Known Turf

I had forgotten to post this when it first appeared but during the pandemic, in 2021, I did this wide-ranging conversation with Naveen Kish...

Imagine then, my perplexity when I found myself trudging from hotel to hotel, baggage in tow, and my friend refusing to check in anywhere. T...

Extract from a new essay on representation of Muslims (Muslim men in particular) in Hindi movies:   In and of itself, the Muslim-as-terrori...

One of the good things that happened over the last year: my short story, ‘Zinnias in the Graveyard’, won third prize (shared with Brecht De ...

From an interview in Helter Skelter magazine: The first thing that struck me when reading  The Comeback  is that it feels like it takes pla...

An extract from the first chapter of my newest novel, The Comeback . Read, and if you find yourself enjoying it, do pick up a copy. There we...

Was very pleasantly surprised to find some new(er?) reviews of my novel Prelude to a Riot.   One in Countercurrents says: 'Zaidi’s withh...

Making an attempt to translate one of my favourite Hindi poets, Kedarnath Singh's 'Mukti'. When I found no other path to liberat...

Is a novel a beautiful thing? What of a novel that is presented as an “outline” for the first draft of a novel that the narrator intends to ...

I've written my first essay for the lastest issue of Wasafiri , themed Futurisms . Here's a very short extract from my essay,  Again...

One of Ali Jawad Zaidi's Urdu ghazals, likely written soon after India won independence: Ye na samjho matwalo! Kaun ab sataayega? Haar m...

I took the liberty of doing an Urdu translation of Manglesh Dabral's Hindi poem 'Prem karti stree'. It didn't take much tran...

CAN A WOMAN tell the unvarnished truth about what happened to her? This is the central question at the heart of Anand Ekarshi’s Aattam (The ...

Very pleased to hear that 'Two Way Street,' a short film I wrote has been named by Platform magazine as one of the shorts to look o...

My review of Tabish Khair's latest collection, Namaste Trump and Other Stories :  The book’s structure is imaginative, if also unusual. ...

In Western fairy tales, a witch is a scary woman who might ‘eat’ you, cooked or uncooked. In South Asian fairy tales and folklore, she might...

Once upon a time, I was judgmental about selfies. From film stars to your third cousin, everyone was pouting, clicking, and uploading selfie...

Shakeela Akhtar was one of the earliest women writers of Urdu fiction in the twentieth century. Born and buried in Bihar, she was obviously ...

Terrible news. Desraj Kali is gone. Other people have written detailed obits , and  friends like Shekhar have written personal accounts that...

Bantering with Bandits and Other True Tales (Aleph 2023) is just out. This is a new edition of Known Turf (2010), with a fresh Introduction...