Known Turf

Veda Pahurkar writes about The Comeback in the Asian Age: ' What begins as a story of friendship slowly reveals deeper layers of rivalr...

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...

When was the last time you read a story that well and truly blew your mind? I suppose, in order to answer that question, you’d have to first...

'Annie Zaidi’s The Comeback is about one man’s journey from self-absorption to consideration for others staged as an ode to theatre as ...

A new-ish review of my book  Bread, Cement, Cactus: A Memoir of Belonging and Dislocation  in Cha journal: 'The plurality inherent in t...

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...

'Annie Zaidi’s new novel, The Comeback , is a delightful journey into the heart of Indian theatre, with a focus on small-town India......

 A first review for The Comeback in Youth ki Awaaz :  'The entire novel is built on the perceived hierarchy of the performing arts, and...

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...

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've tried my hand at translating a poem from English into Urdu. The poem is 'I find Faiz Blowing on his Saucer of Tea' by Imtia...

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

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...

What is a Dalit perspective in literature? How does it differ from the phrase 'Dalit literature'? These were some of the questions I...

If a government is driven by the need to secure majority mandates, what incentives does it have to secure minority rights? In fact, if all i...

I had intended to do this around the new year but better late than never. I have been thinking about unpaid labours of love, art and so on. ...

Recently, I translated a poem of the contemporary Hindi poet Amitabh Bachchan (not the film actor). It was entirely spontaneous for I saw hi...