Bøger af Tabish Khair

This book presents a reading of contemporary Indian fiction in English, using "discourse" and class divisions in "Babu-Coolie" terms. It includes writings of such eminent authors as R. K. Narayan, Raja Rao, V. S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Anita Desai, Amitav Ghosh and others.

"The short story "Namaste Trump" starts in a deceptive domestic setting, where a servant from the hinterlands is patronized and exploited by an upwardly mobile urban family. But as the nation celebrates Trump's visit and copes with the pandemic, it ends up becoming a prophecy of endless haunting. This sets the agenda for a series of stories that delve into fracturing or broken lives in small-town India over the past fifty years. In the novella-length "Night of Happiness," pragmatic entrepreneur Anil Mehrotra has set up his thriving business empire with the help of his lieutenant, Ahmed, an older man who is different in more ways than one. Quiet and undemanding, Ahmed talks in aphorisms; bothers no one; and always gets the job done. But when one stormy night, Mehrotra discovers an aspect to Ahmed that defies all reason, he is forced to find out more about his trusted aide. What will he discover: madness or something worse? In a series of three linked stories, "The Corridor," "The Ubiquity of Riots" and "Elopement," Khair traces, through the eyes of an adolescent, the tensions of living as a liberal Muslim in India in the 1970s and 1980s, tensions that isolate families, break friendships, and point to the violence to come. The narrator of these stories, now a busy professional, returns in the third person in another story, "Olden Friends are Golden," about belonging and exclusion on WhatsApp. Then there is "Scam," a flippantly narrated story about a crime that can only be comprehended as a scam perpetuated by the victim, and in "Shadow of a Story" violence returns to a village family in an unimaginable shape. "The Thing with Feathers" is perhaps about hope, but it is hope beyond despair, hope perhaps gone mad: or, is all hope mad now? Finally, "The Last Installment" narrates two farmers, a father and a son, in a village of North India, caught in a corporate vice: the breathless sentences of the story making the reader sense the desperation of the central character as he finally fights to breathe, to live. By turns poetic, chilling, and heartbreaking, ranging from understated realism to gothic terror, this is a book of stories about precarious lives in a world without tolerance"--

A novel of suspense and intrigue set in the post-pandemic world Harris Maloub, a killer with an erased official past, now in his fifties, is visited by someone who could not be alive and given an assignment. In Aarhus, Denmark, Jens Erik, police officer on pre-retirement leave, somehow cannot forget the body of a Black man recovered from the sea some years ago. On an abandoned oil rig in the North Sea, turned into a resort for the very rich, Michelle, a young Caribbean woman, realizes that the man she has followed to this job is not what he claims to be. And neither is the rig, where a secret laboratory bares to her a face that is neither human nor animal. Behind all this, there lurks the ghost of a seminar in 2007: most of the participants of that seminar are dead or untraceable. Why was their obscure research on plants and fungi and microbes so important? What is the secret that killed them? What is the weapon that powerful syndicates are trying to obtain – or develop? Narrated from the perspective of the post-pandemic world around 2030, but moving back in time to cover all of the 21st century, and even bits and pieces from the 20th and the 19th, The Body by the Shore is a novel of suspense and speculation about the complexity of life and intricacy of the earth. It is also a novel about reason and emotion, love and despair, greed and hope, human beings and microbes. When the narrative strands come together, a world of great terror and beauty is revealed to the reader.

Ved første øjekast kunne Jamilla og Ameena ikke være mere forskellige. De er begge teenagere af sydasiatisk afstamning – født og opvokset i Yorkshire i Nordengland. Jamilla lever sammen med sin konservative, muslimske familie og er stille, religiøs og dygtig i skolen. Den mere verdslige Ameena, der bor sammen med sin enlige mor, gemmer sin usikkerhed bag en flabet og fræk personlighed. De to piger finder sammen i et umage, skæbnesvangert venskab. Da Ameena bliver afvist af skolens populæreste dreng, udvikler hun en intens interesse for religion. Hun begynder at dyrke en militant version af Islam og kommunikerer via internettet med en kvinde, der fra Syrien rekrutterer til jihad – noget der også påvirker Jamilla. Efter Jamillas fars død og broderens giftermål forlader de to piger England og tilslutter sig Islamisk Stat i Syrien. Den intellektuelle og følelsesmæssige fattigdom, såvel som volden, de møder der, skaber en historie, der både er gribende og hjerteskærende. “Khair skriver fantastisk … gå ikke glip af romanen!” The Times “Respektløs, intelligent og eksplosiv.” The Independent “Original og drilsk.” The New Yorker Tabish Khair, f. 1968, er kritikerrost indisk forfatter og digter, hvis bøger er oversat til adskillige sprog og indstillet til en række priser. Han bor og arbejder i dag i Aarhus.

A lucid intervention in current debates about identity and difference, this book uses the concept of Otherness to look again at both Gothic fiction and Postcolonialism.

Set primarily in India and spanning the twentieth century, Filming tells a series of stories, including that of one-time prostitute Durga, who is persuaded to give away her young son, Ashok, and that of Saleem, the son of a prostitute and two-times star of the silver screen. As these stories intertwine and overlap, they combine to create a novel that is simultaneously about the small details and the bigger picture, weaving together major historical events - including Partition, the assassination of Gandhi, the rise of photography and the Bombay film industry, and the development of barbed wire - with the everyday moments that make up the fabric of our lives. 'Its plot, like a Bollywood melodrama, teems with characters and incident' Guardian 'Elegantly structured and taut with understated passion, Filming is a brilliant recreation of the lost world of early cinema and the continuing tragedy of religious hatred . . . Its delights as well as its message should find admiring readers everywhere' Independent 'Absorbing . . . Filming is distinguished by its ambition, its structural inventiveness and its highly evocative prose' TLS 'Underpinning this intriguing novel is a concern for the truth . . . In keeping with Khair's pertinent and thought-provoking musings on self-deception, its skill lies in making us question our assumptions about what we do and why we do it' New Statesman

Ved første øjekast kunne Jamilla og Ameena ikke være mere forskellige. De er begge teenagepiger af sydasiatisk afstamning – født og opvokset i Yorkshire i Nordengland. Jamilla lever sammen med sin konservative muslimske familie og er stille, religiøs og dygtig i skolen. Den mere verdslige Ameena, der bor sammen med sin enlige mor, gemmer sin usikkerhed bag en flabet og fræk personlighed. De to piger finder sammen i et umage, skæbnesvangert venskab. Da Ameena bliver afvist af skolens populæreste, dreng udvikler hun en intens interesse for religion. Hun begynder at dyrke en militant version af Islam og kommunikerer via internettet med en kvinde, der fra Syrien rekrutterer til jihad – noget der også påvirker Jamilla. Efter faderens død og broderens giftermål forlader de to piger England og tilslutter sig Islamisk Stat i Syrien. Den intellektuelle og følelsesmæssige fattigdom, såvel som volden, de møder der, skaber en historie der både er gribende og hjerteskærende. “Historien rammer det inderste af din sjæl på samme måde som den bedste film, du nogensinde har set.” India Today “Khair skriver fantastisk … gå ikke glip af romanen!” The Times “Respektløs, intelligent og eksplosiv.” The Independent “Original og drilsk.” The New Yorker

A t first glance, Jamilla and Ameena couldn't be more different. Both are Yorkshire-born teenage girls of South Asian descent; but whereas Jamilla lives with her conservative Muslim family and is quiet, religious and academically bright, the more worldly Ameena masks her insecurity behind a brassy, bawdy persona and lives with her divorced mum.

“Film – en kærlighedshistorie” af den prisbelønnede og kritikerroste indiske forfatter Tabish Khair er en roman om kærlighed, drømme og bedrag. Det er en poetisk smuk fortælling skrevet af en livsklog forfatter. Beskriver på én gang tilværelsens små facetter og nuancer samtidig med at den tegner et historisk billede af Indien i en tid med konflikter og religiøst had.I bogen følger vi den tidligere prostituerede Durga, som sammen med sin søn og mand rejser rundt til mindre byer i Indien for at fremvise film. Familien lever et fattigt og slidsomt liv, og Durga overtales til at give sin søn væk til en velhavende familie, som år forinden har mistet deres søn.Fælles for Durga og hendes mand er, at de i deres pauvre og slidsomme tilværelse næres af drømme. Drømmene er en væsentlig drivkraft, men de må også erfare, at drømmene samtidig kaster et slør af bedrag efter sig.“Film – en kærlighedshistorie” beskriver også en række historiske begivenheder i Indien i 40´erne, hvor den muslimske stat Pakistan dannes, mordet på Gandhi, udviklingen af fotografiet og filmindustrien i Bombay, hvor genren bollywood-film tager form."En ambitiøs og tænksom roman, som forlanger meget af sine læsere, men som samtidig er rig på ladede øjeblikke og mindeværdige pointer. Flimrende og glimrende". Weekendavisen”Det er en fornøjelse af læse Film – en kærlighedshistorie. Antydningerne er strøet ud med rund hånd, man fornemmer, at her ligger gåder begravet, men man kan umuligt gennemskue dem før senere”. Information.“En kærlighedserklæring til Indien, der opsummerer godt og ondt, kys og prygl. Det er rigt, gribende, virtuost, klogt. Alt i alt anstrengelserne værd, så smøg ærmerne op, kære læser, og tag fat!” Berlingske 5 stjerner.“... fin, tragisk, dramatisk, stille og stærk roman ... det er kunst af filmisk skønhed”. Alt for Damerne 5 stjerner.