Shuma Raha-Frontline

More stories by this author

Asian workers in Sonapur camp in Dubai in April 2006.

When Gulf dreams rust in the backwaters

Sabin Iqbal’s Tales from Qabristan offers small-town melancholy and sprawling dysfunction—buried, perhaps, under a landslide of unedited prose.

Aug 04, 2025

A representative image of a reader surrounded by piles of books

Tsundoku: When your unread books read you back

Every reader and collector of books will probably testify to the paradox that the more you read, the bigger your heap of unread books grows.

Nov 26, 2024

Tamil women grieve during a ceremony commemorating those who died in the civil war at Mullivaikkal village in northern Sri Lanka on May 18, 2024.

Into the heart of Sri Lanka’s civil war

Through one Tamil family’s entanglement with the LTTE movement, V.V. Ganeshananthan’s award-winning novel traces the human cost of conflict.

Oct 01, 2024

Sisters under the skin

Manju Kapur’s latest novel is an exploration of the lives of women: their inclinations and desires, and their compromises.

Apr 18, 2024

The stories are set in the US, and like Vauhini Vara, many of the protagonists are Americans of Indian descent.

Death, decay, and disintegration

Vauhini Vara’s This is Salvaged is a brooding analysis of loss that is sometimes weighed down by its theme.

Jan 11, 2024

Emerging into the light: Review of ‘Furies’

This collection of short stories to mark 50 years of the feminist press Virago is a riotous celebration of women in all their infinite variety.

Sep 21, 2023

Breaking points: Review of Anukrti Upadhyay’s ‘The Blue Women’

This collection of short stories is an engrossing read, with each story unspooling to reveal a deep rot within minds and relationships.

Jun 07, 2023

Calcutta on your plate

A bite of history

The book is as much a deep-dive into the breathtaking smorgasbord of Calcutta’s cuisine.

Feb 09, 2023

The other half

The novel portrays how patriarchal social norms wield an inordinate amount of power over women.

Nov 17, 2022

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