Swimmer Among The Stars

Description

An interview with the last speaker of a language. A chronicle of the final seven days of a town that is about to be razed to the ground by an invading army. The lonely voyage of an elephant from Kerala to a princess's palace in Morocco. A fabled cook who flavours his food with precious stones. A coterie of international diplomats trapped in near-Earth orbit. These, and the other stories in this collection, reveal an extraordinary young storyteller, whose tales emerge from a tradition that includes the creators of the Arabian Nights, Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges, Angela Carter and other ancient and modern masters of the fable.

Promotion info

Furiously inventive, beautifully crafted and remarkably assured, Swimmer Among the Stars announces the arrival of a blazing new Indian talent.

Reviews

Haunting and mysteriously powerful ... Swimmer Among the Stars announces the arrival of a writer who is gifted not just with extraordinary talent but also with a subtle, original and probing mind. -- Amitav Ghosh [Tharoor's] debut work of fiction is a truly global collection: he skips as easily between continents as if he were jumping rope ... His prose can be elegant, ironic, deadpan. Just as often, it is sweetly melancholic ... Tharoor is clearly a monumental talent, and his debut is a pleasure, from the first page to the last. Kirkus (starred review) A refreshingly profound and gifted 31-year-old writer ... Swimmer Among the Stars is a mesmeric introduction to a writer ... the work of a storyteller who stands lucid on the cusp of reinventing storytelling. India Today So brilliantly bold and enchanting ... Tharoor impresses with a perfect lightness of touch ... Jorge Luis Borges claimed that every writer creates his own precursors. Tharoor creates Borges as one of his. Swimmer Among the Stars is a Borgesian patchwork of fact and fantasy, a remapping of ancient cultures and civilisations, a playful foray into parallel dimensions. If Tharoor can achieve all this in miniature, then roll on his first novel. The National (Abu Dhabi) An exemplary debut ... Working with the vast riches of fables, epics, mythologies, folk tales, histories ... Tharoor spins a weave that is for all time, yet peculiarly, achingly of the present ... This is a talent whose time has come. Mint A magnificent collection of short fiction. It transports one into a different world, especially with its minute details, achieving the near-impossible with words. The Hindu Each of these stories ... reflects ... a rare combination of surreal imagination matched with an extraordinary craft of a master storyteller. The Statesman (India) Tharoor's prose is rich, imaginative and free of needless complexities; it is the plots of the stories that stand out with their edgy unpredictability ... A fascinating read, Swimmer Among the Stars promises great things to come from its young author. New Indian Express

Author description

Kanishk Tharoor is an Indian writer based in New York City. His journalism, criticism, and short stories have appeared in international and Indian publications; his story 'Tale of the Teahouse' was shortlisted for a US National Magazine Award. He studied at Yale, Columbia, and at New York University.