Mumbai Noir (31 page)

Ishrat Syed
and
K
ALPANA
S
WAMINATHAN
are surgeons and they write together as
K
ALPISH
R
ATNA
. Syed is also a photographer; his last exhibition,
The Persistence of Memory
, previewed his pictorial project
Palimpsest–––—The Erasures That Made Bombay.
Their most recent book is
Once Upon a Hill
. Syed divides his time between Mumbai and Mississippi.

A
BBAS
T
YREWALA
is one of the most versatile talents in the Hindi film industry. His directorial debut,
Jaane Tu … Ya Jaane Na
(2008), was an award-winning critical and commercial success. He has written dialogues, lyrics, and screenplays for numerous highly acclaimed films, such as
Munnabhai M.B.B.S., Asoka the Great,
and
Maqbool
—an adaptation of Shakespeare’s
Macbeth
. He was born in Mumbai in 1974 and studied at St. Xavier’s College.

A
LTAF
T
YREWALA
was born in Mumbai and studied in New York. He is the author of the acclaimed novel
No God in Sight,
which was published across the world. His short stories have been included in numerous Indian and international anthologies and magazines. He has been awarded the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Literature Grant for 2011, and he can be reached at [email protected].

P
AROMITA
V
OHRA
is a filmmaker and writer whose work focuses on feminism, urban life, love, and popular culture. Some of her films are
Partners in Crime, Morality TV and the Loving Jehad
,
Q2P, Where’ Sandra,
and
Unlimited Girls
. She has also written the Pakistani film
Khamosh Pani (Silent Waters)
and several documentaries, and published fiction and nonfiction in various anthologies including
Bombay Meri Jaan, Electric Feather, Recess, Defending Our Dreams,
and
First Proof.

A
NNIE
Z
AIDI
is the author of
Known Turf: Bantering with Bandits and Other True Tales
. Her work has also appeared in anthologies like
India Shining, India Changing,
and
Women Changing India,
and in several magazines including
Frontline, Caravan, Tehelka, Pratilipi,
and
The Little Magazine
. She currently lives and works in Mumbai.

Also available from the Akashic Noir Series

DELHI NOIR
edited by Hirsh Sawhney
304 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95

Brand-new stories by:
Irwin Allan Sealy, Radhika Jha, Ruchir Joshi, Meera Nair, Siddharth Chowdhury, Mohan Sikka, Palash K. Mehrotra, Hartosh Singh Bal, Hirsh Sawhney, Uday Prakash, and others.

“All fourteen stories are briskly paced, beautifully written, and populated by vivid, original characters … Few books can alter one’s perception about the state of a society, but this does, while delivering noir that’s first class in any light.”

—Publishers Weekly
(starred review)

BROOKLYN NOIR
edited by Tim McLoughlin
350 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95

*Winner of Shamus Award, Anthony Award, Robert L. Fish Memorial Award; finalist for Edgar Award, Pushcart Prize.

Brand-new stories by:
Pete Hamill, Arthur Nersesian, Ellen Miller, Nelson George, Nicole Blackman, Sidney Offit, Ken Bruen, and others.

“Brooklyn Noir
is such a stunningly perfect combination that you can’t believe you haven’t read an anthology like this before. But trust me— you haven’t … The writing is flat-out superb, filled with lines that will sing in your head for a long time to come.”

—Laura Lippman, winner of the Edgar, Agatha, and Shamus awards

BOSTON NOIR
edited by Dennis Lehane
240 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95

Brand-new stories by:
Dennis Lehane, Stewart O’Nan, Patricia Powell, John Dufresne, Lynne Heitman, Don Lee, Russ Aborn, J. Itabari Njeri, Jim Fusilli, Brendan DuBois, and Dana Cameron.

“In the best of the eleven stories in this outstanding entry in Akashic’s noir series, characters, plot, and setting feed off each other like flames and an arsonist’s accelerant … [T]his anthology shows that noir can thrive where Raymond Chandler has never set foot.”

—Publishers Weekly
(starred review)

NEW JERSEY NOIR
edited by Joyce Carol Oates
312 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95

Brand-new stories (and a few poems) by:
Joyce Carol Oates, Jonathan Safran Foer, Robert Pinsky, Edmund White & Michael Carroll, Bradford Morrow, S.J. Rozan, Bill Pronzini, Sheila Kohler, and others.

“Oates’s introduction to Akashic’s noir volume dedicated to the Garden State, with its evocative definition of the genre, is alone worth the price of the book … Poems by C.K. Williams, Paul Muldoon, and others—plus photos by Gerald Slota—enhance this distinguished entry.”
—Publishers Weekly

TRINIDAD NOIR
edited by Lisa Allen-Agostini and Jeanne Mason
348 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95

Brand-new stories by:
Elizabeth Nunez, Robert Antoni, Lawrence Scott, Oonya Kempadoo, Ramabai Espinet, Shani Mootoo, and others.

“Covering the entire island of Trinidad, the stories take readers from the steamy jungle countryside to the tropical beaches and on to the city streets of the capital, where political intrigue thrives. The stories evoke an atmosphere so strong the reader can practically feel the heat, smell the marijuana, and hear the calypso music. The authors do an especially good job with the dialogue, portraying the speech rhythms and slang of the distinctive Caribbean island.”
—Booklist

PARIS NOIR
edited by Aurélien Masson
252 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95

Brand-new stories by:
Didier Daeninckx, Jean-Bernard Pouy, Marc Villard, Chantal Pelletier, Patrick Pécherot, Hervé Prudon, and others.

“The dank and sweaty crime scenes in
Paris Noir
… testify to the fact that the French invented ‘noir.’”
—New York Times
“Rarely has the City of Light seemed grittier than in this hard-boiled short story anthology.”
—Publishers Weekly