This month, our editors select their recent favorite works, including Greek poetry that muses on the voices of cicadas and the natural world, as well as an Indian novel of friendship, philosophy, and the changing Delhi cityscape. Read on to find out more!
Phoebe Giannisi already had me with her Homerica (2017), and now has got me again with her new book Cicada (New Directions, 2022). Beautifully translated, like Homerica, by Brian Sneeden, the book resounds with an “alien voice from the fence of the teeth.” Alien, not only because it is the song of the cicadas that is constantly evoked and lurks from underneath the pages since its clear-voiced announcement in the title, but even more so because the voice here belongs to all sorts of beings, especially the non-human ones. It’s the wind, and the earth, the figs, and the fish, and the egg, the sea, the rain. Words, “the thing that is most yours,” are borrowed from elsewhere. For how else could there be a meditation on the passing of time and transformations, unless out of attention to that which is always present yet is almost impossible to record: the sound or, to say it with Virginia Woolf, “the murmur or current behind it,” the humming of it?
–Cristina Pérez Díaz, Editor-at-Large for Puerto Rico
Krishna Sobti, who passed away recently, is one of the most celebrated Hindi writers in India. Not only is she well-known for her idiolect, a magical blend of Hindustani, Punjabi, and Rajasthani, but also for her profound display of female desire and sexuality. She was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award for her novel Zindaginama, but returned it in 2015 to protest growing intolerance in the country. In The Music of Solitude (Harper Collins India, 2013), translated by Vasudha Dalmia, two elderly people named Aranya and Ishan, living alone in Delhi government flats, develop a friendship. They go on walks, share meals, and talk. In their humdrum middle-class existence, marked by domesticity, chatter, and the occasional robbery, the two speak to each other about their opposing philosophies. Their friendship recalls the many Delhi(s) they’ve occupied, and the rapid changes of the city and their childhoods. A simple question turns into a lofty, though sublime, discussion. Aranya, modelled after the writer, prefers solitude, remains stoic in the face of calamity, and is fiercely feminist. Ishan, on the other hand, is of the belief that there is strength in community. The book is a collection of their musings, where they accept each other’s differences and open themselves to companionship.
–Suhasini Patni, Editor-at-Large for India
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