Fish in a Dwindling Lake - Softcover

Ambai Lakshmi Holmstrom (Tr.)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143414054 ISBN 13: 9780143414056

Publisher: Penguin, 2012

Synopsis

A collection of bold, contemporary and unique stories, told from a woman's gaze.

The body was the only truth she knew. It was the body alone that was left, even as she went beyond the body.

Journeys form the leitmotif of these astonishing new stories by Ambai. Sometimes culminating in an unconventional love affair, some are extraordinary tales of loyalty and integrity; others touch on the almost fantastic, absurd aspect of Mumbai. Yet others explore the notion of a wholesome self, and its tragic absence at times. These stories are illuminated by vivid and unusual characters: from an eccentric, penurious singer-couple who adopt an ape as their son, to a male prostitute, who is battered by bimbos for not giving full satisfaction.

Crucially, some of the stories, like the title one, engage uninhibitedly with a woman s relationship to her body. For Ambai, feminist par excellence, the sensual body, experienced as a natural landscape changing with age, is at the same time, the only vehicle of life and tool for mapping the external world.

About this title

About the Author:

Ambai is the nom de plume of Dr C.S. Lakshmi, a historian and a creative writer in Tamil who writes about love, relationships, quests and journeys in the Tamil region and elsewhere. Her stories have been translated by Lakshmi Holmstrom in two volumes entitled A Purple Sea and In a Forest, a Deer. Ambai was awarded the Lifetime Literary Achievement Award of Tamil Literary Garden, University of Toronto, Canada, for the year 2008.

Lakshmi Holmström is a writer and translator. She has translated short stories, novels and poetry by the major contemporary writers in Tamil. In 2000 she received the Crossword Book Award for her translation of Karukku by Bama; in 2007 she shared the Crossword-Hutch Award for her translation of Ambai s short stories, In a Forest, a Deer; and she received the Iyal Award of the Tamil Literary Garden, Canada, in 2008.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0143414054
• ISBN 13: 9780143414056
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 176