"Small Days and Nights is about disjunction, dislocation and the failure to meet impossible ideals of nationhood, womanhood and parenthood. The title is surely ironic, because this is a concise novel of staggering depth...In its vivid setting, the novel is not exactly a paean to modern India so much as a piercing Munchian howl of grief." -- The Guardian
No matter which part of India you live in – whether it’s rural or urban, if you are a woman – you are thinking about safety issues. There is no place that is safe.... I want to stress that imagined fears for women are as real as the real fears. We cannot separate them or be rational about it, because, I mean, look at the news…
photo by Jonathan Self
Tishani Doshi brings all her skills as one of the world's best poets to this lovely, beguiling, brilliant novel. Run, don't walk to your nearest bookseller." Gary Shteyngart.
Small Days is a novel about contemporary India in the best sense. It’s not a literary Lonely Planet guide to inequality, women’s experience of public space, or the challenges of caring for a person with disabilities in the “third world"—even though all these concerns are at the heart of the story. Instead, Doshi’s writing is lit by palpable rage as well as visceral affection, often for the same things. Raw injustice is not always harnessed into forgiveness and if situations jolt us into questions, we do not always have the comfort of answers.
MINT LOUNGE
An intense meditation on solitude, on a semi-moored life, Small Days and Nights belongs more to the tradition of Doshi’s poetry – most specifically, Girls Are Coming out of the Woods – and less to the tradition of her prose. Those who loved the jauntiness of her writing in The Pleasure Seekers, the energy of the classic immigrant story and the richness, the drama of a family saga, will be surprised by the quietness of this innately inward-looking book.
SCROLL
"Fiction that chooses the domestic for its sphere, especially fiction populated by women is routinely considered narrow, feeble, written for women. Yet the battles for power and control in the domestic sphere and in the community in the 'small days' of this novel, are what shape the fabric of life ..." ANURADHA ROY, THE INDIAN EXPRESS
GIRL IN A BOX
PORTRAITS BY RICCARDO CAVALLARI
PORTRAITS BY RICCARDO CAVALLARI