About Book
In Screamthe lead story in Ajay Navarias collectionthe unnamed protagonist is told at the very beginning, Crime is very seductive. And revenge a trickster. The narrator rejects having his identity constrained by the cruel monikers assigned by the caste Hindus of his village or the supposed refuge of the Christian church. He occupies an unclaimed terrain, as do many of Navarias characters. Journeying from a Dantewada village to the town of Nagpur and from there to Mumbai, the Byronic protagonist is raped, works as a masseur and then as a gigolo even while pursuing his education. The city teaches him the many meanings of labour, and he is freedif ultimately destroyedby its infinite possibilities for self-invention.
As complex as they are political, Navarias charactersranging from a brahmin peon to a dalit male prostituteare neither black nor white, neither clearly good nor evil. They inhabit a grey zone; they linger in the transitional passageway between past object and future subject, casteism and democracy. Like James Baldwin was for American fiction, Ajay Navaria is a guerilla in the Indian literary field.
Unclaimed Terrain heralds the arrival of a bold new voice in Indian literature.
About Author
Ajay Navaria is the author of two collections of short stories, Patkatha aur Anya Kahaniyan (2006) and Yes Sir (2012), and a novel, Udhar ke Log (2008). He has been associated with the premier Hindi literary journal, Hans. Navaria teaches in the Hindi department at Jamia Millia Islamia University in Delhi.
Laura Brueck is Assistant Professor of Hindi Literature and South Asian Studies at the University of Colorado in Boulder, US.