The shelf / 7 Asian healing fiction recommendations for rainy days

A review of ‘Temple Lamp: Verses on Banaras’ (India Penguin Classics, 2023) by Mirza Ghalib, translated by Maaz Bin Bilal

The top selections in poetry, flash fiction and artwork for Day 22 of the Sehri Tales challenge; prompt: Flag

The top selections in poetry, flash fiction and artwork for Day 21 of the Sehri Tales challenge; prompt: Tire

The top selections in poetry, flash fiction and artwork for Day 20 of the Sehri Tales challenge; prompt: August

The top selections in poetry, flash fiction and artwork for Day 19 of the Sehri Tales challenge; prompt: True

The top selections in poetry, flash fiction and artwork for Day 18 of the Sehri Tales challenge; prompt: Rubble

It is impossible to distinguish when, but I think My loss of faith coincided with your arrival

"Love" did not have me at 'hello' Nor does it cure the cries

Words have crashed onto your shores

Kissing strangers only feels good

Your gaze, a dagger, cuts through me

I needed to de-escalate.

This is the first time I let you in, but you’ve already made yourself at home. You are bumbling around in my kitchen, as though you have been making me tea for a lifetime.

The top selections in poetry, flash fiction and artwork for Day 17 of the Sehri Tales challenge; prompt: Together

'Rise': Sehri Tales selections, Day 16

Though on its surface Sanya Rushdi’s  Hospital, translated into English by Arunava Sinha and recently longlisted for the 2024 Stella Prize, looks to be a breezy, short read—it is anything but. With her rather flattened, sparse prose, Rushdi has managed to write an enduring piece of autofiction, a compelling account of psychosis that neither sensationalises nor withers away any sentimentality from the struggles of mental health.

I love reading about popular inventions which were originally created with a different purpose in mind. For instance, did you know that bubble wrap, that oh-so-ubiquitous packing material that doubles as a stress-relieving toy, was initially intended to be wallpaper? Imagine that! On the one hand, you have hours and hours of bubble-popping fun. On the other hand, probably a trypophobe’s nightmare, so maybe not. Either way, March Chavannes and Alfred Fielding, the co-inventors of the material, thought they had a dud on their hands until IBM started looking for better packing materials for their delicate new computers. The rest is history.

In Deena Mohamed’s Shubeik Lubeik (originally published in 2015 and translated in 2023 by Mohamed herself), wishes have not only drastically altered the fabric of daily life in Egypt, but the world at large.

If the country’s literary potential is not given generous support, we may never create favourable conditions for aspiring writers to devote time and energy to the art

The top selections in poetry, flash fiction and artwork for Day 15 of the Sehri Tales challenge; prompt: Library