Seventeen
Short Stories By Anita Agnihotri
Published in Bengali 1985 – 2011
To be published in English translation by Zubaan, 2011

A brother-and-sister visit the unique crater lake that their dead, estranged mother had written to them about in her letters. A middle-class executive’s orderly life turns upside down when his employer holds back his paycheque without an explanation. The employees of a forgotten outpost in a sun-baked town threaten mass suicide because they have no hope of survival. 17 is a collection of short stories from over 100 of Anita Agnihotri’s published short stories. By turn intense, brittle, angry, sad, and torn apart in conflict, the stories bring out different faces of human bondage and explores the country that is still unknown to many. Set in metropolises and in villages, in small-town India and in international suburbia, they run the gamut of experiences both everyday and extraordinary. From deeply personal relationships against the backdrop of turmoil to intensely social truths told through the unique lives of individuals – all of them bathed in human fragility – these stories bring out the best of literary craftspersonship.