The Greatest Kashmiri Stories Ever Told, Selected and Translated by Neerja Mattoo

Published by: Aleph Book Company

Fiction: LiteraryFiction, Translation, Kashmiri Literature

Book summary:

The Greatest Kashmiri Stories Ever Told spans almost a century of work by some of the finest writers of short fiction in the language. The storytellers included here range from the earliest practitioners of the craft of short story writing—Dinanath Nadim, Somnath Zutshi, Ali Mohammad Lone—to more contemporary writers like Dheeba Nazir.

Some stories in this collection are realistic dramas that hold up a startlingly clear mirror to society, such as Sofi Ghulam Mohammad's 'Paper Tigers', or lay bare the pain of losing one's homeland, as Rattan Lal Shant does in 'Moss Floating on Water'. Then there are others like Ghulam Nabi Shakir's 'Unquenched Thirst' and Umesh Kaul's 'The Heart's Bondage', that look beyond the exterior and focus on the complex inner lives of the women of Kashmir.

Selected and translated by Neerja Mattoo, the twenty-five stories in this volume, all born out of the Kashmiri experience, will resonate with readers everywhere.

About the Translator:

Mitra Neerja Mattoo is an eminent writer, teacher, and translator who has taught in Kashmir for over three decades. She has published five books, the most recent being the critically acclaimed The Mystic and the Lyric: Four Women Poets from Kashmir. Her works have been published by the Sahitya Akademi,

*My Review:

*Thank you Aleph Book Company for the review copy. All opinions are my own.

The Greatest Kashmiri Stories Ever Told, selected and translated by Neerja Mattoo brings together 25 short stories is a stark reminder of how literature suffers but also holds on tenaciously in the face of the complexities that beset a troubled place. The array of stories across writing styles and approach in terms of the themes they tackle is a poignant note on how much of Kashmiri literature remains buried under the weight of personal and political trauma. 

Right from the translator's note detailing how much of the Kashmiri literary canon is absorbed into the Indian literary space, this collection brings home to the reader the universality of stories across cultures and geography while remaining unique because of them. Are these stories of Kashmir: the food and the socio-political culture, the brooding despair of not knowing what will happen in life? Or are these stories of human lives that are defined by the situation around them? I dare say it is the latter.

And so you have stories centered around the domestic sphere or those set in neighbourhoods that are perceived as being socially acceptable but how it is within itself, its own world made of imperfections. There are stories of young friends who are good for nothing for other people and who have no sense of the import of life situations and yet they reveal their most basic emotion and empathy when least expected. There are stories of communities that are knit together by their shared anguish of the insecurity of their lives, the hopes they hold that someone will come back from their beholden duty of protecting themselves and there are stories of exploitation, by men of other men and to such an extent that they don't have a mind of their own, an exploitation borne from the privilege and power of wealth and the servitude that acute poverty leads to on the other.

My only grouse with the collection is that of the 25 stories, only 2 are by women writers but then the realities of writing emerging from troubled spaces is that women are less likely to write or have the space for their work to be nurtured. This is a lovely addition to the Greatest Stories Ever Told series brought out by Aleph Book Company though I wish they would increase their font size (my eyes hurt!!). 

This series has received flak from readers who question the selection or non selection of certain stories but I am of the firm belief that adjectives like 'Greatest' or 'Best' are subjective and nowhere in any of these editions has any of the editors who worked on them said they were the ONLY greatest stories ever. I have been an editor myself for a newspaper and edited a few short stories myself and it takes a broader reading of the texts we get to read to realize that word play isn't easy and a lot of thought is behind the process. There is not going to be one compact collection of short stories, which are the greatest and the rest not there yet. Every reader, every editor will have his or her own list because of different sensibilities.