About the Book

THIS HEADY NOVELLA WEAVES TOGETHER HISTORY AND MAGIC, LOVE AND CONFLICT TO ENTRANCE AS ONLY K.R. MEERA CAN.

As the foundations are laid for a temple to rise on the site of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, voices rise from the ground in a small town in central Kerala. She is a judge in a district court, and he a petitioner in a seemingly banal property dispute. But the very first hearing tosses the judge’s life into disarray. The scent of pink Edward roses, the iridescent scales of snakes, the sceptre—and science—of vanishing twins. Girls whose feet do not touch the ground. Irascible and comically powerful ancestors. In this illusory landscape are the hard truths about the intertwined histories of Hindus and Muslims in India, as well as the chasms between men and women.

A hypnotic novella by K.R. Meera, deftly translated by Nisha Susan, Qabar echoes with the dizzying knowledge that verdicts are not solutions.

About the Author

Multiple-award-winning author and journalist K.R. Meera has published short stories, novels and essays, and has won some of the most prestigious literary prizes. Most recently, she won the Kendra Sahitya Akademi Award for Aarachar, widely hailed as a contemporary classic and published in English as Hangwoman.

About the Translator

Nisha Susan is the co-founder of two award-winning media companies, The Ladies Finger and Grist Media. She is the author of The Women Who Forgot to Invent Facebook and Other Stories (Context, 2020). She currently writes a column for Mint called ‘Cheap Thrills’.