‘Shekhar is the sort of writer who appears only rarely in the literary establishment. His voice is powerful, political, urgent. Yet, there is no reason to imagine that politics overpowers the plots—his concerns are deeply literary, his style, effortles’ —Scroll.in

‘[Stories] written from the margin, against the grain, and told with great skill and humanity. Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar is a writer to be sought out and discovered.’ —The Indian Express

‘[There’s] no easy way to read this collection…Shekhar’s tone is calm, even low-key, but he shakes us out of our stupor with his political, ear-to-the-ground stories.’ —The Financial Express

‘The Adivasi Will Not Dance represents a collection of little histories that are contributing to the character of India as a developing, diverse and evolving nation…Shekhar’s work in this volume is a tribute to lives of struggle and marginalisation, carefully avoiding the exotic or self-pitying tone. His craft is suffused by love for his people that reminds readers of Baba Nagarjuna’s poetry—familiar and distant, angry and lyrical.’—Himal Southasian

‘Mr Shekhar is one of India’s most promising writers, his stories deft, compassionate and sharp-edged… His way of seeing is unflinching but not didactic. Mr Shekhar captures an album of people’s lives.’ —Business Standard

‘Shekhar’s writing brings aspects of India that the grand narratives in Indian English writing have often ignored. Through characters that are powerless in so many ways, and by fusing an indigenous realism to the content of his writing, Shekhar has created a fresh and much-needed idiom for the Indian experience.’ —Deccan Herald

‘Shekhar, one of the five writers shortlisted for The Hindu Prize 2017, produces a no-holds-barred work on the life of the marginalized that seems less fiction and more the stuff of life. He doesn’t veil these voices in literary flourishes or what he calls “classic literary tropes”. His characters are flesh and blood, the stories difficult to stomach, the language brutal.’ —The Hindu

‘Hansda Sowendra Shekhar tells the story of people whose ordinariness makes them special.’ — The Hindu

‘From the first page of the first story in The Adivasi Will Not Dance, it has become clear that we have entered a world new to Indian readers.’— Biblio

‘He is clearly a writer to follow, someone whose work promises a fresh look at Adivasi lives.’ —Biblio

‘Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar is a writer to be sought out and discovered. May his tribe increase.’ —The Indian Express

‘Adivasi will not Dance, by Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar, in its ten short stories, leads the reader towards the horizon of destitution and exclusion…yet the provocations one experiences while reading the work is irresistible.’—Mainstream Weekly