Swimmer Among the Stars
22 March 2018Synopsis
'Do read this . . . I don't think I've ever read a collection which exuberantly spans such breadths of time and space.' Mark Haddon
An interview with the last speaker of a language. A chronicle of the final seven days of a town that is about to be razed to the ground by an invading army. The lonely voyage of an elephant from Kerala to a princess's palace in Morocco. A fabled cook who flavours his food with precious stones. A coterie of international diplomats trapped in near-Earth orbit.
The stories in Swimmer Among the Stars reveal an extraordinary young storyteller in Kanishk Tharoor, whose tales emerge from a tradition that includes the creators of the Arabian Nights, Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges, Angela Carter and other ancient and modern masters of the fable.
Details
22 March 2018
9781509822201Reviews
Do read this . . . I don't think I've ever read a collection which exuberantly spans such breadths of time and space.Mark Haddon
Hypnotic . . . Tharoor's prose is calm and unassertive . . . His writing has the clarity and imaginative expansiveness of fable . . . Tharoor's work has something in common with the fantastical world-building of writers such as Jorge Luis Borges, but there is also a distinct fairy-tale quality, connecting him to a much older storytelling tradition.Sunday Times
Haunting and mysteriously powerful . . . Swimmer Among the Stars announces the arrival of a writer who is gifted not just with extraordinary talent but also with a subtle, original and probing mind.Amitav Ghosh
[A] dazzling first book of short stories . . . A near pitch-perfect collection.i
