Today’s conversation with novelist and story writer Jai Chakrabarti is unusually wide-ranging, touching on everything from classical Indian aesthetics to Jewish ritual, from poetry to cognitive science, from Tagore’s plays to Buber’s philosophy, from sublimating the self to writing the other. Chakrabarti’s new story collection, A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness, engages with complex questions of class, gender, race, religion, and nationality, particularly in relation to families and family making, and the tensions between our individual dreams and the countervailing realities of the people we share lives with and among. We discuss questions of story shape, characterization, point of view, and the role of the reader in order to look deeply at how to tell such stories in ways that feel nuanced, lived, and embodied.
For the bonus audio archive Jai reads two poems by the Polish poet and translator (and biographer of Bruno Schulz) Jerzy Ficowski. The epigraph to Jai’s novel comes from one of them, and the second poem is dedicated to the memory of Janusz Korczak (who we discuss quite a bit in the main discussion). To learn how to subscribe to the bonus audio and about the many other potential benefits and rewards from joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter, head over the the show’s Patreon page.
Finally, here is the Bookshop for today’s conversation.
The post Jai Chakrabarti : A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness appeared first on Tin House.
Rae Armantrout : Finalists
Crafting with Ursula : Kim Stanley Robinson on Ambiguous Utopias
Courtney Maum — The Year of the Horses
Ada Limón : The Hurting Kind
Crafting with Ursula : adrienne maree brown on Social Justice & Science Fiction
Cristina Rivera Garza : New and Selected Stories
Caren Beilin : Revenge of the Scapegoat
Crafting with Ursula : Karen Joy Fowler on Experimental Women, Animals, Science & Story
Sheila Heti : Pure Colour
Alejandro Zambra : Chilean Poet
Crafting with Ursula : Isaac Yuen on Writing Nature & Nature Writing
Solmaz Sharif : Customs
Gabrielle Civil : the déjà vu
Crafting with Ursula : Molly Gloss on Writing the Clear, Clean Line
James Hannaham : Pilot Impostor
Rabih Alameddine : The Wrong End of the Telescope
Crafting with Ursula : Becky Chambers on Creating Aliens & Alien Cultures
Victoria Chang : Dear Memory
Valerie Mejer Caso : Edinburgh Notebook
Raymond Antrobus : All The Names Given & The Perseverance
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Lit Society: Books and Drama
Ex Libris
Write The Book: Conversations on Craft
Pride and Prejudice
Grimms’ Fairy Tales
Fresh Air
Myths and Legends