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.
Tice Cin : Keeping the House
Rosmarie Waldrop : The Nick of Time
Percival Everett : The Trees
Myriam J. A. Chancy : What Storm, What Thunder
Tin House Live : Negotiating the Love and Renouncing the Rest with Destiny O. Birdsong and Donika Kelly
Pádraig Ó Tuama : In the Shelter & Borders and Belonging
Adania Shibli : Minor Detail
Tin House Live : Writing On Your Own Terms with Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
Kaveh Akbar : Pilgrim Bell
Callum Angus : A Natural History of Transition
Douglas Kearney : Sho
Arthur Sze : The Glass Constellation : New & Collected Poems
Anakana Schofield : Bina
Doireann Ní Ghríofa : A Ghost in the Throat & To Star the Dark
Abdellah Taïa : A Country For Dying
Elissa Washuta : White Magic
Rikki Ducornet : Trafik
Jorie Graham : Runaway
Brandon Hobson : The Removed
Viet Thanh Nguyen : The Committed
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Lit Society: Books and Drama
Ex Libris
Write The Book: Conversations on Craft
Frankenstein
Black Beauty
Fresh Air
Myths and Legends