RAJI WRITES

More Short Takes: on a literary journal, a film, a Berkeley Coffee Shop, and two novels translated from Malayalam. Weaver’s Literary Review (Volume 1, Number 2, 2025) Volume 1 Number 2 of Weaver’s Literary Review, “A Home for Writings by South Asian Americans and Others”, is beautiful and powerful, with poems, essays, translations, short stories and a review. I have read a few pieces so far, and am looking forward to reading the rest. I am honored to have in it my story Drea

“Cut. If not, shorten.” Anita Desai wrote these words in the margins of an early draft of her daughter Kiran Desai’s latest book,  The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny  (Hogarth, Sept 2025.) This was after the author had cut down a staggering 5000-page manuscript to a still-hefty 1000. Yet, at 688 pages, the published version is still too long, in this reader’s opinion.  Desai discussed the book, which has been shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize, at a Sept. 21 event at  Keple

"Young historian" Manu S. Pillai is a historian and author whose work reimagines Indian history through vivid storytelling and...

Introducing Short Takes   There are so many things I want to write to you all about, and I never seem to have time. So, I decided I would start “Short Takes” to tell you, in 500 words or less, about a book, a show, a movie, or something else that moves me.  So here we go! Film: One Hundred Years of Solitude.   A beloved book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez , made into an impressive Netflix series . I was transported into the world of Macondo and seven generations of the family of J