Arunava Sinha

The Greatest Indian Stories Ever Told is a selection of some of the finest literary short fiction written by Indian writers since the genre came into being in the country in the late nineteenth century. Including early masters of the form, contemporary stars, as well as brilliant writers who came of age in the twenty-first century, this anthology takes in its sweep stories from the various regions, languages, and literatures of India. These authors are some of the most feted in the annals of Indian literature and have, between them, won virtually every major literary prize on offer-including the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Jnanpith Award, the Sahitya Akademi Award, and numerous state, national, and international honours.

A strong and courageous novel that deftly tackles psychosis. In Melbourne, Australia, a woman in her late thirties is diagnosed with her third episode of psychosis, amounting to schizophrenia. What follows is a frenzied journey from home to a community house to a hospital and out again. Sanya, the protagonist, finds herself questioning the diagnosis of her sanity or insanity, as determined and defined by a medical model which seems less than convincing to her. Having studied psychology herself, she wonders whether, even if the diagnosis is correct to some extent, the treatment should be different. Sanya tells her story in a deceptively calm, first-person voice, using conversations as the primary narrative mode, as she ponders if and when the next psychotic episode will materialize. Based on real-life events and originally written in Bengali, Hospital is a daring first novel that unflinchingly depicts the precarity of a woman living with psychosis and her struggles with the definition of sanity in our society.