Böcker av Bhisham Bherwani

These four stories, related but distinct, form a kind of emotional and cultural fugue, one that glances back from different vantage points to recurring melodies of modern cultural and intellectual experience. From Bombay to Berlin, Cambridge and Harvard to Wall Street, the elusive qualtities of contemporary historical consciousness is the scent that Bherwani's characters try to isolate and name. As Robert Morgan notes in his foreword: "Bherwani's fiction is global in the best sense, taking place across continents, across cultures, decades, across strata of wealth, employment, and education... These stories are both a record of the larger shifts of history and the wrenching, intimate unfoldings of particular lives."

Poetry is ultimately mythology, the telling of stories of the soul, Stanley Kunitz wrote. "The old myths, the old gods, the old heroes have never died. They are only sleeping at the bottom of our minds, waiting for our call." These myths, these gods, these heroes are called upon and awakened in this startlingly confessional debut volume. While exploring the dynamics of illness, Bherwani extends his domain, evoking all that is mysterious and nonsensical, beyond family, beyond earth, to heaven, to hell, embracing those old myths, gods, and heroes to try to make sense of our own mortal situation. Within the context of a sibling's enduring love for his brother, this collection examines the intricacies of relationship that define family. Bherwani's narrator grapples with the brother's affliction, exploring, in the process, the predicaments of illness, loss, and handicap.