These Circuses That Sweep Through the Landscape by Tejaswini Apte-Rahm

These Circuses That Sweep Through the Landscape by Tejaswini Apte-Rahm

Media kit

These Circuses That Sweep Through the Landscape by Tejaswini Apte-Rahm

MEDIA KIT

Author Biography

Tejaswini Apte-Rahm is the author of the short story collection These Circuses That Sweep Through the Landscape published by Aleph Book Company in December 2016.

She is a full-time writer from Mumbai.

These Circuses That Sweep Through the Landscapehas been shortlisted for the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2017, and longlisted for the Tata Nexon Literature Live! First Book Award (Fiction) 2017.

Her short stories have been published in HimalSouthasian (Nepal), BLink (Hindu Business Line, India) The Big Chilli (Thailand), Six Seasons Review (Bangladesh) and The Daily Star (Bangladesh), as well as in Monsoon Midnights, an e-book anthology of stories about Bangkok.

Tejaswini worked as an environmental researcher for ten years, during which time she wrote two non-fiction books. She was also a journalist in Mumbai, and has written on cinema, photography and environmental issues for Screen, The Times of India, Hindustan Times and The Asian Age.

She studied at the JB Petit High School for Girls (Mumbai), the United World College of South-East Asia (Singapore), the University of Sussex and the University of Kent (England).

Tejaswini has lived in Serbia, Israel, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar and Bangladesh, spending a year or two in each country with her husband and daughter.

Currently she lives in Azerbaijan.

Competitions

  • 2017: Shortlisted, Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize
  • 2017: Longlisted, Tata Nexon Literature Live! First Book Award (Fiction)
  • 2014: Longlisted, DNA Short Story Competition, India
  • 2007: Longlisted, Fish Short Story Competition, Ireland
  • 2005: Longlisted, Fish Short Story Competition, Ireland
  • 1999: Runner-up prize, Mencap Short Story Competition, London.

Published stories

Apte-Rahm, T.

2016. Sandalwood inBLink, Hindu Business Linenewspaper. India.

2016. The House on the Hill in Six Seasons Review. Bangladesh.

2015. What is WhisperedinThe Daily Starnewspaper. Bangladesh.

2014. Seaweed in The Big Chilli magazine, Bangkok, and in Monsoon Midnights e-book.

2000. Homo Coleoptera in HimalSouthasian. Nepal.

FAQs

Q1: What is the title of the book?

A1: These Circuses That Sweep Through the Landscape.

Q2: What is it about?

A2: It is a collection of ten short stories, set in India and in London.

Q3: Three words that describe the book?

A3: Dark, twisty, funny.

Q4: When was the book released?

A4: December 2016, as a paperback.

Q5: Where can I buy the book?

A5: Amazon, Flipkart, local bookstores.

Q6: Who is the publisher?

A6: Aleph Book Company, New Delhi, India.

Q7: Who else does Aleph Book Company publish?

A7: Aleph Book Company publishes quality literary fiction and non-fiction for the discerning reader. Their list of authors includes Vikram Seth, Ruskin Bond, Khushwant Singh, Valmik Thapar, Wendy Doniger and Shashi Tharoor.

Download book cover and author photos at:

Book Blurb

A fanatical collector of beetles finds out too late where his passion has led him. A woman out on a shopping spree in a glitzy mall finds she can’t go home again. A servant girl experiences a cruel loss of innocence when she eats something that wasn’t meant for her. In the sweltering heat of Bombay, a schoolgirl finds the ground slipping beneath her feet except when she’s watching Star Trek. Four friends meet for drinks one evening, only to find that their friendship is not what it seems. And, in the extraordinary title story, a student who worshipped his old teacher for decades comes to a terrible realization about him. Meanwhile, his old mentor is planning a cunning strategy of his own.

In this funny, dark, richly layered and emotionally complex debut collection of stories, Tejaswini Apte-Rahm explores with great flair and originality the shadowy boundary that separates everyday lives from unexpected, even terrifying, realities.

Taste some Stories

Tales of violence…

“I can peel the skin off his face as I regard him at leisure. But his skin is so old and moth-eaten that logic tells me it cannot possibly be peeled off smoothly, it is too fragile for that and would only hang in shreds.”

“On some days I felt I was witnessing an evil moonrise on a dark planet. I would then sit crouched in a corner gazing about me with wide, horrified eyes.”

“She leaned over the railing and looked down at the top of his head. It was a full head of wavy hair… She idly imagined dropping something heavy on him from above.”

There was a good sharp fruit knife fallen off the coffee table in front of me. I picked it up and slashed at the sofa seat.”

…and tales of passion

“He is rich, he gifts me green contact lenses, and says I look so ravishing in them that he will not take no for an answer and that afternoon he makes love to me hungrily; I emerge out of virgin-hood in this way, feline and content.”

“Her bare waist, with just a hint of fat, showing through the drapes of the thin chiffon sarees she was so fond of, would make Mr Ghosh's heart flutter like a moth.”

“I was looking straight into her eyes to stop myself from looking at the curves under her thin cotton top.”

… tales of Mumbai

“The monsoon arrives with its usual ferocity. Rivers of rain cascade down for days and wrap the city in a muggy blanket. Every year Anshu marvels at the wet metallic rainbows left on the pitch-black roads.”

“She made a pretty picture in the late afternoon sun, her long dark hair and white skirt stirring in the breeze, silhouetted against the sweeping blue-water arc of Queen’s Necklace. She appeared to be standing in a golden pool of light.”

…and a haunting tale of love set in London

“A loud crackling breaks through the dust and then melts into a deep voice, mellow like wood-smoked honey, gentle and heart-breaking as lips against skin… he sings a song of seduction, how playful, how tantalizing his invitation to fly to the clouds, to sing together and find a rainbow away from the crowds. He switches to Italian. I have no idea what the words mean.”

Sample Interview:

Ten Questions with Tejaswini Apte-Rahm

Q1: What is your book about?

A1: These Circuses That Sweep Through the Landscape is a collection of ten short stories. Most are set in contemporary India. A couple are set in London. Many of them are a bit dark and twisty. The stories are about different forms of violence, passion and love. My characters are tussling with some kind of dilemma, or facing a moment of truth. And often they make their decisions with the dark part of their minds.

Q2: What kind of dilemmas do your characters face?

A2: Well, there’s a shopaholic woman who is stuck in a mall for a year, and cannot find a way out. There’s a beetle-collector who suspects his lovely docile wife of having a rip-roaring affair. There’s a girl who falls in love – true love – with Dean Martin who was an American singing sensation in the 1950s – and she has a major problem on her hands because he has been dead for years. Then there are two couples in an upper-class drawing room facing an excruciating evening trying to impress each other over cocktails, though none of them can stand each other. There’s the architect of my title story who is facing his own death –and is planning a cunning architectural legacy. So you have dilemmas that range from the petty, to the fantastic, to the insurmountable. And each kind of situation leads to a great yarn.

Q3: Let’s talk about your title story; why have you chosen this as the title of your collection?

A3: The story titled ‘These Circuses That Sweep Through the Landscape’ is one of my favourites –despite the fact that all the stories are very close to my heart. The title is a line of dialogue said by one of the characters, at a pivotal moment in the story. And I thought the line was dramatic enough and encompassing enough, to speak for the collection as a whole. Lots of strange things happen in these stories – just like the weird and wonderful things that happen in a circus.And we are insignificant creatures simply passing through the earth’s ecosystem, the way circuses pass through the land –even our greatest triumphs and most tragic experiences will in the end be forgotten. The only thing that endures is the landscape.

Q4: What was the inspiration for your stories?

A4: I get inspiration from observing people and situations around me, by being in touch with current events, by reading widely and whimsically. I take what appears to be an ordinary situation, and ask myself the big question that fiction-writers must ask themselves: What If…? This magical question leads to a thousand different stories. I am absolutely fascinated by the inner lives of people. I actually think it is not so easy to keep an inner life inside you. It shows up on your face and in your actions. And that is what I am constantly trying to observe and put into my writing.

Q5: So your stories are based on real life?

A5: No. None of my characters are real people and none of the events have ever happened. Though it would be flattering if readers thought it was so, because that would mean I have done my job well, that I have managed to create authentic characters and situations.

Q6: Why did you choose to write short stories?

A6: I love the short story genre. It is a challenging, frustrating, delightful form of writing. You rarely encounter neat endings in life – it is always jagged, messy. And in short stories too there are rarely neat endings, because you are not witnessing a person’s entire life. You are witnessing one life-changing moment, episode or epiphany that has implications lingering far beyond that particular moment. I think that is the way we actually experience life, as a series of fragmentary episodes rather than the beginning-middle-and-end structure that one conventionally encounters in the novel format.

Q7: Why do you feel that short story writing is so challenging?

A8: Well, in a novel you have thousands of words to say what you want to say. An occasional dud paragraph or dud sentence or even a slip in the logic of a sequence can be quite easily forgiven, if the novel as a whole is good. Not so in the short story, where each word and sentence must make a solid contribution and nothing can be superfluous. If a great novel is like a treasure chest, a great short story is like a perfectly cut jewel that you can hold in the palm of your hand and admire from every angle. I love working with that kind of precision.

Q8: Are you planning to write only short stories?

A8: I’m now working on a novel. You have to use the form and genre that your story demands, whether it is a short story, novella or novel.

Q9: Which authors have influenced your writing?

A9: I love Roald Dahl’s short stories for adults – he was my inspiration to start writing stories in the first place. And I am a great admirer of Doris Lessing’s short fiction. Both use words with the sharp precision of a knife-edge, and both are ruthless in the way they dissect human nature. Doris Lessing couples that with a beautiful compassion for her characters.

Q10: What reaction are you hoping for, from readers of These Circuses That Sweep Through the Landscape?

A10: I’m hoping that some of the more chilling stories unnerve you, and that the emotional journeys of my characters get under your skin. Most of all, I’m hoping you’ll sit back and enjoy the ride!

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