Street Singers Of Lucknow And Other Stories Qurratulain Hyder Paperback 978-81-88965-53-3 Women Unlimited, 2008, 2021 Language: English 244 pages 5.5"x8.5", Price INR 395.00 ADD TO CART This fascinating collection of short stories highlights the innovative genius of this iconoclastic writer as she moves from realism to the fabular, and from history to time-travel. In the title story, woven with social satire and melodrama, an itinerant entertainer becomes a well-known singer, eventually coming back to her Lucknow roots in a subdued, melancholy ending. A cast of characters entertain themselves with gossip and adultery in the lush tranquility of the tea gardens of East Bengal. At the centre is a mercurial, identity-changing adventuress, one who often appears in her fiction. Another is the memorable Eurasian, Catherine Bolton, who escapes her roots to achieve social success. This versatile writer takes imaginative flight in unusual stories spanning decades, or even centuries. Her arsenal of techniques—pastiche, satire, memoir, collage—take us to the place most important to her, the human heart in all its varied seasons.
