LIAN DOUSEL
Praise for Peace in the Land of the Dead:
"These stories inhabit the fertile space where myth brushes against everyday life, revealing the enduring power of love, grief and memory. A thoughtful, memorable, affecting collection that leaves a lasting emotional resonance"
– Janice Pariat, Sahitya Akademi award winner
"Dousel’s short fiction is rare and remarkable within modern Indian writing. His work combines a rigorous historical imagination with exquisitely fetching storytelling and craft. It is this rare alchemy in voices like his that is the most promising aspect of modern Indian fiction."
– Akhil Katyal, Wise Owl Literary Award winner
"Lian Dousel’s Peace in the Land of the Dead is alternately disquieting and sad. But it’s also like a breath of fresh air on a sultry afternoon, cool and fragrant with the aroma of pastoral landscapes! Here is a storyteller with deep emotional resonance and gentle poetic graces! Absolutely worth my time!"
– Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, Shakti Bhatt Prize winner
The demon Kau comforts a girl it is about to possess.
Live-in maid Moinu plans to get recompense as the politically involved family she works for is poised to implode.
A group of friends re-examine the disappearance of two of their friends thirty years later.
A researcher sets out to prove the supernatural doesn’t exist but falls in love with a spirit himself…
In this collection of twelve stories, Lian Dousel carries us into the edges of Manipur, acquainting us with the quotidian lives of a people the rest of India knows little of. The everyday of these lives is never quite what it seems, however, and reality is blurred, heightened and transformed by the surreal. Our protagonists encounter demons that decide their fate and hear laments of sentient woodlands, wonder ‘what if’ and find out too late, and confront us with the fragility and endurance of human life.
Told through horror, comedy and tragedy, this collection shows that there is no one writing from the Northeast; there are only stories, and a wealth of them.
SHORT STORIES
Hammock
The Little Journal of Northeast India
Lekha
Mahavelinadu Collective
Out of Print