The Ghosts of Kashmir

Neighbors make great friends ? and vicious enemies. This is the subtext of The Ghosts of Kashmir, Shankar Vedantam?s debut collection of short stories about the conflict between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. Ordinary Indians and Pakistanis in these stories find themselves torn between hostility and affinity, drawn together by common cultural histories and divided by the poisons of politics and pride. The inter-linked stories have the texture of parables, but they are fast-paced narratives where questions of history and politics are subtly explored through complex characters and dramatic situations. Mirroring the author?s perception of the conflict between India and Pakistan, many of the stories explore the absurd. The events, plots and characters appear simultaneously realistic and symbolic ? a literature whose antecedents span from Saadat Hasan Manto to Joseph Heller.