Podcast

Kabita Dhara of Brass Monkey Books: “They’re outsiders in the place they grew up in”

Kabita Dhara is the publisher at Brass Monkey Books, an imprint of Hunter Publishers. On a residency last year in India, she scoured the fiction market for books to bring home to Australia, and the first catch was Anjum Hasan’s Lunatic in My Head. I spoke to Kabita about starting Brass Monkey Books, which will bring Indian literature to Australia. We also discussed the small press scene in India, which is totally different to ‘small press’ in Australia.

Lunatic in My Head is set in Shillong, a small city near India’s borders with Burma, Bangladesh, China and Bhutan. The locals are the Khasi tribespeople, and everyone else is a dkhar, an outsider. Lunatic in My Head is three immersive tales in one: Firdaus, an English teacher struggling with her PhD on Jane Austen; Aman, a philosophy graduate attempting to sit the civil services exam for the second time; and Sophie, an eight-year-old girl who thinks she is adopted. The three may seem completely different, but they are all dkhar: all subject to violence of body and thought, whether from themselves or others.

Anjum Hasan will be making appearances in Canberra, Hobart and at the Brisbane and Melbourne Writers Festivals. Kabita Dhara is an editorial advisor at Kill Your Darlings.

About 15 minutes. Produced by Rafiq Copeland. Music is Pompey.

Podcasts appear fortnightly. You can download the podcast here. Listen to previous podcasts here, or subscribe to the podcast feed.

• Anjum Hasan
• Brass Monkey Books
• Hunter Publishers
• Indian literature
• Kabita Dhara

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