Harare Review of Books

400 pp. Published December 21, 2024 by Blaft. Fiction anthology w. illustrations.

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DID YOU KNOW that Bollywood caused a literary renaissance in Kano, Nigeria?!

Anyway, I was thrilled when Rakesh of Blaft reached out last year to offer DRCs of The Blaft Anthology of Gujarati Pulp Fiction and The Blaft Book of Anti-Caste SF (more on that one later). As I recently wrote a piece for Strange Horizons on how we should all be reading diversely so we can imagine better futures for all of us—something I’m thinking about a lot—this is very much up my street.

So, I looked it up. The dictionary definition of pulp fiction is

books about imaginary characters and events, produced in large quantities and intended to be read by many people but not considered to be of very good quality. (Cambridge)

Well, then: By definition, this collection misses it… because what I found here was of excellent quality 🙂

What’s in this collection? Every story begins with a summary of the author’s work. The collection opens with Bar Dancer, a story by Vibhavari Varma, who has written both in both the romance and thriller genres. Bar Dancer is a really smart and touching tale of how the mother of a young daughter is willing to find work that can be considered demeaning to be able to provide for her child—the thing that drives her—and how this leads her into problematic situations. She does, however, get the last laugh (I love happy endings for women!), and at the same time rediscovers herself and her place in the world.

There are two stories from Ekta Nirav Doshi; my favourite is Face to Face, a truly hair-raising ghost story. And then there’s work from the great Atom-ji, H. N. Golibar, of the long-running magazine Chakram Chandan, with wonderful illustrations by G. Sandhwani. This is an intriguing tidbit about the magazine:

Special orders of the magazine came in from as far away as Khartoum, Sudan, where 30 or so Gujarati families used to congregate in the community hall at the Indian embassy for a group read.

Atom-ji’s The Coils of Fate is what really got me hooked. It’s brilliant! I won’t spoil it for you, but recommend that you read it first when you get this collection.

Other stories: Varsha Adalja’s Fingerprints; Kalidas Jadav’s The Invisible Enemy, incredible for having been written in 1948 and featuring a moon rocket called Chandrayaan; Viru Purohit’s Hello is fascinating because it’s about a robot-human war as a way to explore how language makes us human; Bansidhar Shukla’s Varunlok: The Undersea Realm is a very elaborate tale of mer people and scientific experimentation. Fifty-fifty, A Crisis of Conscience and The Marksman, all by Kanu Bhagdev, and the whimsical A Message From the Stars by Narad complete the collection.

Interspersed among the stories are covers and cartoons (with translations), and blurbs and title pages which are notable for how delightfully pulpy they are:

“This blood-infused scent of jasmine makes the inspector’s life veer onto a track pitted with dangers at every step—while death follows close at his heels…!”

Now… Sandhya hopes to win Rakesh over, but he is trapped in  Gita’s clutches.  • Even more shocking and horrifying is the fact that Gita is no ordinary woman. She is a witch—a daakan!  • A bone-chilling horror thriller revolving around the contest of  hearts between a woman and a witch…

Ahem.

I’m seriously considering becoming a collector of Gujarati pulp (in translation, I guess… although there’s something appealing about collecting the original works). I’ll leave you with this advert that’s included in the collection:

Many thanks to Rakesh for the review copy!

You can find out more about The Blaft Anthology of Gujarati Pulp Fiction and how to get it here.