Tilted Axis Press

Sheltered within her grandmother''s fiercely protective household, Ainhoa blossoms under the guidance of her constellation of aunts - women who become her teachers, guardians, and spiritual anchors. Through Ainhoa''s keen observant eyes, readers experience how music and dance - particularly during the explosive energy of Carnaval - don''t merely entertain but form the very heartbeat of existence, a pulsing testament to Afro-Ecuadorian identity and resistance. Yet beneath this tapestry of warmth and celebration, Carnaval Fever fearlessly confronts the shadows: crushing economic hardship, the heartbreak of migration, and the ever-present threat of male violence hovering at the community''s edges. At its luminous core, however, this novel stands as a defiant celebration of women''s resilience, collective power, and the unbreakable bonds of sisterhood that sustain communities through generations.

In 1947, and then in 1971, in the South Asian subcontinent, entire communities of people crossed newly-created borders to find new homes as partitions divided and reshaped countries. Kalyani Thakur?s beautiful and evocative novel, tells the story of her people, Dalits belonging to the Matua sect, who settled around a local water body ? Andhar Bil ? in the new nation. Reminiscent of the beloved bil they left behind at home, the refugees begin, slowly and painfully, to rebuild their lives.As children play in and around the bil ? the central ?character? in the novel ? people seek out varieties of fish and cook them in ways that recall the flavours of home, festivals and boat races take place, jute is farmed and sold, floods arrive and push people to high ground, marriages happen and property disputes unfold. The still waters of the bil absorb and hold all these stories and the boroi tree stands in the centre of the bil, a silent witness to everything. Through this episodic, almost plotless novel is woven the story of Kamalini, a young girl who will, one day, journey to the city, leaving her beloved Andhar Bil behind, just as her parents? generation left their villages and their beloved bil in what became another country.

In 1966 Suriname, the Vanta family, an intricate blend of Creole, Maroon, French, Indian, Indigenous, British, and Jewish heritage, is led by Grandma Bee, a proud, cigar-smoking matriarch facing her final days. As she reflects on her scattered family and the loss of her favourite granddaughter, Heli, exiled to the Netherlands for an affair with her white teacher, Bee grapples with one question: What truly binds a family? Off-White offers a moving exploration of Bee''s legacy amid themes of male violence, colonialism, and the dismantling of racial identity, marking the return of a celebrated Surinamese author after two decades.

In Annah, Infinite, the dominant narratives surrounding Paul Gauguin''s famous painting Annah la Javanaise (1893-94) are turned upside down. The work argues a simple point: what if the portrait does not depict a romanticised muse, but a pained child, caught in a moment of profound vulnerability? In questioning the ''facts'' surrounding Annah''s life, Annah, Infinite draws attention to how historical narratives, shaped by colonial powers, have distorted Annah''s story. It critiques the systems of ablenormativity, racism, and sexism embedded in art institutions, and the way these structures mask the violent colonial legacies still haunting museum walls. Interspersed with the author''s own poetry, fiction, and visual art on the painting''s subject, this is a book of emotional heft. It asks us all to acknowledge the possibility of pain in every single portrait, as well as the possibility of escape.

From the International Booker Prize-winning author-translator duo of Tomb of Sand, a powerful, kaleidoscopic novel about a fractured society. A city teeters on the edge of chaos. A society lies fractured along fault lines of faith and ideology. A playground becomes a battleground. A looming silence grips the public. Against this backdrop, Shruti, a writer paralysed by the weight of events, tries to find her words, while Sharad and Hanif, academics whose voices are drowned out by extremism, find themselves caught between clich©s and government slogans. And there''s Daddu, Sharad''s father, a beacon of hope in the growing darkness. As they each grapple with thoughts of speaking the unspeakable, an unnamed narrator takes on the urgent task of bearing witness. First published in Hindi in 1998, Our City That Year is a novel that defies easy categorisation. It''s a time capsule, a warning siren, and a desperate plea. Geetanjali Shree''s shimmering prose, in Daisy Rockwell''s nuanced and consummate translation, takes us into a fever dream of fragmented thoughts and half-finished sentences, mirroring the disjointed reality of a city under siege. Readers will find themselves haunted long after the final page, grappling with questions that echo far beyond India''s borders.

An eighty-year-old woman slips into a deep depression at the death of her husband, then resurfaces to gain a new lease on life. Her determination to fly in the face of convention including striking up a friendship with a hijra (trans) woman confuses her bohemian daughter, who is used to thinking of herself as the more x27modernx27 of the two. At the older womanx27s insistence they travel back to Pakistan, simultaneously confronting the unresolved trauma of her teenage experiences of Partition, and re-evaluating what it means to be a mother, a daughter, a woman, a feminist. Rather than respond to tragedy with seriousness, Geetanjali Shreex27s playful tone and exuberant wordplay results in a book that is engaging, funny, and utterly original, at the same time as being an urgent and timely protest against the destructive impact of borders and boundaries, whether between religions, countries, or genders.