Laura Brueck

Originally written in Hindi, Ajay Navaria’s stories examine the prejudices of India’s caste system, but they speak of inequality wherever it occurs. As complex as they are political, his characters – brahmin or dalit, thakur or mahar – are neither black nor white, neither clearly good nor evil. They evade the determinations of social expectation; they linger in the ‘unclaimed terrain’ between past object and future subject, between caste and democracy.