Description

Bookended by ‘a death’ and ‘a birth’, this collection of short fiction takes the reader through the gamut of experiences and emotions — love, loss, anger, laughter; rebellion, protest, submission, redemption — in their literal and metaphorical ramifications. The stories convey the joys, trials and adversities of life in the tribal hinterland, but always in the overhang of receding identity of not just the people but also the place they inhabit, the setting as much a character as those who bring it alive on these pages.

This is a chronicle of an India hidden from the breathless world of Insta posts and social media captions, far from weaponising oligarchies and religious extremism; this is a self-contained world with its own microcosmic issues that are close to the grassroots, the everyday lives of those hidden from our textbooks and newspapers, from the madhouse of national television channels; a continuing saga of places and people and situations that do not even peep at the peripheries of our urban consciousnesses.

Powerful, heartbreaking, rooted in reality, and filled with painful irony; Paromita Goswami’s stories lingered on in my mind long after I had read them. — Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar

A brilliantly told book, A Death in the Forest recounts the stories of the fragility of existence in the forested, undulating and remote tracts of Central India. Through these stories, based on years of close encounters with the land and its peoples, Paromita Goswami subtly shows us the terrifying vision of a dystopia that is here and now, and yet, how, despite all the savagery that surrounds them, the individuals continue to retain their hope, trust and dreams. — Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt

Paromita’s prose is rich with sensory detail and emotional depth, capturing both the lush beauty of the forest and the creeping terror that haunts those who live within and around it. — Nidhi Dugar Kundalia

[T]hese stories chronicle the quiet defiance and complex negotiations of those forced to fight for land, dignity, and survival. Told through the eyes of an urban narrator, these tales foreground the struggles — and quiet strength — of women and men confronting systemic apathy and patriarchal norms. — Anupama Mohan

Paromita Goswami is a graduate in English literature from St Xavier’s College, Kolkata and post-graduate from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. She did her LLB from Nagpur University. She lives in Chandrapur, Maharashtra where she works as a grassroots activist through the mass organisation Shramik Elgar. She has worked on issues pertaining to land, forest, and violence against women. She was awarded Ashoka Fellowship (2001), Eisenhower Fellowship (2004), and Yale World Fellowship (2005). She was Associate Fellow, National Institute of Rural Development, Hyderabad (2009). She won the Rama Mehta Writing Grant, 2023 (English) for the short story ‘A Death in the Forest’. She is presently working on a book about East Pakistani refugees resettled in Vidarbha.

Reviews

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