Description
Dead God tells the story of a group of Bihari and Nepali miners in a small coal mine deep in the verdant jungles of Meghalaya.
As the working conditions at the mine become hazardous, the miners, inspired by a visiting union leader, threaten to go on strike. The situation escalates quickly. The leaders are threatened. Houses go up in smoke. A couple of Nepali families are sent to a detention camp. A miner is found dead.
Can the impoverished miners survive against the system?
In his powerful narrative of lives rarely talked about in fiction, Dhrubajyoti Borah, one of the foremost novelists from Assam, depicts a stark picture of utter hopelessness in the face of adversity, in a language which is clear and clinical, passionate yet understated — a powerful documentation of the dispossessed.
Dr DhrubaJyoti Borah — DJB to his friends — is one of the most powerful voices in the contemporary literary scene of Assam. Equally at ease with both fiction and non-fiction, DJB has published more than ten novels. His trilogy comprising Kalantarar Gadya (Prose of the Tempest), Tejor Andhar (Darkness of Blood) and Arth (Meaning), based on enquiries into the turmoil and tragedy of Assam during the insurgency, has been hailed as a major literary creation of the present times. Borah’s major non-fiction works include a monograph on the medieval peasant struggle (the Moamorria uprising) of Assam; a study of development of Assamese language into a modern national language and a book on the national question and self-determination. His books on the history of the WWII, the French Revolution and a two-volume work on the Russian Revolution are the first books on these subjects in Assamese. His fiction has been translated into Hindi, English, Bengali, Malayalam and Bodo. He received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2009.
Edited by Sucharita Dutta-Asane, Red River Story Series is a series of limited edition fiction titles from Red River, a publishing outfit based in Delhi dedicated to publishing poetry in English and English translation. Established in 2017, Red River is known for its discerning selection of titles and experimental design. Red River is managed solely by poet, writer and translator Dibyajyoti Sarma, with the help of his friends and colleagues, because for everyone involved, Red River is not just a business, but a passion — an abiding love for poetry. This passion for poetry keeps Red River going, and thanks to the discerning readers of poetry in India and abroad, over the years, it has built a reputation as a niche publisher of poetry.
RED RIVER Story hopes to convey stories from the hinterland and the heartland, from metros and larger towns of the subcontinent — stories that are submerged in the rush of those that are more popular, more immediately acceptable, recognisable.
Sucharita Dutta-Asane is an award-winning writer and independent book editor based in Pune. Her short story collection, Cast Out and Other Stories, was published by Dhauli Books in 2018. It was among Amazon’s “Best of Summer from India, 2018” and was reviewed widely. It is part of the Bengaluru-based Indian Institute of Human Settlements’ (IIHS) library selection. The titular story of Sucharita’s collection is the subject of two international research papers around Gender Politics and Postcolonial Representations of Menstruation. Sucharita is the recipient of the international Dastaan Award and the Oxford Bookstores debuting writers’ (second place) award. Her fiction and reviews have appeared in various literary journals and anthologies. As independent editor she has worked with publishing houses, literary agencies as well as individual authors. From September 2017 to March 2019, she edited the online literary magazine Kitaab, published from Singapore. At present she edits fiction for the Bangalore Review, and teaches a postgraduate course in Writing and Editing at Symbiosis College of Arts and Commerce, Pune.