Author of Stillborn Season (2018) and Of Mothers and Other Perishables. Writer of book reviews and essays. Hopelessly analog. University of East Anglia
Joined June 2009
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Radhika Oberoi retweeted
The mood is carnage-fuelled in the opening pages of When We Are Strangers. It is 1946; Calcutta, glittering bastion of the British Empire, is ravaged by communal riots. Two characters emerge from the smoky atmosphere — Sita, a student of history, and Mahmud, a photographer. Together, they manage to break into the Indian Museum on Chowringhee Road, to steal, or more precisely, steal back what the British had stolen from them — fragments of a Buddha statue that belongs to Hashtnagar (in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province).
✍️Radhika Oberoi
thehindu.com/books/books-rev…
My piece on Gwendoline Riley’s The Palm House, in which characters flounder through a haze of loneliness, and the weather is similarly confounding.
‘The Palm House’: A wry, atmospheric Booker-longlisted study of tenderness amid modern life’s uncertainties, through Laura and Putnam’s wry, disenchanted London orbit.
@hypermonk✍️ mrf.lu/2HlnC
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Radhika Oberoi retweeted
Last Wednesday, Ottessa Moshfegh’s Plimpton Prize–winning story “Bettering Myself” found itself at the center of a lawsuit filed against a Florida college by one of its faculty members. Vinita Prabhakar, the English professor in question, is suing for wrongful termination after being fired for teaching the story, alongside works by Hemingway and Carver, in a unit on unlikable narrators. This week, we’ve unlocked “Bettering Myself,” published in issue no. 204 of the Review, from the archive. theparisreview.org/fiction/6…
I wrote about a strange massacre in my city – the demolition of old houses. The piece also winds its way through the tumult of Partition, and explores two novels with houses as silent protagonists.
worldliteraturetoday.org/202…
Sunny Singh's collection of stories chronicles wartime and the tragedies it spawns.
Review of 'Refuge: Stories of War (and Love)' by Sunny Singh
✍️@hypermonk
thehindu.com/books/book-revi…
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An excerpt from my novel, Of Mothers and Other Perishables, which is now available in paperback.
Radhika Oberoi, author of Of Mothers and Other Perishables, reads a poignant extract from her book✨
Of Mothers and Other Perishables is an exquisite articulation of grief. It is also the sharp-eyed tale of a city tethered to violence and bursting with nazms.
The novel oscillates between the dead woman’s yearnings and the immediacy and excitement of a parallel narrative — her daughter’s. Nicknamed The Wailer (from the band Bob Marley and the Wailers), the dead woman’s daughter offers a sardonic glimpse into the world of advertising — the night before a presentation, temperamental colleagues, the buzz of writers and art directors at work. But the peculiar dynamics of The Wailer’s advertising firm alter drastically, when protests break out in the city of Delhi. Protesters swarm the streets, hollering against a new bill that persecutes the Muslim community. A Muslim art director is drawn to the pulsing heart of this movement. The Wailer, too, is inadvertently involved.
Both narratives — the deceased mother’s digressional memories, and The Wailer’s palpable reality — also tell of Toon, The Wailer’s younger sister, who is the CEO of a coffee startup. Their worlds converge to offer shards of the past, and navigate through a turbulent present. Personal and political histories collide in this haunting tale of many betrayals.
Of Mothers and Other Perishables is available at bookstores near you! Grab a copy today📖
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Susan Choi's Flashlight is almost Márquezian in its descriptions. This novel is an extravagant tale of migrants, spanning decades. My review in The Hindu.
Secrets in the dark | Review of Susan Choi’s Flashlight, shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2025
✍️@hypermonk
thehindu.com/books/book-revi…
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Some superheroes have Mobile Medical Units that traverse narrow mountain roads to save lives. Col. Pant has been an empathetic presence in my life for nearly two decades. His wisdom banishes fear and trembling; his steady hands offer accurate reports...and hope.
1. Among the Big Blessings of My Life
The most fortunate are those who are blessed with such good health that they never have to go to hospitals or depend on doctors to keep them in functioning order. If you don’t belong to the above super fortunate category, the next best is to have caring doctors or vaidyas as your good friends. I belong to the second category. Among the most caring doctors I have ever known is Dr (Col.) Shekhar Pant, who is considered among the top most radiologists of India.
He is a distinguished war veteran, a successful medical practitioner & innovator plus a social entrepreneur who provides valuable health services in villages of Uttaranchal.
In the last 40 years he has seen me through several medical emergencies, including some major unavoidable surgeries.
When I am careless about follow-up with certain tests, it is Col Pant who will phone me and insist that I better not delay any further.
But I hold him in high esteem not just because he has been amazingly good to me-- and whoever of my family needed his help, diagnosis or advice-- but more because he is caring about everyone.
Most of those who come to him as patients become his life-long friends. He provides high quality and ethical care to people in his South Delhi clinic where every patient is treated with equal courtesy and warmth.
His present clinic in GK 1 is so pleasantly designed, without being ostentatious, and so well landscaped in the midst of densely populated neighbourhood, that my driver commented, that just being in such an environment gives you sense of well-being.
His patients include countless VVIPs of Delhi. But even ordinary patients are treated with care and courtesy.
But I value Dr Pant’s friendship most of all because he has reached out to and has been servicing the most neglected sections of our rural population for more than two decades. Continued...
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Delighted to have contributed to the September issue of @worldlittoday. My piece is a satirical one on the various types of book reviewers who singe our souls with their words.
worldliteraturetoday.org/202…
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My piece on Sonia Rafeek's The House of Girls. The novel tells of the fragile dignity of three unwed sisters in the Deira region of Dubai.
Dubai in metafiction | Review of The House of Girls by Sonia Rafeek
✍️@hypermonk
thehindu.com/books/book-revi…
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Radhika Oberoi retweeted
What is it about Delhi’s contradictions that makes it unforgettable in fiction? trib.al/uJTPrEI
On Delhi, reviled city, vulnerable city, seething city prone to stereotypes. The abuse makes it irresistible terrain for literature. My piece in @the_hindu today.
thehindu.com/books/delhi-nov…
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Radhika Oberoi retweeted
“When we write novels, we can’t choose sides. We have to be on everyone’s side—the woman’s, the man’s, the child’s. That’s what I find marvelous about novels, anyway—that they allow us to hear everyone.” —Marie NDiaye
buff.ly/uoOJIID
Bhumika Anand and I spoke about both my novels, Stillborn Season and Of Mothers and Other Perishables. We also discussed memory, and what it means to reclaim the city of one's childhood. Marco Polo, intrepid traveller and teller of tales, slipped into our conversation.
ALT Book Discussion: Writing Personal Cityscapes
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Wonderful book discussion at the Bowring Institute, Bangalore. It isn't often that one encounters so much warmth, eloquence, and wit, all at once. But that's Bangalore on most evenings.
Bhumika Anand and I will discuss what it means to reimagine cities for fiction. Looking forward to my conversation with her @AttaGalatta, a charming bookshop in Bangalore, a city I love.
Join author Radhika Oberoi for “Writing Personal Cityscapes” on Sat, 24 May 2025 at 6:30 PM. A book talk and discussion on grief, politics, and storytelling at Bangalore Writer’s Workshop.
@hypermonk @BhumikaAnand @SimonSchusterIN
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