Shanti

Faber 90th Stories brings together some of our finest short stories, past, present and future.

Who was she? Where was she going? Why did she return?

It is 1945, and twenty-year-old Shiv, grieving his identical twin brother, retreats to a small town in Uttar Pradesh. He is preparing to jump onto the train tracks when he is stopped by the sight of a woman.

Shanti’s husband is a fighter pilot missing in Burma. For the past three years she has travelled the country in search of him. In every military hospital she visits she hears a new story, and every time she passes through Leharia she tells one to Shiv. Borrowing a structure from the Mahabharata, through stories within stories Chandra tells a spiralling tale of loss, and of two wounded people becoming something new.

About the Author

Born in New Delhi, India, in 1961, Vikram Chandra now divides his time between Bombay and Washington D.C. His debut novel, Red Earth and Pouring Rain, was awarded the David Higham Prize for Fiction and the Commonwealth Writers Prize for the Best First Published Book. His collection of stories, Love and Longing in Bombay, was published in 1997 and won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for the Eurasia region. It was also shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize. His most recent novel, Sacred Games, was published in 2007 and was shortlisted for the Encore Awards.