Mute

In this collection of short stories and other miscellaneous moments, Shome Dasgupta creates a world that is somehow both clearly ours as well as barely recognizable. Dasgupta, the author of The Seagull And The Urn (Harper Collins India, 2013), weaves sophistication into pop surrealism, stripping away the meaningless noise that surrounds us and turning up the volume on our sticky yet ever-changing, beautifully disastrous lives. With Dasgupta as our guide, we are able to transcend time, and even verb tense, creeping in and out of postmodern fairytales gone awry. We examine our most awkward high school gymnasium memories and explore, with an unusual objectivity, how one’s dream date can drift away into another’s nightmare. It’s possible that Mute offers more questions than answers, uncertainties that are more satiating than any one-size-fits-all explanation could ever present.