Author: Omair Ahmad
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 2008
Language: English
Pages: 122
ISBN/UPC (if available): 9780143063131
Description
The Begum's story, her challenge, had taken him by surprise. It had been so very long since somebody had matched him and, truth be told, outstripped him. He hadn't imagined being bested. What a shocking joy it was to be defeated, to be in love again.
It is the 1700s and the forces of Ahmad Shah Abdali have destroyed the glorious city of Delhi. Abandoned by fate and fortune, a storyteller finds himself at an isolated casbah a day's ride from the city. When the Begum of the casbah invites him to stay and share a story, he tells her the tale of two brothers, Taka and Wara - wolf and boy - a tale of love and loyalty, and the hurt, fear and distrust that come when love remains unrecognized. The Begum is provoked into responding with a story of her own - the tale of Aresh and Barab and a friendship that transcends death.
What follows in this many-layered tale is a duel of narratives, each reinforcing something different - love, loyalty, friendship, anguish, need, betrayal, sacrifice and loss; each tale drawing the Begum and the storyteller deeper into a forbidden desire; each story transporting the reader to an unforgettable world.
Using evocative prose and exquisite imagery, Omair Ahmad's The Storyteller's Tale explores the delicate nature of human relationships, demonstrating that there is always more than one way of looking at life; that no story is ever just that, or ever truly finished.
COMMENTS
‘Brilliantly conceived, exquisitely written, The Storyteller’s Tale enthralls and amazes with its magical exploration of the art of creating fiction’.
- MANIL SURI
‘It isn’t every day that one comes across a book that one can commend so unreservedly…[A] swift, elegant tale’.
- OUTLOOK
‘Read [The Storyteller’s Tale] for its flavour of myth, tinged with history, and all those fables that you are unlikely to read again’.
- INDIAN EXPRESS
‘[A] masterful (re) telling of stories’
- HINDUSTAN TIMES
‘Reminiscent of the best of Indian fables, Sufi sayings and Koranic and Biblical tales, Omair Ahmad’s storyteller and begum measure up to Scherazade’
- VERVE
‘[The Storyteller’s Tale] illuminates, only as stories, at their purest, can do’
- FIRST CITY
Contents
Prologue
The Storyteller’s Tale
The Begum’s Reply
The Soldier
The Magistrate’s Wife and the Girl
Epilogue
Acknowledgements