Shanti - Vikram Chandra

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles.

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. Through stories within stories Chandra tells a spiralling tale of loss, and of two wounded people becoming something new.

Borrowing a structure from the Mahabharata, Vikram Chandra tells a spiralling story of loss, and of two wounded people becoming something new.

Bringing together past, present and future in our ninetieth year, Faber Stories is a celebratory compendium of collectable work.

Born in New Delhi, India, in 1961, Vikram Chandra now divides his time between Bombay and Washington D.C., where he teaches at George Washington University.
He is a graduate of Pomona College, Los Angeles and Columbia University Film School in New York.
His stories have appeared in the New Yorker and the Paris Review.
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, and was included in the New York Times Book Review's 'Notable Books of the Year', and also in both the Guardian and Independent's 'Books of the Year' round-ups. His most recent novel, Sacred Games, was published in 2007 and was shortlisted for the Encore Awards.

Chandra shares with Dickens the ability to sustain a multitude of sub-plots that writhe energetically around the smooth uncoiling of his principal theme.
Sunday Telegraph

Unlike many contemporary Indian efforts, in fact most of the post-Rushdie stuff that strains to imitate Gunter Grass, James Joyce or Anais Nin, Chandra is refreshingly straightforward.
There is no vanity of expression.
He is telling us stories.
Literary Review