Inverse Journal

Books

"but where the hell was he?" — An Excerpt from Mirza Waheed's Maryam & Son (Context/Westland, 2026)

We are proud to present an excerpt from Maryam & Son (Context/Westland, 2026), Mirza Waheed’s latest novel that traces the journey of struggle of a mother who seeks answers for the disappearance of her son, Dilawar. In this excerpt, the narration turns our attention to the quiet and obsessive nature

Nine Poems from The Map is Not a Territory (Copper Coin, 2025) — by Aranya Padil

We are proud to present nine poems by Aranya Padil, selected from his recent collection titled, The Map is Not the Territory (Copper Coin, 2025). Each of these poems commences with the poetic craft as an exercise in listening to the sounds of things, to their silence and to that which otherwise gets

An Excerpt from The Eye of Childhood (Zorba Books, 2023) — by Dr. Arjun Raina

We present an excerpt from The Eye of Childhood (Zorba Books, 2023) [https://www.zorbabooks.com/store/love-romance/the-eye-of-childhood/], Dr. Arjun Raina’s novel that blends memoir, psyche, and fiction to explore the complex and fragmented terrain of the human mind. The work is born from the author

An Excerpt from Flames of the Cherry Tree by Leena A. Khan (Daraja Press, 2025)

Through narrative cohesiveness, a work of literature has the power to operate as a totality against a world set to fracture and fragment reality and, along with it, core notions of identity. This totalizing power of the literary text to disrupt the fragmentation of reality (orchestrated by power and

"13. Firdous Cinema" — An Excerpt from Dapaan: Tales from Kashmir's Conflict by Ipsita Chakravarty (Context, 2025)

Inverse Journal presents an excerpt from Ipsita Chakravarty's latest book, Dapaan: Tales from Kashmir's Conflict, published by Context-Westland Books [https://www.instagram.com/context_books/?hl=en]. Described as “a quiet book in a time of noise”, Ipsita’s work steers away from the “hypernationalist

The Curious Case of Childhood: Naomi Shihab Nye’s The Turtle of Oman and The Turtle of Michigan — A Book Review by Dr. Deeba Shireen

Dr. Deeba Shireen reviews Naomi Shihab Nye’s two novels, The Turtle of Oman and its sequel The Turtle of Michigan, with a special focus on reading texts that emphasize perspectives drawn from childhood. Shireen’s analysis sheds light on the tender narrative of young Aref’s transition from Oman to Mi

Patriarchy and Partition: Representation of Women in Anirudh Kala’s The Unsafe Asylum — A Commentary by Marusa Mushtaq

In this commentary, Marusa Mushtaq focuses on the lived experiences of women “in the turbulent aftermath of the 1947 India-Pakistan Partition through the lens of Indian psychiatrist Anirudh Kala’s short story collection The Unsafe Asylum: Stories of Partition and Madness(Speaking Tiger, 2018) [https