Inverse Journal

Books

“Love Letter” — An Excerpt from Mehak Jamal’s Loal Kashmir: Love and Longing in a Torn Land (HarperCollins, 2025)

In “Love Letter”, the first story excerpted from Mehak Jamal’s Loal Kashmir: Love and Longing in a Torn Land [https://harpercollins.co.in/product/loal-kashmir/] (HarperCollins, 2025), an epistle becomes the instrument of salvation—from a fate expected out of fear—for a young man in love. As the intr

Srinagar as a Living Embodiment of Kashmir's Tortuous History: Sadaf Wani’s City as Memory (Aleph, 2024) — A Book Review by Bilal Gani

In his review of Sadaf Wani’s City as Memory: A Short Biography of Srinagar (Aleph Book Company, 2024) [https://www.alephbookcompany.com/book/city-as-memory-a-short-biography-of-srinagar/], Bilal Gani brings focus to a book that is driven by a personal account grounded in the collective memory of a

A Kashmiri 2024 in Books — Curated by Majid Maqbool

Majid Maqbool curates a “list of books read by some of Kashmir’s writers, academics, scholars, columnists, and journalists” to celebrate a year of reading. This marks the first of such pieces that we will be putting forth as we get to the end of this year and begin Inverse Journal’s sixth year on Fe

Rupturing Homeland: Rattan Lal Shant’s Rupture: Stories on the Sorrows of Kashmir (Trans. Ed. Javaid Iqbal Bhat, Oxford University Press, 2022) — A Book Review by Junaid Shah Shabir

Junaid Shah Shabir offers a thoughtful reflection on the recent English translation of Rattan Lal Shant’s short story collection, Rupture: Stories on the Sorrows of Kashmir (Oxford University Press, 2022), rendered by Javaid Iqbal Bhat. His review highlights the collection’s contribution to the expa

"Indigeneity as Resistance" — by Ilan Pappe

Inverse Journal presents "Indigeneity as Resistance", the eleventh and last chapter contributed by Israeli historian and professor Ilan Pappe to Rethinking Statehood in Palestine: Self-Determination and Decolonization Beyond Partition [https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9780520385634/htm

“That Which We Cannot Speak Of” — A Short Story from For Now, It Is Night: Stories (HarperCollins/Archipelago Books, 2023) by Hari Krishna Kaul

Inverse Journal presents the English translation of “That Which We Cannot Speak Of” from For Now, It is Night: Stories [https://archipelagobooks.org/book/for-now-it-is-night/] (HarperCollins/Archipelago Books, 2023), a collection of seventeen short stories by the late Hari Krishna Kaul (1934-2009).

Zahid Rafiq’s The World With Its Mouth Open (Tin House, 2024) — A Book Review by Sameem Wani

Sameem Wani presents a brief yet precise review of The World With Its Mouth Open [https://tinhouse.com/book/the-world-with-its-mouth-open/], Zahid Rafiq’s debut collection of stories that—as Wani points out—expands and reshapes the contours of Kashmiri Anglophone fiction. Wani’s review unpacks the q