Writers of South Asian descent have been garnering more and more success, acclaim, and attention. Story-Wallah gathers the finest South Asian voices in fiction for the first time in a single volume. As Shyam Selvadurai writes in his introduction, -The stories jostle up against each other . . . The effect is a marvelous cacophony that reminds me of . . . one of those South Asian bazaars, a bargaining, carnival-like milieu. The goods on sale in this instance being stories hawked by story-traders: story-wallahs.- In this book, some of the world's best fiction writers hawk their wares from...

Set among the upper classes in the gracious, repressive world of 1920s Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Cinnamon Gardens tells the brilliantly intertwined stories of two extraordinary characters.

Annalukshmi is a strong-willed young woman whose family is intent upon arranging a proper marriage for her, forcing her to question whether the independence she craves will doom her to a life without love and companionship. Her uncle Balendran, respectably married, struggles to suppress his secret desire for men. The sudden arrival of a former lover, however, threatens to destroy his...