Translated from the Gibberish

A swimming instructor is determined to re-enact John Cheever’s iconic short story, ‘The Swimmer’, in the pools of Mumbai. A famous Indian chef breaks down on a New York talk show. A gangster’s wife believes a penguin at the Mumbai Zoo is the reincarnation of her lost child. An illegal immigrant in Vancouver plays a fateful game of cricket. A kindly sweets-shop owner’s hope for a new life in Canada leads to a terrible choice. By turns quirky and clever, poignant and powerful, Anosh Irani’s stories deftly reveal the human condition in all its vitality and vulnerability. Bookending the seven tales in this collection is a gorgeous, emotionally raw ‘translation’ of the author’s singular experience of being an immigrant, ingeniously blurring the line between fiction and fact as it shuttles between two worlds-Vancouver, where he miraculously realized his seemingly impractical dream of becoming a writer; and Mumbai, the city he could never fully leave behind. Filled with moments of great beauty and clarity, Translated from the Gibberish confirms Anosh Irani as a unique, inventive and vitally important voice in contemporary fiction.