Kanishk Tharoor's Blog
February 8, 2016
Press for SWIMMER AMONG THE STARS
Swimmer Among the Stars Stories
“Stylistically assured, keenly imagined, and written with a poetic receptivity, Kanishk Tharoor’s short fictions Swimmer Among the Stars accomplish what so little of modern fiction does today: put beauty and wonder into storytelling.”
— Musharraf Ali Farooqi, Scroll.in
“Kanishk Tharoor’s new collection of short stories is gentle in voice, majestic in imagination and assured in craft. These aren’t stories that you read, enjoy and cast aside. Rather, these are the tales you’d ferret away and recount, whether to a friend on a car journey, a child declining to go to bed or to yourself on a muddle of a day. After all, as the epics illustrate, what is the worth of a story unless it passes from person to person, voice to voice, from this time to another?”
“At a time when the memoir and confession have become de rigueur, when the milieu of writers determine their audience, Tharoor’s erasure of the self from the narrative is a welcome break, and hopefully a beacon for others to follow.”
— Nandini Nair, Open Magazine
“An exemplary debut.” “Tharoor spins a weave that is for all time, yet peculiarly, achingly of the present.” “This is a talent whose time has come.”
— Sumana Mukherjee, Livemint
“Swimmer Among the Stars is a mesmeric introduction to a writer who must neither be judged by his second name nor age. It is the work of a storyteller who stands lucid on the cusp of reinventing storytelling. The year 2016 couldn’t open on a more subtle alchemy for Indian literary fiction.”
— Jairaj Singh, India Today
“The dozen-odd stories in Swimmer Among The Stars are beautifully pitched, infused with an awareness of history (and history’s accidents) that go confidently beyond boundaries of nationhood and period.”
— Nilanjana Roy, Business Standard
“Kanishk Tharoor’s debut book Swimmer among the Stars: Stories is a magnificent collection of short fiction. It transports one into a different world, especially with its minute details, achieving the near-impossible with words.”
— Jaya Bhattacharji Rose, The Hindu
“The young writer Kanishk Tharoor meets the challenge brilliantly in his Swimmer Among the Stars, a collection of 12 stories that reveal a voice that is sensitive, gentle and layered.” “This one is a promising debut.”
— Shalini Singh, The Week
“Each of these stories in Swimmer among the Stars reflect … a rare combination of surreal imagination matched with an extraordinary craft of a master storyteller.”
— Saket Suman, The Statesman
“Delightfully versatile and juxtaposes an archaic, fabular charm with contemporary resonance” “An anthology that modern Indian writing in English can be proud of”
— Daily Pioneer
“Tharoor’s prose is rich, imaginative and free of needless complexities; it is the plots of the stories that stand out with their edgy unpredictability.” “A fascinating read, Swimmer Among the Stars promises great things to come from its young author.”
— The New Indian Express
“In these wonderfully-crafted stories, Tharoor marries the magical with the real…”
— Mail Today
“From tracing an elephant’s journey across Morocco to imagining the epilogue to climate change, Tharoor traverses time and space in these brightly original stories. And he’s found fast approval; in an early review of the book, Amitav Ghosh calls Tharoor an extraordinary talent with “a probing mind”.”
— Elle India
“Stylistically assured, keenly imagined, and written with a poetic receptivity, Kanishk Tharoor’s short fictions Swimmer Among the Stars accomplish what so little of modern fiction does today: put beauty and wonder into storytelling.”
— Musharraf Ali Farooqi, Scroll.in
“Kanishk Tharoor’s new collection of short stories is gentle in voice, majestic in imagination and assured in craft. These aren’t stories that you read, enjoy and cast aside. Rather, these are the tales you’d ferret away and recount, whether to a friend on a car journey, a child declining to go to bed or to yourself on a muddle of a day. After all, as the epics illustrate, what is the worth of a story unless it passes from person to person, voice to voice, from this time to another?”
“At a time when the memoir and confession have become de rigueur, when the milieu of writers determine their audience, Tharoor’s erasure of the self from the narrative is a welcome break, and hopefully a beacon for others to follow.”
— Nandini Nair, Open Magazine
“An exemplary debut.” “Tharoor spins a weave that is for all time, yet peculiarly, achingly of the present.” “This is a talent whose time has come.”
— Sumana Mukherjee, Livemint
“Swimmer Among the Stars is a mesmeric introduction to a writer who must neither be judged by his second name nor age. It is the work of a storyteller who stands lucid on the cusp of reinventing storytelling. The year 2016 couldn’t open on a more subtle alchemy for Indian literary fiction.”
— Jairaj Singh, India Today
“The dozen-odd stories in Swimmer Among The Stars are beautifully pitched, infused with an awareness of history (and history’s accidents) that go confidently beyond boundaries of nationhood and period.”
— Nilanjana Roy, Business Standard
“Kanishk Tharoor’s debut book Swimmer among the Stars: Stories is a magnificent collection of short fiction. It transports one into a different world, especially with its minute details, achieving the near-impossible with words.”
— Jaya Bhattacharji Rose, The Hindu
“The young writer Kanishk Tharoor meets the challenge brilliantly in his Swimmer Among the Stars, a collection of 12 stories that reveal a voice that is sensitive, gentle and layered.” “This one is a promising debut.”
— Shalini Singh, The Week
“Each of these stories in Swimmer among the Stars reflect … a rare combination of surreal imagination matched with an extraordinary craft of a master storyteller.”
— Saket Suman, The Statesman
“Delightfully versatile and juxtaposes an archaic, fabular charm with contemporary resonance” “An anthology that modern Indian writing in English can be proud of”
— Daily Pioneer
“Tharoor’s prose is rich, imaginative and free of needless complexities; it is the plots of the stories that stand out with their edgy unpredictability.” “A fascinating read, Swimmer Among the Stars promises great things to come from its young author.”
— The New Indian Express
“In these wonderfully-crafted stories, Tharoor marries the magical with the real…”
— Mail Today
“From tracing an elephant’s journey across Morocco to imagining the epilogue to climate change, Tharoor traverses time and space in these brightly original stories. And he’s found fast approval; in an early review of the book, Amitav Ghosh calls Tharoor an extraordinary talent with “a probing mind”.”
— Elle India
