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The Keeper of Desolation: Stories
A farmer urges the Prime Minister to change the formula for compound interest...
A man refuses to make space for another on a train and is beaten to death...
A family living in a single room forgets one member even exists...
Surreal yet gritty, violent yet poetic—such is the world of Chandan Pandey's fiction.
Set deep in the heart of present-day India, The Keeper of Desolation chronicles the warped realities our everyday lives must confront and battle. Immersive and provocative in equal measure, these stories from one of the most powerful voices of our generation make for an arresting record of our times—while transcending time itself.
'Poignant and hard-hitting'
—GEETANJALI SHREE, winner of the International Booker Prize 2022 for Tomb of Sand
A man refuses to make space for another on a train and is beaten to death...
A family living in a single room forgets one member even exists...
Surreal yet gritty, violent yet poetic—such is the world of Chandan Pandey's fiction.
Set deep in the heart of present-day India, The Keeper of Desolation chronicles the warped realities our everyday lives must confront and battle. Immersive and provocative in equal measure, these stories from one of the most powerful voices of our generation make for an arresting record of our times—while transcending time itself.
'Poignant and hard-hitting'
—GEETANJALI SHREE, winner of the International Booker Prize 2022 for Tomb of Sand
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
213 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 18, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 21, 2024
I translated the book, it's very good! (even if I say so myself)
December 29, 2024
Chandan Pandey's The Keeper of Desolation is a collection of nine stories that come together to explore the angst and anxieties of people who don't even make the footnote of history. The stories don't stick to a single theme, most of them almost meander into the plot and yet they leave you with a sense of discomfort.
In the first story, which sets the mood of the book, a family starts forgetting a family member they pin their hopes on, in their daily struggles. You still buy into the improbability of the plot due to some skillful writing.
Junction builds around a moment of meaningless violence in a train station - which, you are somewhere in the back of your mind, immediately buy into thanks to the news. There are a couple of stories that talk about the burden of debt on the downtrodden - a story where a borrower is ready to lose his leg to claim insurance.
The most unsettling story for me concerns a corporate guy, removed from the humdrum of revolutions, taking a night time lift taken on the highway. The claustrophobia builds up as the men question him about his political views, his opinions that appear to be in contradiction with the drivers. Why this is scary is also because it resonates of the state of a dissident opinion against majority. The ending was smart.
I did find a couple of stories set in corporate offices more Kafkaesque with exhibition of power. There are quite a few intellectual references like Malthusian theory and writers which I imagine stuck out in this collection.
A special note on the translation. The setting of the book makes you expect a rustic native narrative with simple translation. However, the original writing is a bit high brow for the setting and hence it is left to the translator to sell it.
A good collection.
In the first story, which sets the mood of the book, a family starts forgetting a family member they pin their hopes on, in their daily struggles. You still buy into the improbability of the plot due to some skillful writing.
Junction builds around a moment of meaningless violence in a train station - which, you are somewhere in the back of your mind, immediately buy into thanks to the news. There are a couple of stories that talk about the burden of debt on the downtrodden - a story where a borrower is ready to lose his leg to claim insurance.
The most unsettling story for me concerns a corporate guy, removed from the humdrum of revolutions, taking a night time lift taken on the highway. The claustrophobia builds up as the men question him about his political views, his opinions that appear to be in contradiction with the drivers. Why this is scary is also because it resonates of the state of a dissident opinion against majority. The ending was smart.
I did find a couple of stories set in corporate offices more Kafkaesque with exhibition of power. There are quite a few intellectual references like Malthusian theory and writers which I imagine stuck out in this collection.
A special note on the translation. The setting of the book makes you expect a rustic native narrative with simple translation. However, the original writing is a bit high brow for the setting and hence it is left to the translator to sell it.
A good collection.
July 24, 2024
I had read this book back in May. The nine stories of this collection capture starkly the social fabric of (North) India today. There were stories that gripped me so firmly by its melodious language and intense plot that I could barely resist the temptation. This book is one of those rare collection of stories written by Indian authors that reinstated my faith in regional languages to provide what Indian writing in English may be skirting away from. Anyway, let’s not ramble here. I have written about the book and my thoughts for The New Indian Express. The link is below. I enjoyed the author’s commentary on the Indian women. It was a smart move to only have stories where the lead were men but you get a sense of why is it so.
Thanks @harpercollinsin for this copy!
The link is here- https://www.newindianexpress.com/life...
Thanks @harpercollinsin for this copy!
The link is here- https://www.newindianexpress.com/life...
December 27, 2024
The Keeper of Desolation by Chandan Pandey, originally written in Hindi and translated into English by Sayari Debnath, is a collection of nine thought-provoking short stories.
Each story delves into the emotional turmoil of male protagonists, offering a refreshing perspective on vulnerability, societal norms, and relationships. Sayari Debnath's translation captures the pain, confusion, and depth of the characters with commendable accuracy, making the book a poignant read.
While stories like Forgetting, The Poet, and Wound stand out with their emotional resonance, a few feel incomplete and could benefit from further refinement. The narratives blend the essence of small-town and metropolitan India, but their raw authenticity may resonate more with Indian readers.
The book provides a unique lens into the male emotional experience and Indian mentality. A compelling read for those who appreciate layered storytelling and cultural insights.
Read the detailed review here - Books Chharming
Each story delves into the emotional turmoil of male protagonists, offering a refreshing perspective on vulnerability, societal norms, and relationships. Sayari Debnath's translation captures the pain, confusion, and depth of the characters with commendable accuracy, making the book a poignant read.
While stories like Forgetting, The Poet, and Wound stand out with their emotional resonance, a few feel incomplete and could benefit from further refinement. The narratives blend the essence of small-town and metropolitan India, but their raw authenticity may resonate more with Indian readers.
The book provides a unique lens into the male emotional experience and Indian mentality. A compelling read for those who appreciate layered storytelling and cultural insights.
Read the detailed review here - Books Chharming
July 7, 2025
-A Crow with a Peacock's plume-
The nine stories of Chandan Pandey and Sayari Debnath’s ‘The Keeper of Translation’ are stories of the men that live in the newspaper. Not the one that you open on an app; but the one that used to come to your home about, say, a decade earlier. The one your father and grandmother would struggle to read first or else the pages would get all crumpled up. Because that was the newspaper that carried the stories (misfortunes?) of the men that populate the world of Pandey and Debnath. These are the men that live in India, not in ‘new India’, mind you. For Pandey has written only about men and the ones that you would find in the queues of a bank (if you still visit one) trying to get a (tractor/home/education) loan sanctioned or in a post office trying to reap the benefits of some two-penny investment scheme.
Sayari Debnath’s translation is superbly invisible. It’s ironic that more ‘untrasnlated’ a translation reads, the better it’s ranked. As someone who knows both Hindi and English, there were a few sentences that made me wonder: what would they be in the original text? But these sentences were few and far in between. That’s also a win for a translator. Not to let the bilingual reader chewing upon the backstory of the translated word. The poems, it is said, are difficult to translate.
Debnath has translated this one skilfully:
Aankhon mein khulta hua aasmaan ya phir
titliyon ka sanghralay ya phir
gussail chintiyaan apne aap ko paani par
dhakel rahi hain.
The translation reads:
In the eyes is the sky unfurling
or a museum of butterflies
or a string of furious ants dragging
themselves over water.
The men in the world of Pandey and Debnath are not in a fit state to inhabit the world of the newspaper that you open in your phone. They often come in the vernacular variety, on the third or fifth page, under an obscure heading of ‘local news’ or ‘city news’. These are the men who get arrested on suspicion of being a terrorist. These are the men who get arrested on suspicion of nicking a gold ring of a cop wife. These are the men who lie to their girlfriends and don’t talk to their wives. These are the men who die by falling into septic tanks while protesting against not given a fair chance to participate in army bharti. These are the men who write letters to politicians to ease off their loans. These are the men who are murdered because they didn’t offer a seat in a cramped bogey of a train (that plies from a junction to another in the old India) to another man. These are the men who murder a man because the money they had received after selling their land has run out. These are the men who kill and maim just because they can. These are the men who hide their poems from their boss. These are the men who think about chopping off their leg to get insurance benefit. These are the men you would find in a papery newspaper. They will still be lurking on the third page or the fifth or the seventh one. Not on your phone. Never on your phone.
Pandey’s stories often start with a hook, only to cast it off like a much-holed vest and dive into the murky of the backstage. So in the very beginning of a story called ‘Forgetting’, you find a man thought-shaming another for not plucking flowers for his sweetheart, thinking all this while that if he were in his place, he would have scaled the damn tree. It is only when you start to read, you get to know that he had been responsible for pushing his brother into a trap of ambition and earning, currency and coins. He and the entire family saddled him with the weight of their own failure. The story moves on a precarious zone between the real and the imagined, skirting the very edge of (magical?) realism. The apathy and emotional violence drips from these lines: ‘At twenty-five, he had already been inactive for seven or eight years, and there was no knowing how long he would continue this way. Even when he was younger, we had to cup our hands around his ears and speak loudly into them for him to hear us. On top of this, he was totally blind too... Alone in his shanty, whenever Gulshan needs anything, he simply calls out loudly for me or our mother or Shalu. Whoever is free goes to him, but if they're not, he might have a long wait. In the meantime, the smile never leaves his face.’
The men in Pandey and Debnath’s stories are, of course, misogynist. Another story, ‘The Junction’ that starts with a rumour of the narrator’s love affair with a bureaucrat goes off track. The narrator here is uncomfortable to see a woman as a high-ranking officer, someone in a position of authority. His discomfort and misogyny are reflected in these lines: ‘The chair was occupied by a beautiful lady-this rattled my confidence for a moment, but quickly became a source of relief. Suddenly, a thought popped up in my mind. Why not assign all fearsome and death-dealing positions to beautiful and refined women?’
Pandey’s humour, when it comes, comes dressed up in black. These lines are so sharp, you might cut your irises upon paper. Have a look:
‘He declared that he only accepted the greetings of those who had at least a BA degree. He got along especially well with those who had double MA degrees or a PhD.’
‘When I visited him, I found him writing two articles, one with each hand. With his left hand he was writing about the necessity of land grabbing, and with the other one, a condemnation of the act. He even finished both articles at the same time.’
I am known for the corporal punishment I mete out. On the days I remove my ring from my right hand and relocate it to my left, no one, including me, can predict which classroom will be at the receiving end of my infamous wrath.’
This black humour, tinged with sadness, shines in ‘The Mathematics of Necessity’ where the protagonist writes a letter to PM of India to introduce a tweak in the formula of compound interest on a tractor loan. As the story progresses, it dives between humour and pathos, and ultimately bruises its shins on the threshold of yawning poverty. The protagonist, a farmer but pushed into teaching, has taken a loan without asking for the rates of interest. And he also needs a trolley if he wants to rent out that tractor! The story swells towards the end when the reader comes to know that the letter-writer has also CCed God and President of USA. He is also rueful for addressing the latter second in order after God. He claims that the president, after all, is well aware of who will emerge the winner.
The narrator here dreams about inflicting violence upon his students. He wants ‘to pick up a student, turn him upside down, and bang his head on a desk. I could even kill someone if I wanted to, and no one would dare question me.’ At the same time, his mind is swirling with such philosophical musings: ‘Numbers do not lie. And they are not traitors. I would even say that numbers are just like pets. Mathematics can neither enjoy the freedoms of physics nor be misinterpreted like history. Yet, it is mathematics that has been responsible for the fall of civilizations-not history.’
The eponymous story ‘The Keeper of Desolation’ is a shiny mirror where sarcasm draped in a diaphanous gown of tears shines sadly. A cop wife’s ring goes missing. The poor, who always pay the price, are rounded up. They, of course, are blamed with the theft. I would urge you to read the entire book just because Pandey has written this gem. Have a look at this sad sarcasm: ‘Police stations across the town reported that some forty thieves had been taken into custody. The man who pumped air into punctured bicycle tyres, the porter who worked at the vegetable market, and the man who sold eggs were all accused of the crime.’
Each one of these stories have something that you might have read in a newspaper. If you compare these stories to the shiny peacock of new India, it would look like the majestic bird has sprouted the wings of a crow. This shiny new India, sadly, sits as uselessly upon the stories of Pandey like a peacock’s plume upon the diseased head of a dying crow.
Pick up the newspaper.
The nine stories of Chandan Pandey and Sayari Debnath’s ‘The Keeper of Translation’ are stories of the men that live in the newspaper. Not the one that you open on an app; but the one that used to come to your home about, say, a decade earlier. The one your father and grandmother would struggle to read first or else the pages would get all crumpled up. Because that was the newspaper that carried the stories (misfortunes?) of the men that populate the world of Pandey and Debnath. These are the men that live in India, not in ‘new India’, mind you. For Pandey has written only about men and the ones that you would find in the queues of a bank (if you still visit one) trying to get a (tractor/home/education) loan sanctioned or in a post office trying to reap the benefits of some two-penny investment scheme.
Sayari Debnath’s translation is superbly invisible. It’s ironic that more ‘untrasnlated’ a translation reads, the better it’s ranked. As someone who knows both Hindi and English, there were a few sentences that made me wonder: what would they be in the original text? But these sentences were few and far in between. That’s also a win for a translator. Not to let the bilingual reader chewing upon the backstory of the translated word. The poems, it is said, are difficult to translate.
Debnath has translated this one skilfully:
Aankhon mein khulta hua aasmaan ya phir
titliyon ka sanghralay ya phir
gussail chintiyaan apne aap ko paani par
dhakel rahi hain.
The translation reads:
In the eyes is the sky unfurling
or a museum of butterflies
or a string of furious ants dragging
themselves over water.
The men in the world of Pandey and Debnath are not in a fit state to inhabit the world of the newspaper that you open in your phone. They often come in the vernacular variety, on the third or fifth page, under an obscure heading of ‘local news’ or ‘city news’. These are the men who get arrested on suspicion of being a terrorist. These are the men who get arrested on suspicion of nicking a gold ring of a cop wife. These are the men who lie to their girlfriends and don’t talk to their wives. These are the men who die by falling into septic tanks while protesting against not given a fair chance to participate in army bharti. These are the men who write letters to politicians to ease off their loans. These are the men who are murdered because they didn’t offer a seat in a cramped bogey of a train (that plies from a junction to another in the old India) to another man. These are the men who murder a man because the money they had received after selling their land has run out. These are the men who kill and maim just because they can. These are the men who hide their poems from their boss. These are the men who think about chopping off their leg to get insurance benefit. These are the men you would find in a papery newspaper. They will still be lurking on the third page or the fifth or the seventh one. Not on your phone. Never on your phone.
Pandey’s stories often start with a hook, only to cast it off like a much-holed vest and dive into the murky of the backstage. So in the very beginning of a story called ‘Forgetting’, you find a man thought-shaming another for not plucking flowers for his sweetheart, thinking all this while that if he were in his place, he would have scaled the damn tree. It is only when you start to read, you get to know that he had been responsible for pushing his brother into a trap of ambition and earning, currency and coins. He and the entire family saddled him with the weight of their own failure. The story moves on a precarious zone between the real and the imagined, skirting the very edge of (magical?) realism. The apathy and emotional violence drips from these lines: ‘At twenty-five, he had already been inactive for seven or eight years, and there was no knowing how long he would continue this way. Even when he was younger, we had to cup our hands around his ears and speak loudly into them for him to hear us. On top of this, he was totally blind too... Alone in his shanty, whenever Gulshan needs anything, he simply calls out loudly for me or our mother or Shalu. Whoever is free goes to him, but if they're not, he might have a long wait. In the meantime, the smile never leaves his face.’
The men in Pandey and Debnath’s stories are, of course, misogynist. Another story, ‘The Junction’ that starts with a rumour of the narrator’s love affair with a bureaucrat goes off track. The narrator here is uncomfortable to see a woman as a high-ranking officer, someone in a position of authority. His discomfort and misogyny are reflected in these lines: ‘The chair was occupied by a beautiful lady-this rattled my confidence for a moment, but quickly became a source of relief. Suddenly, a thought popped up in my mind. Why not assign all fearsome and death-dealing positions to beautiful and refined women?’
Pandey’s humour, when it comes, comes dressed up in black. These lines are so sharp, you might cut your irises upon paper. Have a look:
‘He declared that he only accepted the greetings of those who had at least a BA degree. He got along especially well with those who had double MA degrees or a PhD.’
‘When I visited him, I found him writing two articles, one with each hand. With his left hand he was writing about the necessity of land grabbing, and with the other one, a condemnation of the act. He even finished both articles at the same time.’
I am known for the corporal punishment I mete out. On the days I remove my ring from my right hand and relocate it to my left, no one, including me, can predict which classroom will be at the receiving end of my infamous wrath.’
This black humour, tinged with sadness, shines in ‘The Mathematics of Necessity’ where the protagonist writes a letter to PM of India to introduce a tweak in the formula of compound interest on a tractor loan. As the story progresses, it dives between humour and pathos, and ultimately bruises its shins on the threshold of yawning poverty. The protagonist, a farmer but pushed into teaching, has taken a loan without asking for the rates of interest. And he also needs a trolley if he wants to rent out that tractor! The story swells towards the end when the reader comes to know that the letter-writer has also CCed God and President of USA. He is also rueful for addressing the latter second in order after God. He claims that the president, after all, is well aware of who will emerge the winner.
The narrator here dreams about inflicting violence upon his students. He wants ‘to pick up a student, turn him upside down, and bang his head on a desk. I could even kill someone if I wanted to, and no one would dare question me.’ At the same time, his mind is swirling with such philosophical musings: ‘Numbers do not lie. And they are not traitors. I would even say that numbers are just like pets. Mathematics can neither enjoy the freedoms of physics nor be misinterpreted like history. Yet, it is mathematics that has been responsible for the fall of civilizations-not history.’
The eponymous story ‘The Keeper of Desolation’ is a shiny mirror where sarcasm draped in a diaphanous gown of tears shines sadly. A cop wife’s ring goes missing. The poor, who always pay the price, are rounded up. They, of course, are blamed with the theft. I would urge you to read the entire book just because Pandey has written this gem. Have a look at this sad sarcasm: ‘Police stations across the town reported that some forty thieves had been taken into custody. The man who pumped air into punctured bicycle tyres, the porter who worked at the vegetable market, and the man who sold eggs were all accused of the crime.’
Each one of these stories have something that you might have read in a newspaper. If you compare these stories to the shiny peacock of new India, it would look like the majestic bird has sprouted the wings of a crow. This shiny new India, sadly, sits as uselessly upon the stories of Pandey like a peacock’s plume upon the diseased head of a dying crow.
Pick up the newspaper.
May 14, 2024
Each of the stories is dark, hints at inner violence and is almost dystopian. Yet, surreal though the stories appear, each of them finds a faint resonance in reports that appear sporadically, get discussed for a few days and then disappear again. The power of the stories is in the fact that they seem absolutely improbable, yet remind us of real events.
Though a work of fiction, the book is a reflection of the numerous injustices that people from lower income and middle income communities are subject to. The book also explores the hypocrisy of relationships, especially those between men and women. The book forces the reader to take a look at the reality that we try to ignore, in the hope that a truth is no longer a truth if it is not acknowledged as one. The book throws light of the power dynamics at play in every situation, and of how people can end up losing everything (including their life) if they question the rules set by those in a position of power.
Chandan Pandey burst like a meteor into the firmament of Indian-English books with his translated novella “Legal Fiction”. The book was hailed as “the Kafka in Deoria. Or Camus in the cowbelt”, and it was praised as being “a sharp look at a terrifying Indian-ism and the currents against it.” With “The Keeper of Desolation”, he consolidates his position as perhaps the most original voice who describes the reality of modern day India.
More detailed review here: https://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2024/05/...
Though a work of fiction, the book is a reflection of the numerous injustices that people from lower income and middle income communities are subject to. The book also explores the hypocrisy of relationships, especially those between men and women. The book forces the reader to take a look at the reality that we try to ignore, in the hope that a truth is no longer a truth if it is not acknowledged as one. The book throws light of the power dynamics at play in every situation, and of how people can end up losing everything (including their life) if they question the rules set by those in a position of power.
Chandan Pandey burst like a meteor into the firmament of Indian-English books with his translated novella “Legal Fiction”. The book was hailed as “the Kafka in Deoria. Or Camus in the cowbelt”, and it was praised as being “a sharp look at a terrifying Indian-ism and the currents against it.” With “The Keeper of Desolation”, he consolidates his position as perhaps the most original voice who describes the reality of modern day India.
More detailed review here: https://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2024/05/...
January 1, 2025
Rating 4.25 stars
Review - The Keeper of Desolation by Chandan Pandey, translated from Hindi by Sayari Debnath is a collection of 9 stories, stories that reveal a yawning gap between the rich and poor, those who wield power/authority and the common man, between dreams and reality, spoken and unspoken words. And it does this leaving a slim gap between fact and fiction, the surreal feels almost real.
For instance, in ‘Wound’, we are reminded of several instances from across the world where shoes have been hurled at politicians/eminent persons by frustrated commoners. Here, an illustrator working for a magazine has his intentions and actions questioned by the top management for drawing pictures of shoes. ‘The Junction’ germinates from a mob lynching and a death in a train when a man refuses to make space for another. For the intense farmer strikes that rocked the nation, farmers’ woes get a place in 'The Mathematics of Necessity’ where a farmer writes a letter to the PM of India requesting him to provide a more humane formula for calculating interest over loans. While this story feels light with wit and mild sarcasm, the staggeringly high interest rates leaving people in debt hanging from a precipice is written in a deeply affecting fashion in ‘The Alphabet of Grass’. The disproportionate power play (not the powerplay of cricket) unfolds in the titular story that reads like a farce. Interrogation of some sort features in a couple of stories here - but a threateningly menacing one in the story ‘The Land was Ours’ leaves a deep impact.
The writing here is clever, convoluted, even a knotty affair at places that we learn to disentangle. The translation, so fine and erudite, makes the reading wholesome. Here, socio-political issues are juxtaposed with personal strife, tender with brutal and stark with subtle.
That the author portrays women as ethereally beautiful objects meant for man’s desire or lust irked me at times, but this isn’t unrealistic. Harper Perennial editions normally have an insights section at the book's end, a little disappointed that it’s absent here. These minor niggles aside, The Keeper of Desolation unravels truths we have lived with for years, some that we have even turned a blind eye to, thanks to our privilege.
A wonderful collection of thought-provoking stories!
Review - The Keeper of Desolation by Chandan Pandey, translated from Hindi by Sayari Debnath is a collection of 9 stories, stories that reveal a yawning gap between the rich and poor, those who wield power/authority and the common man, between dreams and reality, spoken and unspoken words. And it does this leaving a slim gap between fact and fiction, the surreal feels almost real.
For instance, in ‘Wound’, we are reminded of several instances from across the world where shoes have been hurled at politicians/eminent persons by frustrated commoners. Here, an illustrator working for a magazine has his intentions and actions questioned by the top management for drawing pictures of shoes. ‘The Junction’ germinates from a mob lynching and a death in a train when a man refuses to make space for another. For the intense farmer strikes that rocked the nation, farmers’ woes get a place in 'The Mathematics of Necessity’ where a farmer writes a letter to the PM of India requesting him to provide a more humane formula for calculating interest over loans. While this story feels light with wit and mild sarcasm, the staggeringly high interest rates leaving people in debt hanging from a precipice is written in a deeply affecting fashion in ‘The Alphabet of Grass’. The disproportionate power play (not the powerplay of cricket) unfolds in the titular story that reads like a farce. Interrogation of some sort features in a couple of stories here - but a threateningly menacing one in the story ‘The Land was Ours’ leaves a deep impact.
The writing here is clever, convoluted, even a knotty affair at places that we learn to disentangle. The translation, so fine and erudite, makes the reading wholesome. Here, socio-political issues are juxtaposed with personal strife, tender with brutal and stark with subtle.
That the author portrays women as ethereally beautiful objects meant for man’s desire or lust irked me at times, but this isn’t unrealistic. Harper Perennial editions normally have an insights section at the book's end, a little disappointed that it’s absent here. These minor niggles aside, The Keeper of Desolation unravels truths we have lived with for years, some that we have even turned a blind eye to, thanks to our privilege.
A wonderful collection of thought-provoking stories!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews