A fellow reviewer of this collection notes the author’s fine poetic voice.
She is also wickedly funny!
The semi-fictional universe of **Gods, Nukes and a Whole Lot of Nonsense teems with male fraudsters: deceitful mystics; unholy, rapacious beggars; oversexed street food vendors; conniving civil servants - and even an apparent real-life divinity who disappears most disappointingly during a plane journey somewhere into the ether.
The cited characters above are non-Jews. But perhaps Shirani Rajapakse invited me to read this, her latest batch of stories, not only because she includes a jolly, cacophonous band of visiting Israeli musicians but also because Jewish Indians in Israel would recognise their western counterparts at every hallowed and so lucrative tourist spot they may name.
Rajapakse and I are acquainted only online. So I am unsure whether she is a stern political feminist, an unrepentant misandrist - or just a natural cynic.
Never mind!
Here she draws a devastating portrait of an India – where like Israel – pools of an unpleasant, ancient patriarchy swirl menacingly just beneath the tides of daily life.
**Gods, Nukes and a Whole Lot of Nonsense is available from Amazon on Kindle ($8.99) and Paperback ($15.99).
© Natalie Wood (13 June 2021)
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