We've Moved

The Blaft Blog has moved!

New posts are happening over here.

The Blaft Book of Mizo Myths

The Blaft Book of Mizo Myths, our first release in 2 years, is (finally!) available in print in the USA, from Small Press Distribution and Amazon.com, in India from our site (Blaft.com), and as an ebook worldwide.

This was a really fun book to be involved with. Mizoram is a super interesting place... a tiny Indian state nestled in the hills on the Myanmar border; remote and beautiful; culturally unique; a success story in terms of education and human development, but somewhat difficult for outsiders to get to know about.

The author, Cherrie Lalnunziri Chhangte, is a rockstar academic from Mizoram University & Stanford who has a Ph.D. in African-American literature and has written on the parallels between Native American folklore and Northeastern Indian hill tribe mythology. 

Cherrie Chhangte

Her book presents 6 stories from pre-Christian Mizo mythology that reflect her interest in supernatural love affairs -- between humans and weretigers, humans and phungpuinu (a terrifically icky sort of goblin), humans and lasi (a race of elves or faeries), and more.

Check it out!

#TSBCBlaftWeek

We're teaming up with The Sunday Book Club for a bunch of Twitter giveaways this week.

We'll be giving away copies of our comics/street art anthologies The Obliterary Journal, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, Kuzhali Manickavel's new collection of "South Indian experimental feminist" short fiction Things We Found During the Autopsy, Vishwajyoti Ghosh's postcard book Times New Roman & Countrymen, and the romantic monster-love picture book Kumari Loves a Monster by Rashmi Ruth Devadasan and Shyam.

Follow both @TSBookClub and @blaftness on Twitter. Answer questions and win free books!

2012 & 2013 titles now available in the US

At long last, our 2012 and 2013 releases are now available in the USA from the excellent Berkeley, California-based Small Press Distribution.

Click on each cover to read a description or to order.

 

Things We Found During the Autopsy by Kuzhali Manickavel

We promised this book in February, then in August. Now it's finally available, and you should read it, because Kuzhali is totally amazing.

We made a book trailer. Check it out:

 
Buy the print book online from here or here, or buy the ebook from here, here, or here. Enjoy!

Maharaja of Tamil Pulp steps up output

Rajesh Kumar, the most insanely prolific of the many Tamil pulp fiction authors whose work we featured in The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction Vol. I and Vol. II, has apparently begun writing even faster. The Coimbatore-based writer has been averaging three new titles a month since he got started in 1968, and was reportedly up to a lifetime total of around 1500 books. Now, however, our local tea kadai proprietor tells us that he's stocking eight or nine new Rajesh Kumar novels every month.

Let's repeat that: Eight or nine novels. Every month.

If you aren't familiar with the Rajesh Kumar yugam, peruse this profile by Samanth Subramanian.

Also, check out this interview of G Asokan, one of Rajesh Kumar's publishers, where he reminisces about the eighties when television had not yet taken over people's lives.

Here are a few of this month's Rajesh Kumar covers:

Launching tomorrow!

Subramaniyapuram: The Tamil Film in English Translation

Please join us at 3:30 P.M. tomorrow—Friday, January 17, 2014—at the Chennai Book Fair (at the YMCA grounds in Nandanam) for the launch of our new release, a translation of the screenplay of one of the most acclaimed Tamil films of recent years.




Director M. Sasikumar will present the first copy to chief guest Gautham Menon. Actors Jai and Samuthirakani and cinematographer S. R. Kadhir will be there, along with Anand Pandian, the editor and co-translator of the book, and film critics Baradwaj Rangan and Preminda Jacob, who have contributed essays. Sahitya-Akademi-award-winning Tamil author Su. Venkatesan will also speak at the event.

There will be a question and answer session at the end, followed by a book signing... and afterwards, of course, you can head onwards into the giant book fair tent and browse the stalls of hundreds of publishers, all of whom are offering their titles at a discount of at least 10%.

If you're not in Chennai tomorrow, please note that you can order the book online from our site.

Blaft Party in Bangalore, Thursday, January 9

Photos from the Chennai launch of The Obliterary Journal Vol. 2: Non-Veg

 Before the crowd arrived

 

 This paati (center, in pink) was drinking a lot of elaneer

Contributors. Clockwise from top left: Mihir Ranganathan, Nagavalli, Ratzzz, Aneesh K.R., Thulasi Kumar, Kala, Rakesh Khanna, Rashmi Ruth Devadasan, Kadamma Ilavarasi, Sathyanarain Muralidharan

Photos by UK. (Thanks!) Order your copies today!

Subramaniyapuram: The Tamil Film in English Translation

 On January 17th, we'll be releasing Subramaniyapuram: The Tamil Film in English Translation.

 

If you haven't seen this movie yet, you should: it's amazing. A tale of friendship, betrayal, love and revenge set in Madurai in the early 1980s, the film pioneered a new, gritty aesthetic in Tamil cinema that has caught the attention of film lovers around the world. Made on a tiny budget by a first-time director and a cast of newcomers, Subramaniyapuram was a smash hit with audiences all over South India, from the big cities to the villages. 

It's also been cited as a major influence by some of India’s most respected filmmakers, including Anurag Kashyap, who dedicated his 2012 epic Gangs of Wasseypur to "The Madurai Triumvirate": Subramaniyapuram director/screenwriter/star M. Sasikumar and his mentors, directors Ameer Sultan and Bala.

 
The book contains an English translation of the screenplay (by Kausalya Hart and Constantine Nakassis) plus a wealth of additional material curated by Anand Pandian, a film scholar at Johns Hopkins University. There are essays by Baradwaj Rangan, Constantine Nakassis, Preminda Jacob, and Anand himself on the film's cinematic context and social impact; a full-colour gallery of film stills, never-before-seen working shots, and publicity posters; and an exclusive, wide-ranging interview with Sasikumar.

The launch is scheduled for 3:30 pm on Friday, January 17, at the Chennai Book Fair. Both Sasikumar and book editor Anand Pandian will speak and be available for signings. We encourage you to grow a beard, if you're able, and come in period costume -- though your aruvaal and bottle of naattu sarakku will probably not be allowed inside.

Things We Found During the Autopsy

Guess what yougaiz!!11!!1!!

We're super thrilled to announce that Kuzhali Manickavel's new short story collection will be released in early February.

Here's the cover (by Prabha Mallya):

There are 52 short, short-short, & short-short-short stories inside. Some of them have appeared online, some of them in phoren journals, but many are brand-new-never-seen-before. The stories cover a wide variety of topics; a few of them are enumerated on the back cover.

Prepare to have your bones sawed through and your intestines cut open with an enterotome*. Good times are on their way.

*Enterotome: the scissor-like implement pictured at the top of the front cover. Used to cut through intestines of dead people. We just learned this word and it is fun to say.

Book Launch at the Fish Market

From what we hear, most people are getting a little tired of the typical book launch event -- the one where you go to a swanky hotel or cafe or art gallery, sit politely for a couple of hours watching two people in chairs exchange moderately witty banter, and then drink some tea.

So, just to switch things up a little, on Saturday, January 4th, 2014, at 11 A.M., we'll be launching The Obliterary Journal, Vol. 2: Non-Veg at Nochikuppam Fish Market, which is right next to the Marina Beach Lighthouse in Chennai.  We'll be setting up next to the stall of the lovely and gracious Ms. Kadamma Ilavarasi, who has a starring role in "Nochikuppam Fisherwomen Comics", a photocomic interview by Ratzzz and X. Kumar that's included in the book.

Here's Ilavarasi looking fearsome, standing in a blood-coloured ocean:

Rrrraaawwwwrrrrr.

Exciting one-time-only offer: With each purchase of a Blaft book at the event, you get a coupon for Rs. 100 off on seafood from partipating stalls! There will also be free coffee, tea, and elaneer. You can get your book signed by Ilavarasi and her co-star Kala (pictured below), as well as several other artists who have contributed to the journal.

Look forward to meeting you all at Nochikuppam on the morning of January 4th.

Coming Soon: The Obliterary Journal, Vol. 2

We are excited to announce that in the first week of January, close on the heels of our release of Stupid Guy Goes Back to India, Blaft will be bringing out The Obliterary Journal Vol. 2: Non-Veg. This book is a collection of short comics and artworks having as their common theme the consumption of animal flesh by members of the human species.

 

The Obliterary Journal Vol. 2 features talking chicken legs, giant man-eating serpents, plenty of aliens, a few mind-blowing statistics, and some excellent kebabs. It includes contributions from Meena Kandasamy & Samita Chatterjee, Appupen, Durrrrk Mixer Grinder Serial No. 30277XM03, PETA India, Aneesh K. R. & The Coromandel Avian Taxonomy Research Institute, Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih & Aratrika Choudhary, Nicolas C. Grey & James Farley, Prabha Mallya, and many more. It's by turns fun, bloody, defiant, thought-provoking, and extremely strange.

The ferociously talented Prabha Mallya (known for her work with Manta Ray Comics, as well as for her illustrations for Nilanjana Roy's The Wildings) has also designed the cover for the book. In fact she has designed three different covers, all of them featuring an endearingly feisty lady we here in the Blaft office have taken to calling "Meat-Face Aunty". Since we couldn't decide on which version of Meat-Face Aunty we liked best, we will be publishing the book in three short runs with different covers, so you can choose your favorite.

We don't have a firm date for the book launch yet, but the event will most likely be in the first weekend of January, at Nochikuppam Fish Market, near Marina Beach. Details to follow shortly!

Coming Soon: Stupid Guy Goes BACK to India

Blaft has been in hibernation for a while. We haven't had a book out in over a year, and haven't posted here in almost that long either. I'm not even sure if people still read blogs anymore. We should probably move over to Tumblr or something, that seems to be where all the cool people hang out.

In the meantime, though, we're excited to announce the imminent release of Stupid Guy Goes BACK to India by Yukichi Yamamatsu.

It's the sequel to his first autobiographical manga, which was published in Japanese in 2008, and which we published here in India in an English translation by Kumar Sivasubramanian as Stupid Guy Goes to India in 2011.

In the new book, Yukichi returns to India, more determined than ever to succeed in his crackpot business schemes. He recounts his adventures trying to run an udon noodle cart business in a Delhi slum, while performing Hindi standup comedy routines in public parks on the side. He also follows some drug dealers around, travels to Purvanchal, and muses on Indian bathroom habits.

Included as a bonus at the end is an English translation of Yukichi's wonderful 24-page original Hindi fiction manga, Cycle Rickshaw-wale ki Dukaan.

Unfortunately, we can't bring Yukichi down to India again, but the first copies of the book will be available at the Westland/Tranquebar stall at the Mumbai Film & Comic Convention, Dec. 20-21, and it will be available in stores soon afterward. You can also pre-order a copy from our website.

Pongal-O-Pongal! Blaft Mega Sale!

இனிய பொங்கல் நல்வாழ்த்துக்கள்! 

It's the incredible Pongal Blaft Mega Sale! சிறப்பு தள்ளுபடி!

For the next four days we're offering 35% OFF ALL TITLES* when purchased from our website,

FREE SHIPPING within India and VERY LOW RATES internationally.

*ebooks not included

Pick up some Tamil folk tales,
some Tamil pulp fiction,
some transgressive postmodern literary Tamil wackiness,
some Tamil romance with monsters...

...or any of our other titles!

This jallikattu bull will run only until the 16th of January! CATCH IT!

The Kannywood-Bollywood Connection

For those you who've read Balaraba Ramat Yakubu's Sin Is a Puppy That Follows You Home and are curious about the Hausa - Indian movie connection, Abdalla Uba Adamu of Bayero University has sent us some very cool scans of Nigerian/Bollywood movie posters. Check it out:

 

 

 

And here's the poster for the first Indian movie ever dubbed in Hausa, starring none other than namma ooru Superstar! Natch.

 

Also, a quick note: I made a rather large goof in the Publisher's Note to Sin Is a Puppy. I claimed that "to the best of our knowledge", it was the first Hausa novel ever translated into English. The best of our knowledge, it turns out, was not very good. Carmen McCain points out in a review of the novel in a Nigerian paper that there have been older novels that have appeared in well-known translations, and even one soyayya novel published in Nigeria. She has helpfully revised our boast to "the first international publication in translation of a contemporary Hausa novel". We'll have to wait for the next print run to fix that. Woops.

"Sin Is a Puppy" now available in print and eBook formats

Balaraba Ramat Yakubu's 1990 novel Alhaki Kuykuyo Ne..., one of the early bestsellers from northern Nigeria's Hausa-language soyayya pop fiction genre, is now available in English translation from Blaft Publications. You can read the first chapter here.

Order from our website for free shipping within India & low shipping prices for the rest of the world. Or, you can buy the eBook in EPUB or Kindle formats.

We think you'll enjoy it!

For those interested in knowing more about Hausa culture and Hausa literature, we point you to Abdalla Uba Adamu of the University of Kano, who helped us with this project in a huge way. He maintains this YouTube channel, The Foundation for Hausa Performing Arts, where you can find some excellent video of Hausa traditional music performances. You can also read his blog posts (from a few years ago) for some background on Hausa literature and the struggles between authors and censors.

There's also Carmen McCain, an American living in Kano who blogs about Hausa films and popular culture.

Cheers!

Upcoming release

We're excited to announce the imminent release of the next Blaft title, Sin Is a Puppy That Follows You Home by Balaraba Ramat Yakubu.

The book is a translation from Hausa, a language spoken by over 40 million people in West Africa. Hausa is written in two scripts: one, the ajami script, is derived from Arabic, and is used mostly for poetry and religious writings; the other, boko, is derived from the Roman alphabet, with a few extra characters (e.g. ɓ, ɗ, ƙ).

In the late 1980s in the city of Kano, Nigeria, there was a publishing boom of Hausa-language books written in boko. These popular novels were often inspired by Hindi films, which have been hugely popular among Hausa speakers for decades. (Check out this Nigerian guy who's never been to India, but learned Hindi from the movies!)

Balaraba Ramat Yakubu, who published her first novel in 1987, has been at the forefront of this Hausa popular fiction scene virtually from the beginning. With nine novels to her credit, she's recently moved into film, working in Kannywood (the Kano-based Hausa film industry).

Balaraba Ramat Yakubu
photo by Sunmi Smart-Cole

Sin Is a Puppy That Follows You Home is a translation (by Kano University professor Dr. Aliyu Kamal) of Balaraba's second novel, which came out in 1990.

It's an Islamic soap opera complete with polygamous households, virtuous women, scheming harlots, and black magic.

We think you'll like it.

Sin Is a Puppy That Follows You Home represents a number of firsts. It's the first time, as far as we know, that an English translation of a full Hausa novel has ever been published (although a short excerpt did appear before, in an excellent reader put together by Stephanie Newell from the University of Sussex.) For a language with 40 million speakers--that's comparable with Kannada, and about four times as many as Dutch--this seems long overdue.

It's also, we believe, the first time a translation of an African-language work has ever been published first in India. We like the idea of South-South literary exchange, and we wish this sort of thing would happen more often.

The book is now available for pre-order on our site, and copies should be available in Indian stores in mid-October. An ebook version will also be available worldwide next month.

In other news

A number of new books have been released recently by other publishers which feature the work of Blaft authors/artists/collaborators. Here are some of them:

The Pao Anthology of Comics 1
featuring work by Orijit Sen, Amitabh Kumar, and Vidyun Sabhaney  [all of whom were also contributors to The Obliterary Journal], Vishwajyoti Ghosh [author of Times New Roman & Countrymen], and many more

Breaking the Bow: Speculative Fiction Inspired by the Ramayana
featuring a story by Kuzhali Manickavel among many others.

(Aside: for more modern riffs on the Ramayana, check out Thai painter Jirapat Tatsanasomboon's work.)

The Taming of Women by P. Sivakami
translated from Tamil by Pritham K. Chakarvarthy, who's translated a number of books for Blaft.








Buy & support! Get them from an independent bookstore if you can.

Bangalore Comic Con

Blaft will be at Bangalore Comic Con in stall A18 at Koramangala Stadium, Bangalore, Saturday & Sunday from 10 am to 9 pm.

Meet Shyam, prolific illustrator for Tamil weekly magazines and book covers, as well as the artist behind Kumari Loves a Monster (which now has a Tumblr.)

Shyam (L) with Rashmi Ruth Devadasan and unidentified therapod

 One of Shyam's illustrations from Kumari Loves a Monster

George Mathen a.k.a. Appupen, author of Moonward, will also be there.

 

We'll be selling Blaft books at discount rates... as well as copies of Vidyun Sabhaney and Shohei Emura's new Captain Bijli comic "Mice Will Be Mice" and some limited edition Tamil Pulp Fiction light boxes.

See you there!

A Lit Mag Evening -- July 7 in Bangalore

Attention Bangaloreans:

 

Note: Some organizers voiced concerns that it might appear tacky to mention on the invite itself the fact that there will be 

 

FREE BOOZE AND SNACKS!!!! 

 

at the event. Good thing we have no such qualms here at the Blaft blog.