FOMITE

The year is 1976. East and West are being dissolved in an increasingly globalized world. The narrative moves between India during and after the Emergency and Vienna in the remembered shadow of the Anschluss, while drawing larger parallels about the consequences of intolerance. Chaos stalks the streets as the characters confront their inner holocausts.

 

About the Author

Jay Birjépatil taught English Literature at Marlboro College in Vermont. He was born in the city of Baroda, India, when it was an elegant princely capital. His background includes private schooling and academic training (MA.,Ph.d) at the University of Manchester (UK) and (Post Doc) Yale.Before settling down in Vermont he taught at M.S. University, Baroda and Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. He is the author of Beyond The Axle Tree, a study of T.S. Eliot and has contributed articles to scholarly journals in India, England and the United States. At Manchester Jay also trained in theatre and directed plays at Brown and Marlboro College. In 1965 he was selected to play a tiny role in an experimental film called The White Bus directed by Lindsay Anderson.

His first novel, Chinnery’s Hotel, was published by Bodiam Books (U.K) and by Ravi-Dayal-Penguin India. The Good Muslim of Jackson Heights released in the US by Fomite was earlier published by Ravi Dayal-Penguin, India. His short stories have been included in The Way We Were: An Anglo-Indian Anthology and in the fiction issue of South Asian Review. His poetry has appeared in Critical Quarterly and Acumen in England and in an anthology of Indian Poetry in English, edited by Kaiser Haq for Ohio State University Press.