Anosh Irani

Anosh Irani

Anosh Irani has published four critically acclaimed and award-winning novels, including The Song of Kahunsha, shortlisted for CBC Canada Reads and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize; Dahanu Road, a finalist for the Man Asian Literary Prize; and The Parcel, which was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. His anthology The Bombay Plays: The Matka King & Bombay Black and Men in White were both shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama. Irani’s short stories have appeared in Granta and The Los Angeles Review of Books, and his nonfiction has been published in The New York Times. He lives in Vancouver, where he teaches Creative Writing at Simon Fraser University.

Website: anoshirani.com
Instagram: @anoshirani_writer

FESTIVAL BOOK

Translated from the Gibberish

Two decades ago, to the mystification of family and friends, Anosh Irani left India for Vancouver, Canada, a city and a country completely foreign to him, hoping to reinvent himself as a writer. He did just that, publishing critically acclaimed novels and plays set in his beloved hometown of Mumbai. But this uprooting did not come without a steep price – one that Irani, for the first time, directly explores in this book.

In <em>Gibberish</em>’s seven, surprising stories, Irani shows, through a prism of unforgettable characters, what it means to live between two worlds: India and Canada. Among the people we meet are: a swimming instructor determined to reenact John Cheever’s iconic short story “The Swimmer” in the pools of Mumbai; a famous Indian chef who breaks down on a New York talk show; a gangster’s wife who believes a penguin at the Mumbai zoo is the reincarnation of her lost child; and a kindly sweets-shop owner whose hope for a new life in Canada leads to a terrible choice. The book starts and ends with a gorgeous, emotionally raw “translation” to the page of the author’s own life between worlds, blurring the line between fiction and fact.

ALL EVENTS WITH Anosh Irani

6:30 PM
Friday Night Showcase
Oct 18 @ 6:30 PM MT - 8 PM MT

Patricia A. Whelan Performance Hall, Central Library

800 3 Street SE
7 PM
Cabinet of Curiosities
Oct 19 @ 7 PM MT - 8:30 PM MT

Memorial Park Library, 2nd Floor

1221 2 St SW