Swimmer Among the Stars

Do read this . . . I don't think I've ever read a collection which exuberantly spans such breadths of time and space. -- Mark Haddon
Hypnotic . . . Tharoor's prose is calm and unassertive . . . His writing has the clarity and imaginative expansiveness of fable . . . Tharoor's work has something in common with the fantastical world-building of writers such as Jorge Luis Borges, but there is also a distinct fairy-tale quality, connecting him to a much older storytelling tradition. * Sunday Times *
Haunting and mysteriously powerful . . . Swimmer Among the Stars announces the arrival of a writer who is gifted not just with extraordinary talent but also with a subtle, original and probing mind. -- Amitav Ghosh
[A] dazzling first book of short stories . . . A near pitch-perfect collection. * i *
Kanishk Tharoor’s debut has an impressively wide scope. Its 13 stories skip through countries, continents, and centuries in past and future . . . Highly playful and imaginative. * Financial Times *
[A] remarkably crafted and imaginative debut collection of stories that span space and time . . . Tharoor is sensitive to inequality and acts of exploitation, both deliberate and unintentional . . . The experience of reading this collection is like watching a contemplative, concerned – yet playful – observer leafing through its volumes. * New York Times *
A wonderful collection: as sharp and multi-faceted, polished, light-filled and ancient as a string of diamonds. -- Kate Clanchy
A sparkling, magical, heartbreaking meditation on the way tradition clashes with technology, and the way our reality is both defined and restricted by the language we use to represent it . . . It's a testament to the author's empathy, rich voice, and immaculate craftsmanship that the book succeeds . . . even as it comforts, illuminates, and unnerves. * National Public Radio *
[Tharoor’s] debut work of fiction is a truly global collection: he skips as easily between continents as if he were jumping rope . . . His prose can be elegant, ironic, deadpan. Just as often, it is sweetly melancholic . . . Tharoor is clearly a monumental talent, and his debut is a pleasure, from the first page to the last. * Kirkus (starred review) *
A refreshingly profound and gifted 31-year-old writer . . . Swimmer Among the Stars is a mesmeric introduction to a writer . . . the work of a storyteller who stands lucid on the cusp of reinventing storytelling. * India Today *
So brilliantly bold and enchanting . . . Tharoor impresses with a perfect lightness of touch . . . Jorge Luis Borges claimed that every writer creates his own precursors. Tharoor creates Borges as one of his. Swimmer Among the Stars is a Borgesian patchwork of fact and fantasy, a remapping of ancient cultures and civilisations, a playful foray into parallel dimensions. If Tharoor can achieve all this in miniature, then roll on his first novel. * The National (Abu Dhabi) *
An exemplary debut . . . Working with the vast riches of fables, epics, mythologies, folk tales, histories . . . Tharoor spins a weave that is for all time, yet peculiarly, achingly of the present . . . This is a talent whose time has come. * Mint *
A magnificent collection of short fiction. It transports one into a different world, especially with its minute details, achieving the near-impossible with words. * The Hindu *
Each of these stories . . . reflects . . . a rare combination of surreal imagination matched with an extraordinary craft of a master storyteller. * The Statesman (India) *
Tharoor's prose is rich, imaginative and free of needless complexities; it is the plots of the stories that stand out with their edgy unpredictability . . . A fascinating read, Swimmer Among the Stars promises great things to come from its young author. * New Indian Express *
Each story expertly explores a tantalisingly different worldview – resulting in a near-perfect collection. * Manchester Evening News *
Kanishk Tharoor’s mind is an overflowing library from which he pulls Persian folklore Egyptian history, Anglo-Saxon poetry and 20th-century politics. He prods the world with his great stick of irony and vast imagination . . . Wherever he goes and in whatever era, Mr Tharoor is original, unselfconscious and relevant. * Country Life *
I greatly admired the imaginative range and adventurousness of Kanishk Tharoor’s stories in Swimmer Among the Stars. -- Pankaj Mishra * Guardian *