Annie Zaidi's Known Turf

from the Metropoli d’Asia website:

Genre: Non-fiction, Reportage
Pages: 280 pp.
Origin: India

ABOUT THE STORY: Annie Zaidi leads us to real undiscovered India: bandits, untouchables, religious conflits, crimes against the women, corruption, nationalitites. She has a particular skill for combining reportage and personal narrative, and we feel ourselves thrown inside the action, travelling old buses to far villages, lodging in miserable half star hotels, and meeting dangerous people because of her curiosity to understand her country in the deep. Whether it is analyzing banditry or developing a personal philosophy through the art of buying railways ticket in her country, Known Turf is a book that enages readers, surprising and schoking them with an unusual capacity of mixing microstories and greater socioeconomics issues. By the way, she tells about her particular love for tea...

“Annie Zaidi tells these stories from different parts of India with compassion, detail and importantly, with a gentle humor. Often, the very funny conversations, which so well capture the flavour of non-metro India, set you up for a tale of sudden brutality. This author sketches the personality of her subjects with warmth and sympathy and humour, but minus the cliches that often make such stories a heavy read. Above all it is the high quality of the story telling that grips you.”Palagummi Sainath.

“Annie Zaidi combines a reporter's on-the-spot perception and a writer's reflection and language to etch interesting, nuanced portraits of that half mythicalbeing in the throes of constant change: contemporary India” Tabish Khair.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Annie Zaidi writes poetry, fiction and non-fiction and drama.  She currently lives in Mumbai and writes a weekly column for DNA, also calledKnown Turf. A first collection of illustrated poems, Crush, was published in 2007. She has contributed to three anthologies: 21 Under 40, India Shining India Changing (published in Italian as 'India') and Women Changing India. She has also co-authored The Bad Boys' Guide to the Good India Girl, to be published by Zubaan in 2011.

 PRESS REVIEWS:

“Zaidi combines the skills of a professional journalist, poetic genes, and the virtues of a liberal upbringing to write on a range of subjects with accuracy, fervour and tremendous feelings” Dna India

There's a flow and feeling in Aniie Zaidi's writng that makes reading Known Turf an enjoyable experience... She travels through the badlands of Chambal, explores rural Punjab's connections with Sufism, and examines the causes of malnutrition... But when she writes on her more privete experiences, the writer in her really finds her turf.” The Times of India

FOCUS ON:

• True India in the deep: bandits, caste system, violence and religious riots.
• A young woman, a passionate reporter, her personal feelings and experiences travelling and telling her own country
• Real India described at grass root level, by the voices of common people.

Annie Zaidi's poetry was published in Issue #12 of Cha.
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Meet Annie Zaidi

If your lover wants to be so close to you, so close, closer than your skin, how will you respond? Annie Zaidi's poem "Diaphragm", which will be published in the September 2010 issue of Cha, explores this topic, and the result is, as our guest editor put it, 'as taut as breath held'.

Bio: Annie Zaidi is the author of Known Turf: Bantering with Bandits and Other True Tales (Non-fiction/Tranquebar 2010) and Crush (Jaico 2006). Some poems have appeared in The Little Magazine, Desilit, First Proof: 2, Pratilipi, Indian Literature (Sahitya Akademi) and Mint. Her short fiction appeared in 21 Under 40 (Zubaan 2006), Verve, and The Raleigh Review. Her first play "Name, Place, Animal, Thing" was short-listed for The Hindu MetroPlus Playwright Award, 2009. She has been a journalist for a decade and has written for several newspapers and magazines including Frontline, Tehelka, Mid-Day and Deccan Herald.

• Read Annie Zaidi's "Diaphragm" in Cha.
• Who else is in Issue 12?

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