Street Singers of Lucknow & Other Stories

This fascinating collection of short stories highlights the innovative genius of this iconoclastic writer as she moves from realism to the fabular and from history to time-travel. In the title story woven with social satire and melodrama an itinerant entertainer becomes a well-known singer eventually coming back to her Lucknow roots in a subdued melancholy ending. A cast of characters entertain themselves with gossip and adultery in the lush tranquility of the tea gardens of East Bengal. At the centre is a mercurial identity-changing adventuress one who often appears in Hyder’s fiction. Another is the memorable Eurasian Catherine Bolton who escapes her roots to achieve social success. This versatile writer takes imaginative flight in unusual stories spanning decades or even centuries. Her arsenal of techniques—pastiche satire memoir collage—takes us to the place most important to her the human heart in all its varied seasons.