Seahorse  (English, Hardcover, Janice Pariat)

Nem is a student of English literature at Delhi university. He drifts between classes, weed-hazy parties and the amorous complexities of campus life, until a chance encounter with an art historian steers him into a world of pleasure and artistic discovery. Nems life is irrevocably transformed. One day, without warning, his mentor disappears.

In the years that follow, Nem cocoons himself in South Delhi, writing for a chic cultural journal. When he is awarded a fellowship to London, a cryptic note plunges him into a search for the art historian-a search which turns into a reckoning with his past.

Retelling the myth of poseidon and his youthful male devotee pelops, seahorse transforms a simple coming-of-age story into an epic drama of loss, love and healing.

Awards and nominations for Janice Pariats boats on land

• Winner of the crossword book award for fiction 2013
• Winner of the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar 2013
• Long listed for the Frank OConnor short story award 2013
• Shortlisted for the Shakti Bhatt first book prize 2013
• Long listed for the Tata literature live first book award 2013

Praise for Janice Pariats boats on land

At almost her best, Pariat pulls off intelligent, effortlessly moving stories that are reminiscent of early Alice Munro, at her best, her quiet, particular voice is mesmerizing and entirely individual rich, evocative, satisfying storytelling. - Nilanjana Roy, business standard, New Delhi.

There is a sense of timelessness to this beautifully crafted selection of short stories which are almost faultless in their perfection. They deserve to be read over and over again. - Kankana Basu, The Hindu

Pariats voice is being heralded as one of the freshest of the decade and a literary force to be reckoned with. - Elle

Best fiction (Debut)-bookmarking 2012, DNA Mumbai

(B)eautifully written - Cosmopolitan

Marvellous the short story in Pariats hands borrows from storytelling-it is written familiarly, invokes a sense of shared culture and maintains a casual reliance on the existing legends of the land. The collection lingers on in the memory as much as for it is said as what is left unsaid. - Karishma Attari, Asian age

Many writers with an authentic voice on the region have made the cut in literary fiction - Mitra Phukan, Jahnavi Barua and Anjum Hasan to mention a few. Janice Pariat now joins this pantheon of excellence a superbly controlled style from a skilled pen. The reader leaves each story with reluctance-the shared pain and empathy remain with you long after you have turned the pages. Boats on land is quintessentially shillong, sketched by an insider. And that makes all the difference. - Suneetha Balakrishnan, business standard

In her first collection of short stories, Janice offers a breath of fresh air to the Indian book reading multitude. - Eclectic

Each tale deftly weaves political unrest with old world superstitions. - New on the bookshelf, Grazia

Theres something about Janice Pariats short stories that makes you want to linger, to return to particular lyrical descriptions of the north east, to set down the book and contemplate the point where folklore and reality intersect. Janice Pariats short stories meld myth and reality to lead the reader to a fresh understanding of an unknowable world. - Manjula Narayan, Hindustan Times

Janice Pariats collection of short stories exudes the myths and sorrows of north east. - Anshuman Chakraborty, India Today, New Delhi

Rewarding reading - Neeraj Priyadarshi, The Indian Express, New Delhi

A gem of a short story collection with a mastery that belies her debut author status. Theres a lot of poetic elegance in Pariats writing. Her words cast an ethereal spell. - Jemima Raman, millennium post, New Delhi

Ghosts, myths and mysteries commingle in this debut short story collection.

Her style is poetic and self-assured an ambitious and carefully-wrought book. - Supriya Nair, Mint, New Delhi

(W)onderful collection. Janice is a wonderful storyteller. She has a soft, nuanced voice, meditative in quality, which evocatively brings out Shillongs landscape and its people. - Lhendup G. Bhutia, Open

One of the most assured and stylish first books I have read in a long time. She writes with poise, fluency and lyricism-possessing an acutely strong sense of landscape and its history. Her fictional world is suffused at the same time with both realism and a quality of evanescence. Janice Pariat is a poets prose writer whose sentences are beautiful, often magical, fragile, quiet and precise. Boats on land is a finely nuanced debut. - Sudeep Sen, Outlook

Boats on land is a masterful rendition of the shimmery and fleeting, the haunting and disappearing, the complex and yet simple nature of a people perhaps lost, perhaps gone forever, but caught, only transiently, in the stories. - Bilbio

Janice Pariat deliciously underplays her settings and is adept at conveying both atmosphere and character. Even her ambiguities have a queer beauty. - Aishwarya Subramanian, Sunday Guardian

Fantastical stories from a faraway land. - Shutapa Paul, Sunday Guardian

With her debut book, Janice joins the company of Anjum Hasan and Siddhartha Deb - Indian writers who have written evocatively about Shillong in English. Where Janice differs from her forebears is in her folkloric style that depicts the marvelous real - Time Out

The beauty of Janices prose is a feast for the senses - People

Janices debut work is a revelation - Femina

Each story is a beautifully etched work of art the biggest challenge was to weave the wondrous with the mundane and Pariat does it with elan a gifted writer - Sunday Standard

Carefully wrought, sometimes striking. - Tehelka

About the Author

Janice Pariat is the author of boats on land-a collection of short stories, which won the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar and the Crossword Book Award for Fiction in 2013.

Her work-including cultural features, literary columns, art and book reviews-appears in a wide selection of newspapers and magazines. Nomad at heart, she lives between India and Italy.