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ISSUE 15: CONTRIBUTORS
Rimi B. Chatterjee, Nicole Tanquary, Soham Guha, David Heckman, Neelu Singh, Carlos Norcia, Michael Janairo, Sonya Taaffe, Holly Lyn Walrath, Marco Raimondo, Sandi Leibowitz, David Memmott, Anne Carly Abad, Prashanth Gopalan, Sami Ahmad Khan, Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad & Ishita Singh
Cover: Original sculpture “Othello” by Cathleen Klibanoff. Background: Bailey’s Beach, Newport, R.I. by Childe Hassam, 1901.
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Lopamudra’s Wedding
Many years ago, when the earth was still very young and her every toss and turn frightened mortals, propelling them to create a pantheon of omnipresent gods, there was a great learned yogi-alchemist named Agastya. He was convinced that there was a mysterious pattern,...
Dessert Heads
In a mega-fat future not too far from now, cake is like gold and it’s a currency that can take you places. In the inevitable fringe, life imitates good order, but Mason Well is a forgotten promise where life isn’t good… not one little bit. Every day, to Jon’s simple...
Life and Death on the Rocks
1. The day I met Life, I was sharpening my scythe She skipped to me, silver hair streaming behind her in ribbons “Who are you?” “Death,” I replied “But you can call me Grim” Blue eyes brightened raspberry lips, a smile “Nice to meet you, Grim” And she placed her hands...
Editorial: An Interlude
Purchase this issue: Gumroad | Amazon The 10th issue of Mithila Review comes to you after a long interlude. The word “interlude,” however, doesn’t quite do justice to the time between our last issue and this one. “Interlude” suggests a notion of passiveness — the idea...
Shoegaze + Suburbia
Slowly there’s a scene that celebrates itself, holds high office of shame, shoplifts grace from grocery stores and tomorrow’s tin can mess. It’s a scene standing in pride, unfazed by the murmuring strong-styled neighbourhood believed to be energized out of...
The Carpet Makers by Andreas Eschbach
In an introduction to the 1976 edition of The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K Le Guin wrote that the genre of science fiction was descriptive, not predictive. A novelist, knowingly or unknowingly, invents elaborate circumstantial lies to describe certain aspects of...
The Glass-Toothed Wolf
When it rained, only dust fell from the sky. The preformed people were out on the streets, fighting their little wars, but not much else moved under the suffocating heat. Baladrick needed to escape the city, but all the trains had been stopped, or not exactly stopped,...
I, Lilli Man
They call me Lilli Man. They call me other names too. Lilli Butcher, for example. Ever since I started the farm they began baptising me ‘Lilliputian.’ Everything was going fine… Until the day the policeman came. The allegation was pure hogwash. He said I had been...
Crisis
1. Arrival Nicholas landed at Vaptsarov Airport on a cold March dawn, three weeks before the country collapsed. With only a shoulder bag for luggage in which he carried his laptop, passport, and a guilty-pleasure romance paperback with the front cover stripped, he...
Sita’s Descent
Sita fills the sky, a woman clothed with the Sun. I watch as she descends through the atmosphere, bringing the light of day to the night sky to prove to the world her ordeal by fire. Agni-pariksha. I imagine her above the sea of fire, poised to dive. What did she...
A Time Called L’apatia
“Let me tell you a story.” The twelve-year-old girl looked across the room in confusion. Her grandmother was at it again; talking weird. “What?” the girl asked, trying to hide her annoyance. After all, she’d been waiting for a movie to come on; the kids in school had...
Why another WOC Special?
"Narrative is frightening and staggeringly powerful, and those who control the narrative control what the world sees." – Cassandra Khaw Growing up in the UK as an immigrant and a POC during the noughties, your cultural references for speculative arts were very limited...
The Universal Library by Kurd Lasswitz
Translated from the German by Erik Born Publication Note As far as we are aware, the source for this translation is in the public domain, since the text was originally published in Germany in 1904 and the author passed away in 1910. Translator’s Preface Kurd...
Stories We Carry On The Back Of The Night
Sam’s father tells him bedtime stories about the people by the lake. Or, better to call them one bedtime story, repeated so often, it takes a different shape each time, a shadow puppet morphing in the penumbra of a flashlight. Sam’s father calls it his earliest...
Excerpts: Half of What I Say
“Who’s the most beautiful woman of all?” asked Padma, with satisfaction. He smiled. He was glad to be her truth-telling mirror. He was glad Padma had pressured him to attend the 10th Annual IAPTA Fashion Show party. He was glad Eshwar Pillai was in town. He was glad...