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Preti Taneja
PRETI TANEJA is a writer and activist, and Professor of World Literature and Creative Writing at Newcastle University, UK. Her novel WE THAT ARE YOUNG (Galley Beggar Press) won the UK’s Desmond Elliott Prize, and was listed for awards including the Folio Prize, Republic of Consciousness Prize (UK), the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize (India) and Europe’s premier award for a work of world literature, the Prix Jan Michalski. It has been translated into several languages and is published in the USA by AA Knopf. Her new book, AFTERMATH on the language of trauma, terror, prison and abolition is part of the Undelivered Lecturers series from Transit Books USA, and will be published in the UK by And Other Stories in April 2022.


Articles Available Online


Order, Order

Essay

December 2021

Preti Taneja

Essay

December 2021

‘INQUESTS INTO THE DEATHS ARISING FROM THE FISHMONGERS’ HALL AND LONDON BRIDGE TERROR ATTACK CASE MANAGEMENT’1   with asides, insertions, questions and other patterns...

Fiction

Issue No. 30

HOTEL STATIONARY (AND THIS IS THAT)

Preti Taneja

Fiction

Issue No. 30

And the night John Berger died, I, Maria, pale shadow, the youngest sister of Sabine, was walking the city....

At Kabul airport, a man I mistook for a foreigner   A security guard, red-haired with blue eyes and pale skin, patting me down I couldn’t help but look him directly in the face And he returned the compliment before joking with his colleagues in Dari He looked just like a guy who sells fashion-wear on Lamb’s Conduit When – I wondered – when in the archeologies of all the civilisations that have passed through these mountains and deserts was he deposited here? I thought he was Irish   Waiting at the gate with sun whiting out the hazy mountainous horizon and a beautiful greenhouse of a morning Two helicopters fly across the silhouetted, flattened scene Always in twos Humming like insects – of course – across the sky Then two more And another pair…and another Five pairs in all They pass from left to right in the two-dimensional morning, from east to west was it? I am not sure Perhaps north to south   And then they return, arcing back in a line like a scorpion’s tail, descending one after the other to land like a stairway or a ski-lift Afterwards three aircraft, flashing in like birds, swooping to land almost together, without a second thought   We wind up above Kabul in a corkscrew   *   In Herat we land hard and fast after a steep turn and a roll from side to side, wing to wing A drone under concave shelter Like a toy, in pale grey, or grey white As we pass out it departs, trailing electronically through the sky   The hum of activity   A long, straight road, lined with tall pines For some reason surprised that the Russians (or the British) didn’t raze them   The office like a summerhouse, rose bushes and red carpets, and warm, sky-blue air An elaborate (but probably cheap) golden mirror above a sink on the first-floor central landing, a touch of grand decay   The security situation – like everywhere – is deteriorating in the province For civilians and aid workers, for police and security Threats abound The Taliban and others are rich with poppy harvests, busy gaining influence from a

Contributor

February 2020

Preti Taneja

Contributor

February 2020

PRETI TANEJA is a writer and activist, and Professor of World Literature and Creative Writing at Newcastle University, UK. Her...

In conversation: Preti Taneja and Gina Apostol

Feature

February 2020

Gina Apostol

Preti Taneja

Feature

February 2020

Adelaide, Writers Week, March 2019. It was 41 degrees, and it was the furthest I have ever flown. I was standing at the fringes...

READ NEXT

feature

February 2015

A Closer Joan

Shawn Wen

feature

February 2015

Here are a few of the Joans I know. The girl who arrives at Port Authority Bus Terminal in...

Interview

April 2012

Interview with Grant Gee

Evan Harris

Interview

April 2012

As the theatre is relit and the credits roll on Grant Gee’s latest film, Patience (After Sebald), an essay on...

feature

June 2015

Uneasy Lies the Head

William Watkin

feature

June 2015

Last October I was standing in my kitchen, waiting for espresso to trickle from the spout of our imposing...

 

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