I adore flash fiction for its potential of telling a story in only few lines. Although I don´t read enough, and review even less, this genre of fiction has a potential I wish to spend more time exploring. Definitely, it is about time to upgrade my bibliography in this respect as soon as possible.
In addition to this, I read even less books by authors from India. Another shameful confession. Despite that I have plenty of language classes students, consulting clients and friends from India, particularly in the last month, my overall knowledge of the literature in India is extremely limited. And this applies, unfortunately, also to the enormous linguistic heritage of the country, with only one regional language - Telugu - being spoken but at least the same population like Germany´s.
Thus, I approach Orenda - ´a mystical force in all creatures allowing the strength to make a change individually and at the societal level´ - by Shalaka Kulkami with a lot of curiosity and interest. Inspired by travels, everyday interactions, relationships and parental worries, the story included in the collection may not be all the same, but do have each a grain of human life. The flash of the individual stories unfolds in a life movie entering the life and souls of so many diverse and different people.
Ingeniously, each story is an introduced by a keyword, in various Indian regional languages, as well as in Slovenian, Hebrew, German etc. An appealing call for reading also for the language nerds and lovers - like this writer.
Orenda is all one can wish in terms of flash fiction, as an experimental writing project, but also as a source of diversity. My appetite for even more - and more similar experiments is only getting bigger.
Rating: 3.5 stars
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