Aruni Kashyap

Aruni Kashyap (Assamese:আৰুণি কাশ্যপ; born on June 9, 1984 ) is an Indian writer and translator who writes in Assamese and English. He is the author of The House With a Thousand Stories, a critically acclaimed novel that broke the long national silence in India about human rights violations in Assam, Northeast India.

The House With a Thousand Stories draws it power from a brutal and underreported chapter in India's history during the late nineties when hundreds of people in Northeast India were extra-judicially killed during an insurgency against Indian rule. These killings took place between 1998 – 2001 in Assam and came to be known as the Secret killings of Assam. For highlighting this shameful episode of human rights violation in independent India, the novel has been hailed as one of the most courageous works to emerge from India in recent years and praised for its "adept juggling of the personal with the political."

Biography
Aruni Kashyap is the son of Assamese novelist Dipti Dutta Das and critic and commentator Surjya Das. He grew up in Guwahati, the largest city in north-east India and studied at St. Stephen's College, Delhi. He is the English translator of the novel The Bronze Sword of Tengphakhri Tehsildar, originally written in Assamese by Indira Goswami. His first novel, The House with A Thousand Stories, published by Penguin India (June 2013). Along with fiction, he writes extensively on socio-political issues and his opinion based articles have appeared in The Guardian, UK, Open Democracy and Tehelka. His poems have appeared in Indian Literature (Sahitya Akademi), Postcolonial Text, The Daily Star (Bangladesh) and Muse India. He has also written essays, articles and short stories for Tehelka, The Assam Tribune, Sadin, Satsori, Dainik Janasadharan, etc. He is regarded as a strongly emerging young literary voice from the north-eastern part of India. His work published online and in print has been able to draw interest and critical acclaim.

The House with a Thousand Stories
It is 2002 and young Pablo, a city boy who has mostly lived a sheltered and privileged life in Guwahati, is visiting his ancestral village for his aunty's wedding. This is his second time in Mayong, in rural Assam, since 1998, when he had come for a few days to attend his father's best friend's funeral. As the wedding preparations gather pace, Pablo is amused as well as disturbed by squabbling aunts, dying grandmothers, cousins planning to elope for love and hysterical gossips. And on this heady theatre of tradition and modernity hovers the sinister shadow of insurgency and the army's brutal measures to quell militancy. In the days leading up to the wedding, which ends in an unspeakable tragedy, Pablo finds first love, discovers family intrigues and goes through an extraordinary rite of passage. Written with clinical precision, this gripping first novel announces the arrival of one of the most original voices from India's North-East.