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Stories
by Anjali Sachdeva
Book Reviewed by:For fans of Dave Eggers and Kelly Link, an exhilarating collection of stories that explores the mysterious, often dangerous forces that shape our lives - from censorship and terrorism to technology and online dating.
Spanning centuries, continents, and a diverse set of characters, these alluringly strange stories are united by each character's struggle with fate. In a secret, subterranean world beneath the prairie of the Old West, a homesteader risks her life in search of a safe haven. A workman in Andrew Carnegie's steel mills is turned into a medical oddity by the brutal power of the furnaces—and is eventually revitalized by his condition. A young woman created through genetic manipulation is destroyed by the same force that gave her life.
Anjali Sachdeva demonstrates a preternatural ability to laser in on our fears, our hopes, and our longings in order to point out intrinsic truths about society and humanity. "Killer of Kings" starts with John Milton writing Paradise Lost and questions the very nature of power - and the ability to see any hero as a tyrant with just a change in perspective. The title story presents a stirring imagining of the aftermath of the kidnapping of Nigerian schoolgirls by Boko Haram that leaves us pondering what is lost when we survive the unsurvivable. And in "Pleiades," genetically modified septuplets are struck by a mysterious illness that tests their parents' unwavering belief in the power of science.
Like many of us, the characters in this collection are in pursuit of the sublime, and find themselves looking not just to divinity but to science, nature, psychology, and industry, forgetting that their new, logical deities are no more trustworthy than the tempestuous gods of the past. Along the way, they walk the knife-edge between wonder and terror, salvation and destruction. All the Names They Used for God is an entrancing work of speculative fiction that heralds Anjali Sachdeva as an invigorating, incomparable new voice.
Deftly written and sensitively observed, All the Names They Used for God is as wise as it is thought-provoking. The real twist in Sachdeva's collection isn't that her stories delve in weirdness, but that they beautifully reveal how the simple act of being human is its own kind of magic...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by Cynthia C. Scott).
In "The Killer of Kings," the short story in Anjali Sachdeva's collection All the Names They Used for God, John Milton (1608-1674), secluded in the English countryside after being charged and fined for publishing a tract that contemplated regicide, writes his epic poem
Paradise Lost with the help of a muse, an angel the blind poet can only see in his mind. The idea of Milton being inspired by a literal angel may seem like a literary conceit, but there is actual basis for this.
Born into a middle class family, Milton studied at St Paul's School in London until 1625 when he enrolled at Christ's College Cambridge. It appears that he initially planned to study for the priesthood but changed his direction, possibly after a conflict with one ...
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Life is the garment we continually alter, but which never seems to fit.
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Chris Offutt, author of My Father, the Pornographer and Kentucky Straight: Stories
With this book Anjali Sachdeva moves literature forward a notch, and moves the short story form a full revolution. Yes, it's that good - fresh, original, and moving. The prose is gorgeous and the characters still linger with me. I love this book.
