Seventeen

A brother and sister visit the unique crater lake that their dead, estranged mother had written to them about in her letters. A middle-class executive’s orderly life turns upside down when his employer holds back his pay cheque without explanation. The employees of a forgotten outpost in a sun-baked town threaten mass suicide because they have no hope of survival. 17 is a collection of short stories from Anita Agnihotri’s vast oeuvre. By turn, intense, bitter, angry, sad and torn apart by conflict, the stories bring out different faces of human hardship, and explore a country that is still unknown to many. Set in metros and villages, in small-town India and international suburbia, Agnihotri’s stories run the gamut of experiences both everyday and extraordinary. This is literary craftsmanship at its best.