Annie Zaidi
Known Turf

Genre: Non-fiction, Reportage
Pages: 280 pp.
Origin: India

ABOUT THE STORY: Annie Zaidi leads us to real undiscovered India: bandits, untouchables, religious conflits, crimes against the women, corruption, nationalitites. She has a particular skill for combining reportage and personal narrative, and we feel ourselves thrown inside the action, travelling old buses to far villages, lodging in miserable half star hotels, and meeting dangerous people because of her curiosity to understand her country in the deep. Whether it is analyzing banditry or developing a personal philosophy through the art of buying railways ticket in her country, Known Turf is a book that enages readers, surprising and schoking them with an unusual capacity of mixing microstories and greater socioeconomics issues. By the way, she tells about her particular love for tea...

“Annie Zaidi tells these stories from different parts of India with compassion, detail and importantly, with a gentle humor. Often, the very funny conversations, which so well capture the flavour of non-metro India, set you up for a tale of sudden brutality. This author sketches the personality of her subjects with warmth and sympathy and humour, but minus the cliches that often make such stories a heavy read. Above all it is the high quality of the story telling that grips you.” Palagummi Sainath.

“Annie Zaidi combines a reporter's on-the-spot perception and a writer's reflection and language to etch interesting, nuanced portraits of that half mythicalbeing in the throes of constant change: contemporary India” Tabish Khair.