Goa, Nov. 1 -- Vivek Menezes

The Bitter Fruit Tree and Other Stories by Prakash Parienkar is an excellent addition to our burgeoning shelf of first-rate Konkani literature in English translation, and an invaluable expansion of the literary-cultural imagination of Goa far "off the grid" into the Sattari forests, where the Mhadei powers unpredictably down from the Western Ghats towards the Arabian Sea. This nicely-produced new volume from Niyogi Books derives mostly from the veteran versatile writer and widely respected Goa University professor's debut collection Varsal - it won the 2023 Sahitya Akademi award - and it has been quickly followed by Igadi Bigadi Tigadi Tha, another wonderful work by Parienkar now available in English and Hind...