New Delhi, May 3 -- In the titular novella from Upamanyu Chatterjee's The Hush of the Uncaring Sea: Novellas 2018-2025, a racist sea captain from Apartheid-era South Africa is talking himself into abandoning an accidental stowaway aboard his ship-a naive Bengali young man named Abani who boarded in Calcutta (now Kolkata) to see a relative off and took a nap at the wrong time. The passage is vintage Chatterjee, not just because of the black humour but also because of the way he presents evil as a tragically banal phenomenon; the idea that given the right circumstances, any of us could nonchalantly carry out the worst atrocities. Like leaving a helpless young man in the middle of the ocean on a threadbare raft with meagre supplies.

"Kon-Ti...