Book Launch: Circus Folk and Village Freaks
You are invited for an hour-long devised performance, with live music, movement, readings and drama. The aim is to create an immersive, experimental experience that evokes the setting of the book ‘Circus Folk and Village Freaks’ by Aparna Upadhyaya Sanyal, in a multi-dimensional way. The ensemble has a singer, dancer and live musician apart from Rajat Kapoor, Vinay Pathak and Jim Sarbh.
· At 6:30 pm sharp
· The book will be launched by Sanjna Kapoor
· RSVP at info@g5a.org subject to confirmation
· The book launch will be followed by cocktails at PORT, the restaurant at G5A
· There is valet service available for this program
· Strictly no late entry into the Black Box
About the Book:
Meet the beautiful people of the Circus, and the freaks who live in the Village next to them. Mangled, jangled, misunderstood, all find place in the rich tapestry of this book.
Siamese twins separate to lose half a heart each, and find snake-man and tiger-taming lovers. A man bitten by a crocodile becomes a God, and a Devadasi woos the entire countryside with her culinary artistry.
Fates intertwined lead sometimes to tragedy, sometimes happy summits of fame. A clown finds his place in Hollywood and mute animals break unspeakable chains. A twisted man falls in love with a mirror and a white man is unmade by the Indian sun.
In this book are tales for every season and every reason. Tales of human depravity that take innocent lives, and of a murderers’ insanity that follows, a fitting revenge by nature, red in tooth and claw.
These stories are told in the form of narrative poems in rhyming couplets.
Look inside and you will find, you have been to this Village. Surely, you have been to this Circus too.
What people are saying:
“Aparna Sanyal Upadhyaya is one of those rare people who are just as funny on the page and in a poem as they are in person. I laughed aloud many times reading about the shenanigans in these charming and quirky twisted tales.”
~ Chandrahas Chaudhary, Author of Arzee the Dwarf and Clouds.
Sanyal explores the absurd and the bizarre with witty undertones through tales of transmogrification of men to monsters, animals to women, speaking truths of various lives and their travesties. A texture of swift worldly-wisdom underscores the focus on freaks, but often leaves an invisible message of a reverse lens on the rest of the world.
~ Rochelle Potkar, poet and Author
About the Author:
Aparna Upadhyaya Sanyal holds an MA from Kings College, London. She is a recipient of the 14th Beullah Rose Poetry Prize by Smartish Pace. She was shortlisted for the Third Coast Fiction Prize, 2018. She is featured on the Masthead of the Songs of Eretz Poetry Review as a Frequent Contributor. A popular Spoken Word poet, she performs at events across venues in India. Her page poetry is featured in reputed international literary journals such as Smartish Pace, Dunes Review, Typehouse Literary Review, SOFTBLOW, Broad River Review, Gyroscope Review and many more. Her poetry will be anthologised in a collection alongside the work of renowned poets such as Gulzar and Piyush Mishra in 2019.
She lives with her 4-year-old son, husband and two dog babies in Pune, India.
Find links to her work here:
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