Editor’s Choice Award: The Daughter that Bleeds

Proud to announce that The Daughter That Bleeds, a short story I wrote, that has been published in The Best Asian Speculative Fiction 2018, has been awarded the Editor’s Choice Award. 

All of 2018, as I prepared The Rakta Queen for publishing and moved countries, I’ve been busy typing away hilarious, maddeningly weird feminist speculative fiction stories. The Daughter That Bleeds was one of them and it was a glad moment for me when it got selected for this prestigious anthology. 

About the anthology

The anthology has been published by Singapore-based Kitaab and comes with over 40 stories from 16 countries in Asia.  

The Best Asian Speculative Fiction

Editors: Rajat Chaudhuri & Zafar Anjum (Series Editor)
Format: Paperback (Ebook not available yet)
Imprint: Kitaab
Published: 2018
Subject: Fiction/Short Stories
ISBN: 978-981-11-8528-1
Buy at Kitaab Store (for Singapore & global deliveries)
Buy here for deliveries in India

Between singing asteroid stations with a secret, and chilling visions of dystopia, between mad sorcerers with an agenda and time-travelling phantoms perplexed by the rules of afterlife, this volume of stories offers a unique sampling of flavours from the infinite breadth of the Asian imagination. If science fiction, horror, and fantasy are the genres you swear by, but miss Asian voices and settings, then this anthology is your oyster. Call these stories speculative, sff, or by any other name, they are really tales well told, and they always take off at a tangent from the big, blustering ‘real’. Here the imaginative spirit is aflame, casting a rich lovely light. Tales from sixteen countries of Asia plus the diasporas. Freshly minted, told by seasoned writers and new talent—a smörgåsbord of Asia’s finest speculative imagination.

Excerpt: The Daughter That Bleeds

He had to sell his daughter today. If that didn’t happen, he would have to go back, take fresh blood samples, apply again to the State Auction Bank and wait.Or worse, sell his daughter in the black market, for the money.

“Never,”he whispered. “My blood’s real. My daughter is bleeding for real.” Unlike thatSardar Singh and those geriatric peddlers. Bystanders, jobless, coming to the marketplace day in and day out dragging their barren daughters, forcing them to try surgical methods or potions or medicines in a desperate need to make them fertile. Empty-pocketed, infertile idiots! They just couldn’t afford it. Oh yes, he was going to make a sale today, no matter how.

Buy at Kitaab Store (for Singapore & global deliveries)
Buy here for deliveries in India