The Grand Arcade

Vinta Ramani's debut fiction collection is a kaleidoscopic jolt to the senses. A foreign talent barricades himself in his rented condo as he gradually loses his grip on reality. A wife explores a series of affairs in order to exert control over her sexual autonomy. A retiree descends into silence when he refuses to wear a hearing aid. An artist takes a road trip to unearth why the mores of her community have led to her sexually stunted adulthood. These stories unearth the truths often hidden by polite society.

“Provocative, urgently lyrical, vividly lucid and absolutely unforgettable, Vinita Ramani's debut collection transports us into subversive, sensual, previously unremarked spaces, both external and internal, with thrilling lapidary fierceness and an incisive intelligence that connects the Indian vedas with case briefings, and the longings of a Cambodian refugee with rapturous female desire. Every human tastes different, she writes, and she might well be describing her own method of illuminating the architecture and anxieties of Singapore while delving into the delirious and exquisite depths of being a woman so startlingly that normative narrative is forever disrupted. Ramani's prose blazes with a dazzling, erotic frankness and pulsating, cosmopolitan intelligence, making The Grand Arcade a triumph of the embodied imagination.”
—Dr Ravi Shankar, multi-award-winning author of Correctional