Jungle Without Water
Sreedhevi Iyer
Gazebo Books: 2018
.

Under Your Wings
Tiffany Tsao
Viking: 2018
.

apple and knife (translated by Stephen J Epstein)
Intan Paramaditha
Brow Books: 2018
.

Sreedhevi Iyer’s collection of short stories, Jungle Without Water, starts and ends in Brisbane. In the opening story, an Indian student called Jogi has trouble completing an urgent task for his mother: “Will you do the Japji Sahib prayer with a Baba for your father? Your prayers always work. Since you were little.”

And in the book’s final story, an eight-year-old girl, Kavita, recounts a trip to Brisbane with her father, Ratnam. She scrutinises Ratnam’s nostalgia-tinged storytelling: “Pa talks, I listen. That’s how it has been since Ma left.” They stay in the suburb of Indooroopilly with Ratnam’s old university friend, Shekar, whom Ratnam persists in calling Double S, his old nickname. The visit is painfully awkward. Only after father and daughter contrive to leave early, to their host’s mild demurring but plain relief, does Ratnam explain to Kavita the meaning of the nickname Double S.

These two stories are Australian stories just as much as, say, a tale about a ballet-dancing kangaroo. They are about people moving through an unfamiliar city and enduring unfamiliar suburban habits. Iyer does not anchor either story in mainstream Australia — there’s no need — and white Australian characters appear only in the background. But the monolingual and monocultural predisposition of Australia sits heavily, like a day of high humidity.

• Tags: Intan Paramaditha, Issue 15, Patrick Allington, Sreedhevi Iyer, Tiffany Tsao