Akil Kumarasamy

"Following the fractured origins and destines of two brothers named after demigods from the ancient epic the Mahabharata, we meet a family struggling with the reverberations of the past in their lives. These ten interlinked stories redraw the map of our world in surprising ways: following an act of violence, a baby girl is renamed after a Hindu goddess but raised as a Muslim; a lonely butcher from Angola finds solace in a family of refugees in New Jersey; a gentle entomologist, in Sri Lanka, discovers unexpected reserves of courage while searching for his missing son"--Amazon.com.

Half Gods

Fraser Simons

Wonderful prose, snappy read, mostly pulls off its goals. It can sometimes be a bit strange reading a short story that’s connected to others that has another narrative within the short story that speaks to mythological aspects, but not have that in others. I’m not sure if the variations on structure help it out in the long run. 

Part of me thinks something as simple as better layout might have elevated it. It’s got weird typography choices and heavy text structure that’s broken up by paragraphs rather than what you’d typically expect in a format. 

There’s a knack here for pulling off mundane moments with really economical and evocative prose that offsets that though. Overall, well worth a read regardless.

Half Gods

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