August fiction: A new Geetanjali Shree novel and five more recently published books for this month

Our City That Year, Geetanjali Shree, translated from the Hindi by Daisy Rockwell

A city teeters on the edge of chaos. A society lies fractured along fault lines of faith and ideology. A playground becomes a battleground. A looming silence grips the public.

Against this backdrop, Shruti, a writer paralysed by the weight of events, tries to find her words, while Sharad and Hanif, academics whose voices are drowned out by extremism, find themselves caught between clichés and government slogans. And there's Daddu, Sharad's father, a beacon of hope in the growing darkness. As they each grapple with thoughts of speaking the unspeakable, an unnamed narrator takes on the urgent task of bearing witness.

A Bouquet of Dead Flowers: Stories, Swadesh Deepak, translated from the Hindi by Jerry Pinto, Pratik Kanjilal, Nirupama Dutt and Sukant Deepak

Among the most uncompromising of modern Hindi prose writers, Swadesh Deepak’s unsettling stories have a profound ability to offer a searing critique of society, of bureaucracy, but also to upend the usual masculine stereotypes found in much literature of our time.

The little boy in “Hunger” who scrounges for leftovers by the station is pleasantly confused by the godown guards’ generosity one day when his sister tags along. The Prime Minister’s imminent visit to...

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