May fiction: Six new novels and short story collections to cool down with in summer

All information sourced from publishers.

Songs Our Bodies Sing, Lindsay Pereira

A heartbroken father in London turns to the Beatles to make sense of what he has lost. An antique dealer in Bombay rejects jingoism in favour of racism. Two immigrants in Toronto look for ways of belonging with a local rock band. And, in Paris, a tourist rejects long-held ideas about trust.

The East and West have clashed in innumerable ways since each first acknowledged the existence of the other. The stories of Songs Our Bodies Sing are set at these points of intersection. What they reveal are commonalities rather than differences, with protagonists on opposite sides of an imaginary divide, trapped in boxes of their own making.

My Name is Jasmine, Shashi Warrier

A woman wakes up confused in Malkangiri District Hospital in Odisha. When a nurse wants to know her name, she blacks out in terror at the realisation that she has no idea who she is.

The next time she wakes up, the terror returns, but she wills herself to look at her world more rationally. She discovers she’s suffered a head injury and lost some of her memories in the aftermath. When the police come, she finds out that she knows more about guns and violence than any common citizen...

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