In sparkling, clear prose, understated yet unflinching, Open Season probes deep into the fissures of caste, class, religion, and gender in our world. Located mostly in India and Canada, the stories describe a world of global flows where a woman returns to India after her two daughters are killed in a school shooting in the US; in the title story a Muslim young man is lynched in an Indian town on the false charges that his fridge contains beef; "Light as a Butterfly" draws our attention to the ongoing degradation of the environment; in "All Cut Up," set in a suburb of Toronto, seven-year-old Zoya is heroically protected by her mother Zarina from her community's demand that she be circumcised. The stories speak of a world familiar and yet all too elusive, of a gentler, mellower, more hopeful time; they explore the charms and constraints of life in a small town and question assumptions and beliefs and dreams.

Shaukat Ajmeri's profile page

Shaukat Ajmeri is the author of the novel Keepers of the Faith. Born and educated in India, he now lives on the lands and territories of the Mississauga of the Credit and other Indigenous peoples in Ontario, Canada.

"In sparkling, clear prose, understated yet unflinching, Open Season probes deep into the fissures of caste, class, religion, and gender in our world. With references that range from the classical poets Ghalib, Meer, and Rumi to Hardy Boys, Dickens, and Shakespeare, Open Season, like many Canadian diasporic writings, expands the boundaries of Canadian literature, tearing down the high fences to let the new realities of the globalized world in." --Arun Prabha Mukherjee, Professor Emerita, York University

"Intensely atmospheric, Shaukat Ajmeri's stories transport you easily to times and places. You hear the voice of each character speaking, while the words evoke the setting in your mind. These are stories that take us to places which might otherwise be inaccessible." --Tehmina Khan, author of Things She Could Never Have

"'The day my school principal caned me, because my hair was not cut short enough, my grandmother died.' The moment you read this sentence you know that you are in the company of a genuine fiction writer. The stories of Shaukat Ajmeri are endearing in their simplicity, and for their love of life and people. They make you aware that it is our relationships which give us our humanity." --Apoorvanand, Professor, Hindi Department, University of Delhi

"Open Season secures Ajmeri's importance in the firmament of diaspora writing, as a straightforward but powerful storyteller, who has inherited O Henry's love for the telling twist, but who situates his narratives in multitudes of contexts and perspectives befitting the complexity of his motherland." --Kiran Bhat, author of We of the Forsaken World