Submissions

The Little Review welcomes articles on any aspect of culture – from book reviews to thoughts on a recent film or exhibition – but we are particularly interested in articles on European or international culture in Dublin. Articles should generally be between 500 and 1000 words. If you have an idea about an article, please contact the editor by email first, at littlerevieweditor@gmail.com.

1 Response to Submissions

  1. Madhuranthakam Narendra says:
    August 20, 2011 at 8:11 am

    Sir,
    May i submit my novel for serializing in The Little Review.
    i herewith attach a brief synopsis of the novel.

    MANDWELL
    ( WHAT IS MY NAME?)
    — MADHURANTHAKAM NARENDRA
    (A Satire on the dehumanization of the institutions in a thickly populated country)

    A group of scholars having PhD degrees and employed in sundry establishments elsewhere come to Mandwell on the invitation of the Director of The Institute of Movement of the city to value scripts of an examination conducted to select candidates to fill vacancies in one of its branches. Some of them who don’t feel like undergoing that drudgery leave Mandwell where as the others find it an opportunity to earn some extra income. When the Director finds out that the number of scripts they can value after a day was very negligible, he waives all the rules and asks them to value as many as they can and even extends the working hours also. Then the examiners invite assistants from their places to attend to their day to day activities and focus their attention on valuation. They invent many easy methods to value more scripts and in the ensuing mad rush, they forget all fundamental things including their names.
    The assistants, who come to Mandwell only to assist the examiners, soon establish a novel club where they participate in the gambling based on the number of scripts corrected by their respective examiners. They declare themselves as wardens and call their examiners as wards. They become so engrossed in their gambling that they forget the identity of their wards and they count only the number of scripts they value.
    The situation becomes more confusing when the identities of two examiners get changed and their wardens get worried as their wards don’t value as per their expectations. One of the wardens tortures his ward when he gets annoyed by his indifference. He invites one of his acquaintances from his place to act as his assistant after the death of the examiner. The new assistant, a notorious schemer, simply exploits the situation.
    The curtain unfolds on the whole drama when the director declares that the valuation has to be rounded off quite abruptly. But none could identify the corpse found in the edifices of spot-valuation. When the photograph of the corpse is printed in the news paper every one of them gazes at the image in the mirror to verify whether the corpse is that of one self or not.
    D.S.Rao, Former editor, Indian literature, Journal of Sahitya Akademi:
    Mandwell is almost Swiftian. I liked, in particular, the line: ‘But the scripts are designed in such a way that a person who knows only four alphabets A, B, C and D can easily value.’
    Dr.Sarath Babu, Critic:
    The novelette is really good and absorbing.
    The burlesque is very powerful.
    The story haunts the reader as Kafka’s the Castle. Money is the strongest alienating and dehumanizing agent. In their mad scramble, people forget their own identity and become inhuman to their blood relations and friends and finally to themselves. Besides the humor, the reader feels obsessed with the horror and havoc caused by our foolish craze for money. The language is simple and suitable. Though it is the first attempt, it betrays professionalism. This is definitely a great step toward the great future success as an Indian novelist in English.

    Yours Sincerely,

    madhuranthakam narendra

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