Avinuo Kire Libri

Set against a backdrop of folk fantasy, the story follows eleven-year-old Vime as she navigates her grief after her mother's death. Seeking solace, she discovers a magical tree that serves as a portal between the human and spirit worlds. Guided by Tei, a forest spirit, Vime embarks on a journey through these realms, confronting her fears and the possibility of her father remarrying. As she learns to embrace her loss, she also encounters various spirits, uncovering the complexities of grief and the importance of letting go.

In this collection of short stories, Avinuo Kire tells powerful tales of women overcoming violence and repression. In The Power to Forgive, many of the stories are told against the backdrop of the struggle for Nagaland’s independence from India. Yet it is the finely drawn portraits of ordinary people that resonate most in this unusual collection.  Culled from folk and tribal traditions of Naga life, Kire’s collection takes us into a world where spirits converse with humans and where unsuspecting people are drawn into forces greater than themselves. Among others, we find a man dying quietly of cancer, a mother questioning her choice to give her a child a name she didn’t intend, and a survivor reflecting on the ways that a traumatic event has shaped nearly two decades of her life. A fresh voice from a region of India renowned for its writers, Kire offers a promising and moving debut.

Description Profoundly compassionate and a masterful storyteller, Avinuo Kire describes a world that is as breathtaking as it is shattering; where military occupation and magic co-exist. 'The Disturbance' holds three interconnected stories, set against the backdrop of the Indo-Naga conflict that began in the late 1940s and remains unresolved to this day. Told through the eyes of women from three succeeding generations of the same family, the stories recount how Naga people remained determined to hold on to normalcy even in the face of occupation, state torture, the tearing apart of families and racism. In 'New Tales from an Old World', everyday events in the mountains are infused with an element of the supernatural. Naga myths and folk legends slip effortlessly into tales of hard farm life, childhood terrors and adventures in the countryside, love and mourning. In these stories, hunters, predators, Tekhumevi (weretigers), secret potions, shadowy-demons called Kamvüpfhi, strange spirits and enchanted forests, find a place in contemporary Nagaland with remarkable ease. This volume, both a political declaration and a personal love-note to her land, establishes Avinuo Kire as a writer of formidable skill. The Last Light of Glory Days is an exquisite unravelling of the tired tropes that cast Nagaland as another undistinguishable piece in the 'Northeast'.