Power to Forgive and Other Stories, The

Avinuo Kire’s is a fresh, young voice from Nagaland, in India’s northeast.

In ‘The Power to Forgive’, the title story of this strong collection, Avinuo Kire tells the moving story of a rape survivor who, at the threshold of a new life, looks back on the incident that has shaped nearly two decades of her life and wonders if she made the right choice.

Culled from folk and tribal traditions of Naga life, Kire’s stories take us into a world where spirits converse with humans, unsuspecting people are drawn into the movement for Naga independence, a man dies quietly of cancer, a mother wonders if she did the right thing in giving her child a name different from the one she intended…

While the long drawn-out conflict and militancy form the backdrop of many of the stories, it is the finely drawn portraits of ordinary people in Naga society that mark this unusual collection.