''Laburnum for My Head'' (2009) is the collection of eight short stories by Indian author

Temsüla Ao Temsüla Ao (25 October 1945 – 9 October 2022) was a Naga poet, fiction writer, and ethnographer from India. She was a Professor of English at North Eastern Hill University (NEHU) from where she retired in 2010. She served as the Director of ...

. The stories are about the lives of people from the vibrant and troubled region of

Nagaland Nagaland () is a landlocked state in the northeastern region of India. It is bordered by the Indian states of Arunachal Pradesh to the north, Assam to the west, Manipur to the south and the Sagaing Region of Myanmar to the east. Its capital cit ...

northeast India , native_name_lang = mni , settlement_type = , image_skyline = , image_alt = , image_caption = , motto = , image_map = Northeast india.png , ...

. The collection brought its author the 2013

Sahitya Akademi Award The Sahitya Akademi Award is a literary honour in India, which the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, annually confers on writers of the most outstanding books of literary merit published in any of the 22 languages of the ...

for English, conferred by the

Sahitya Akademi The Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, is an organisation dedicated to the promotion of literature in the languages of India. Founded on 12 March 1954, it is supported by, though independent of, the Indian government. Its of ...

, India's National Academy of Letters.

Stories

*Laburnum For My Head. A strange obsession of a woman for laburnum flowers. Unable to successfully grow a laburnum plant on her garden during her lifetime, she wants to have one over her grave. *Death of a Hunter. A brave hunter, Imchanok, totters when the ghost of his prey haunts him, till he offers it a tuft of his hair as a prayer for forgiveness. *The Boy Who Sold an Airfield. Pokenmong, the servant boy, by dint of his wit, sells an airfield to unsuspecting villagers. *The Letter. A letter found on a dead insurgent blurs the boundaries between him and an innocent villager, both struggling to make ends meet. *Three Women. A woman's terrible secret comes full circle, changing her daughter's and granddaughter's lives as well as her own. *A Simple Question. An illiterate village woman's simple question rattles an army officer and forces him to set her husband free. *Sonny. A young girl loses her lover in his fight for the motherland, leaving her a frightful legacy. *Flight. A caterpillar finds wings.

Reception

The collection received generally favorable reviews. Writing for
Biblio: A Review of Books
', Anusua Mukherjee compares the voice of the narrator to that "of an elderly village woman telling the tales, who has been there and seen it all, and in the wisdom born of endurance, can smoothen the jagged edges of experience in the rich texture of the tapestry that is the stories she weaves." On a critical note, Mukherjee also goes on to say that the dry writing style which is the strength of Ao's poetry, "parches the prose, making it too flat at times." However, writing for ''

Business Standard ''Business Standard'' is an Indian English-language daily edition newspaper published by Business Standard Private Limited, also available in Hindi. Founded in 1975, the newspaper covers the Indian economy, infrastructure, international busin ...

'', Vineeta Rai suggests that "the simplicity of the language hides the complexity of emotions and themes she has written about, and the stories linger on long after the pages have been turned and the book closed."

Awards

* Sahitya Akademi Award for English - December, 2013

References

External links

''The Sunday Tribune'' review of ''Laburnum For My Head''
* Sikhamoni Gogoi
"An Ecofeminist Reading of Temsula Ao’s ''Laburnum for My Head''"

The Criterion: An International Journal in English
' (March 2012). {{Sahitya Akademi Award for English, state=collapsed 2009 short story collections Sahitya Akademi Award-winning works Indian short story collections