In Anushka Jasraj’s “Radio Story”, a woman reads her father’s last words, left behind on a paper that is still jammed into its place in a typewriter. Expressing his love for a woman who is not her mother, the note leaves behind more questions than answers. Attempting to make sense of it feels to her like looking for clues to an unknown puzzle…”futile, like the mute swan’s last song or like trying to find a name for nothingness.”
This feeling of being on uncertain ground, of something being askew but being unable to resolve it, is common to several of the short stories in Principles of Prediction. The stories were written over the course of nearly a decade – “Radio Story”, which won Jasraj the 2012 Asia Regional Commonwealth Short Story Prize, sits alongside another winner of the prize, “Drawing Lessons” (2017), as well as 11 other stories – which might explain the assuredness of this highly original debut. Jasraj is a brave, almost reckless…