Publish Date
4 Sep, 2025
About This Book
‘By turns stark and wry, emotional and enlightening, Whistling in the Dark serves as more than just an academic addition to the canon of sub-continental queer studies.’—Verve ‘Not just a dry-as-dust series of interviews, these are real-life stories of real people, living all around us, yet feeling separate from the mainstream… This book gives them a voice.’—The Tribune The twenty-six interviewees in Whistling in the Dark represent a cross-section of India’s LGBTQI+ community—poets, artists, professors, students, activists, clerks and auto-rickshaw drivers; family men, gay couples, unmarried people and divorcees. The probing and incisive questions put to the respondents tease out narratives that go beyond the conventional and provide rare insight into the private lives of queer people in urban and small town India. Conducted at various times over more than two decades, the interviews show how little has changed despite legal victories for gay rights. Countless men remain trapped.....
About The Author
R. Raj Rao is regarded as a pioneer of gay literature in India and one of the country’s boldest and most subversive writers in English. He is the author of several novels, story collections and plays, including the iconic novel The Boyfriend, and the acclaimed collection of short stories One Day I Locked My Flat in Soul City. Rao taught Indian literature, LGBT literature and creative writing at the University of Pune for many years. Writer and editor Dibyajyoti Sarma has published three volumes of poetry, four books of translations, and two academic books, besides numerous short stories and articles in journals. His translation of five novellas by Indira Goswami was shortlisted for the Sahitya Akademi Award for Translation into English 2023.
Speaking Tiger
One of India's most acclaimed independent publishing companies.