The Big Book of Kashmiri Literature: Poems, Songs, Plays, Stories is an anthology of Kashmiri poetry, folk songs, plays, and stories written by Onaiza Drabu, an anthropologist, writer, and translator.Onaiza has also authored ‘Legend of Himal and Nagrai: Greatest Kashmiri Folk Tales’ and ‘Vaeliwe Gaenzravaw - Kashmiri Counting Book’.As an anthropologist, the author approaches the book by decoding Kashmiri literature through anthropology and folklore.

The Big Book of Kashmiri Literature: Poems, Songs, Plays, Stories, which runs to 664 pages, is deeply informed by Kashmir’s oral traditions and folklore, Kashmir’s language, culture, and meaning-making.The book illustrates that Kashmiri literature lives in the voice of the grandmother, in the wanwun sung at a Kashmiri wedding, in the Ladishah that mocked authority, in the vaakh remembered without knowing who composed it, in the lullaby that survived even when its meanings began to fade.The book illustrates that Kashmir’s oral traditions have transferred from generation to generation despite the lack of protective institutions, the absence of archives, or even literacy.

To me, the book is more important than its title suggests.The publisher, Penguin........

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