Inverse Journal

Rounak Bhat’s translation of Bansi Nirdosh’s “Yotamath Naal Wotum Damanas Tal” (translated as “The Clerk of the First Day”) brings forth a Kashmiri tale that is as deceptively uncomplicated as it is devastating. inversejournal.com/fiction/the-cl…

Laila Brahmbhatt presents verses that inhabit longing and erasure while gathering the half-alive and half-buried fragments of a poetic self that persists through the power of speech and expression. inversejournal.com/poetry/learn-t…

Khawar Khan Achakzai problematizes the historical figure of Sikandar Shahmiri—notoriously known as Sikandar Butshikan, “the idol breaker”—by engaging with a variety of historical texts, previously unaccessed documentary and archaeological evidence. inversejournal.com/2026/04/05/bey…

Saadia Peerzada presents a poem that trails behind the slow passage of the years that are shaped by absence, memory, and quiet and subtle endurance. inversejournal.com/2026/03/08/rui…

We are proud to present an excerpt from Maryam & Son (Context/Westland, 2026), Mirza Waheed’s latest novel that traces the journey of struggle of a mother who seeks answers for the disappearance of her son, Dilawar. inversejournal.com/2026/03/08/but…

R.F. Kuang’s Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution London: HarperVoyager 2022 ISBN: 970-0-00-850181-5, £16.99 (HB) inversejournal.com/2026/02/27/the…

Huzia Rais examines the manner in which Western psychiatric frameworks—particularly those dealing with care for PTSD—do not work properly because they struggle to take into account the lived realities of Kashmiris. inversejournal.com/2026/02/22/bey…

"The contributors to this collection shine an intimate spotlight on those who are driven from their homes by conflict and forced into exile by authoritarian regimes." What We Brought with Us: Things of Exile and Migration (Transcript,2024) via BY-NC-ND 4.0 inversejournal.com/2026/02/21/exi…

We are proud to present nine poems by Aranya Padil, selected from his recent collection titled, The Map is Not the Territory (Copper Coin, 2025). inversejournal.com/2026/02/20/nin…

Salman B Baba introduces for now, an exhibition on display at the 6th edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (titled For The Time Being). Co-curated with Khursheed Ahmad, for now gathers a selection of works by emerging artists from the Western Himalayas. inversejournal.com/2026/02/07/for…

Amir Sultan presents one of the most powerful and necessary commentaries regarding the state of journalism in India and across the world. Amir’s unsparing diagnosis of contemporary Indian journalism problematizes its descent into a state of accommodation. inversejournal.com/2026/02/06/rev…

In Ahymon Ayoub Khan's poem, the body is rendered as unfamiliar terrain that is unhabituated to itself in verses that treat it “as a site of grief.” inversejournal.com/2026/01/28/hom…

We present an excerpt from The Eye of Childhood (Zorba Books, 2023), Dr. Arjun Raina’s novel that blends memoir, psyche, and fiction to explore the complex and fragmented terrain of the human mind. inversejournal.com/2026/01/18/an-…

Ayana Joe brings us a poem that travels across the fragile territory of the body in its communion with the natural world. By using "window of the heart" as a metaphor, Ayana’s verses explore a state of vulnerability rooted in spiritual thirst. inversejournal.com/2026/01/13/%e0…

Set in pre-Partition Kashmir under Dogra rule, Flames of the Cherry Tree follows a young Kashmiri girl coming of age amid political upheaval, social transformation, and the struggle to pursue her dream of becoming a doctor. inversejournal.com/2026/01/12/an-…

Rabiya Fayaz presents a poem that embodies a sustained interrogation of selfhood, addressing the reader through a series of insistently ethical questions that unsettle inherited measures of knowledge, achievement, and respectability. inversejournal.com/2026/01/12/wo-…

These five poems by Carol Blaizy D’Souza move with subtle confidence across inner and outer geographies, often reflecting how travel and wandering also take place within us. inversejournal.com/2026/01/04/a-t…

As we say goodbye to another year, here are the few but important pieces by our contributors and community that shaped 2025 at Inverse Journal. inversejournal.com/2026/01/01/202…

GM Khan's prose combines lyrical restraint characterized by a moral clarity that leads us to ask an unsettling and unavoidable question: what remains of a person when even hope is placed under lockdown? inversejournal.com/2025/12/31/the…

Nigerian poet Annah Atane presents two poems that inhabit the horror of war and massacre where collective catastrophe is confronted with private mourning. inversejournal.com/2025/11/28/the…