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y separately published work icon Transactions selected work   short story  
Issue Details: First known date: 2013... 2013 Transactions
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'A spoiled Emirati rich girl, an Iranian asylum seeker in Amsterdam, a Liberian refugee seeking aid from a charity, a Ukrainian prostitute, a Danish sex trafficker, a Chinese gamer. Alizadeh's characters live on the edge of what is considered civilised society, oftern caught between East and West, in the web of global politics. Fresh and adventurous, this absorbing story cycle melds themes of love, exploitation, globalisation, war and poverty, offering a provocative and panoramic view of contemporary life. (Source: Trove)

Notes

  • Dedication: For Meena Keshwar Kamal (1956-1987)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Other Formats

  • Also large print.

Works about this Work

Stories for Hyperlinked Times : The Short Story Cycle and Rebekah Clarkson’s Barking Dogs Amelia Walker , 2019 single work column
— Appears in: The Conversation , 9 October 2019;

'We live hyperlinked lives, expected to be switched on and logged in 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Time is a dwindling resource, multitasking is our default setting. We’re constantly reading: online articles, emails, social media posts. But for many of us, this dip-in, dip-out reading feels dissatisfying. We crave deeper engagement.' (Introduction)

Form, Frame and Allegory in Recent Transnational Short Fictions Michael R. Griffiths , 2017 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Humanities Review , November no. 62 2017;

Sri Lankan Tamil Asylum Seeker on a Leaky boat finds his story interspersed with that of an Australian case worker in a wavering marriage, a ‘spoiled Emirati rich girl’ ridicules a Ukrainian sex worker online, a young Peruvian man cares for his girlfriend while concealing their relationship from her overbearing Gujarati mother. Which recent collection of short stories are these vignettes blurbing from? The answer is that each comes from a separate collection: the first from Maxine Beneba Clarke’s Foreign Soil, the second from Ali Alizadeh’s Transactions, the third from Daniel Alarcón’s War By Candlelight. Yet, in the context of these short stories and their paratexts, this list could ironically also be said to read as a cohesive blurb. Such global short stories of overlap and interconnectivity have become a staple of the transnational publishing world, with such Australian-based writers as Beneba Clarke, Alizadeh, and Nam Le winning multiple awards, making multiple bestseller lists, and joining a wider transnational phenomenon which includes such U. S. based writers as Alarcón and Jhumpa Lahiri. In this essay, I build on the work of Ken Gelder, Wenche Ommundsen, Nicholas Jose, Lachlan Brown and Marita Bullock to proximately examine the way Beneba Clark, Alizadeh and Le—the Australian writers on this list—engage with the transnational by calling attention to the ambivalent position of migrant and diasporic inscriptions of self-reference (Gelder).' (Introduction)

Worlds Apart : Nam Le’s The Boat and Ali Alizadeh’s Transactions Lachlan Brown , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: Transnational Literature , May vol. 7 no. 2 2015;

'Australian short fiction collections which are self-consciously and explicitly transnational have risen to prominence during the past decade. Nam Le’s celebrated collection The Boat (2008) has been followed by Ali Alizadeh’s Transactions (2013), Maxine Beneba-Clarke’s Foreign Soil (2014) and Ceridwen Dovey’s Only the Animals (2014). All these books are ambitious, grandtour collections, organising themselves in ways that emphasise disparate locations around the globe. They are marked by precocious writing styles, a predilection for distinct and distinctive voices, rapid or jolting movements between specific yet diverse situations, a thematisation of

‘the global’, as well as holistic or in some cases totalising structures. The collections by Le, Alizadeh and Beneba-Clarke are accompanied by metafictive frames which foreground the idea of writing as a creative and urgent act in a globalised world. Such transnational short fiction may find immediate precursors in writers like Jhumpa Lahiri, whose Unaccommodated Earth

explores familial migrations and double migrations and Daniel Alarcon whose War by Candlelight depicts intense and specific locations from Lima to New York.' (Author's introduction)

Book Review : Transactions Gay Lynch , 2014 single work review
— Appears in: Transnational Literature , May vol. 6 no. 2 2014;

— Review of Transactions Ali Alizadeh , 2013 selected work short story
Elizabeth Bryer Reviews Transactions by Ali Alizadeh Elizabeth Bryer , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: Mascara Literary Review , December no. 14 2013;

— Review of Transactions Ali Alizadeh , 2013 selected work short story
[Untitled] 2013 single work review
— Appears in: Books + Publishing , April vol. 92 no. 5 2013; (p. 22)

— Review of Transactions Ali Alizadeh , 2013 selected work short story
[Untitled] Jay Daniel Thompson , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , July-August no. 353 2013;

— Review of Transactions Ali Alizadeh , 2013 selected work short story
Seedy Side of a Global Village Thuy On , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 10-11 August 2013; (p. 31) The Canberra Times , 10 August 2013; (p. 22)

— Review of Transactions Ali Alizadeh , 2013 selected work short story
Power Plays in a Connected World Portia Lindsay , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 10-11 August 2013; (p. 20)

— Review of Transactions Ali Alizadeh , 2013 selected work short story
Humiliations Accrue Francesca Sasnaitis , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , October 2013;

— Review of Transactions Ali Alizadeh , 2013 selected work short story
Worlds Apart : Nam Le’s The Boat and Ali Alizadeh’s Transactions Lachlan Brown , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: Transnational Literature , May vol. 7 no. 2 2015;

'Australian short fiction collections which are self-consciously and explicitly transnational have risen to prominence during the past decade. Nam Le’s celebrated collection The Boat (2008) has been followed by Ali Alizadeh’s Transactions (2013), Maxine Beneba-Clarke’s Foreign Soil (2014) and Ceridwen Dovey’s Only the Animals (2014). All these books are ambitious, grandtour collections, organising themselves in ways that emphasise disparate locations around the globe. They are marked by precocious writing styles, a predilection for distinct and distinctive voices, rapid or jolting movements between specific yet diverse situations, a thematisation of

‘the global’, as well as holistic or in some cases totalising structures. The collections by Le, Alizadeh and Beneba-Clarke are accompanied by metafictive frames which foreground the idea of writing as a creative and urgent act in a globalised world. Such transnational short fiction may find immediate precursors in writers like Jhumpa Lahiri, whose Unaccommodated Earth

explores familial migrations and double migrations and Daniel Alarcon whose War by Candlelight depicts intense and specific locations from Lima to New York.' (Author's introduction)

Form, Frame and Allegory in Recent Transnational Short Fictions Michael R. Griffiths , 2017 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Humanities Review , November no. 62 2017;

Sri Lankan Tamil Asylum Seeker on a Leaky boat finds his story interspersed with that of an Australian case worker in a wavering marriage, a ‘spoiled Emirati rich girl’ ridicules a Ukrainian sex worker online, a young Peruvian man cares for his girlfriend while concealing their relationship from her overbearing Gujarati mother. Which recent collection of short stories are these vignettes blurbing from? The answer is that each comes from a separate collection: the first from Maxine Beneba Clarke’s Foreign Soil, the second from Ali Alizadeh’s Transactions, the third from Daniel Alarcón’s War By Candlelight. Yet, in the context of these short stories and their paratexts, this list could ironically also be said to read as a cohesive blurb. Such global short stories of overlap and interconnectivity have become a staple of the transnational publishing world, with such Australian-based writers as Beneba Clarke, Alizadeh, and Nam Le winning multiple awards, making multiple bestseller lists, and joining a wider transnational phenomenon which includes such U. S. based writers as Alarcón and Jhumpa Lahiri. In this essay, I build on the work of Ken Gelder, Wenche Ommundsen, Nicholas Jose, Lachlan Brown and Marita Bullock to proximately examine the way Beneba Clark, Alizadeh and Le—the Australian writers on this list—engage with the transnational by calling attention to the ambivalent position of migrant and diasporic inscriptions of self-reference (Gelder).' (Introduction)

Stories for Hyperlinked Times : The Short Story Cycle and Rebekah Clarkson’s Barking Dogs Amelia Walker , 2019 single work column
— Appears in: The Conversation , 9 October 2019;

'We live hyperlinked lives, expected to be switched on and logged in 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Time is a dwindling resource, multitasking is our default setting. We’re constantly reading: online articles, emails, social media posts. But for many of us, this dip-in, dip-out reading feels dissatisfying. We crave deeper engagement.' (Introduction)

Last amended 28 Jul 2015 14:00:50
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