Arjun Basu was born and continues to live in Montreal. His parents are first generation immigrants from India. Basu has worked as a magazine editor. In addition to writing short stories and novels, he regularly updates his blog and posts twitter-length stories that he calls “twisters”.
Fiction (Short stories)
Squishy
Montreal: DC Books, 2009.
Publisher’s Synopsis
Arjun Basu’s fiction collection is a wry and consistently provocative book which exposes the realities beneath social conventions. Squishy asks: Do you still love me? Do you want fries with that? Do I look fat?
Life is full of small moments that define us, tangents that lead us to unexpected places, bad decisions and no decisions with repercussions you couldn’t possibly predict. This is the world of Squishy, where subtle truths emerge from just beneath our seeming contentment and happiness, our layered social obligations. …
Awards and Honours
2009 ReLit Award short fiction category (shortlist)
Fiction
The Reeds: A Novel
Toronto: ECW Press, 2024.
forthcoming Oct. 2024
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
The Reeds are a very loving, slightly dysfunctional family — but a summer of individual changes is about to shake their tight family unit. Bobby, the father, loses his executive job while his wife Mimi’s lucrative home-run business leaps ahead. Their adopted son, Abbie, leverages his internet stardom into the makings of a career, while their adopted daughter, Dee, discovers who she really is. They’ll have to navigate the shifting landscapes of commerce and fame in the age of the internet, office politics, gender dynamics, and sexuality in a world that has just seen Brexit, Trump, and heightened climate anxiety. Set in Montreal’s west end, The Reeds is about family, love, and nostalgia while exploring the dehumanization of work and the power of art against a backdrop of mid-century modern furniture, shag carpeting, the relentlessness of change, gentrification, and Korean fried chicken. In many ways, The Reeds is an optimistic story about the middle class, its hopes, ambitions, and challenges.
Fiction
Waiting for the Man
Toronto: ECW Press, 2014.
PS8603 .A797 W33 2014
Publisher’s Synopsis (from its website)
Joe, a 36-year-old advertising copywriter for a slick New York company, feels disillusioned with his life. He starts dreaming of a mysterious man, seeing him on the street, and hearing his voice. Joe decides to listen to the Man and so he waits on his stoop, day and night, for instructions. A local reporter takes notice, and soon Joe has become a story, a media sensation, the centre of a storm. When the Man tells Joe to “go west,” he does, in search of meaning.
Waiting for the Man is a compelling and visceral story about the struggle to find something more in life, told in two interwoven threads — Joe at the beginning of his journey in Manhattan, and at the end of it as he finds new purpose on a ranch in Montana under the endless sky.
Anthology (Short story)
Montreal Noir
Brooklyn, NY: Akashic, 2017.
PS8257 .M6 M66 2017
Basu, Arjun. “Wild Horse.” In Montreal Noir, edited by John McFetridge & Jacques Filippi. Brooklyn: Akashic, 2017, 107-133.
Selected Criticism and Interpretation
Chilana, Rajwant Singh. “Arjun Basu.” In South Asian Writers in Canada: A Bio-Bibliographical Study. Surrey, BC: Asian Publications, 2017, 169.
Z1376 .S68 C45 2017