The Other: Stories of Difference

Who is the Other? Is it you? Is it me? Is it all of us?

Childhood and teenage years—adults insist they are the best time. They cotton wool adolescence in soft lights, ignoring the heartaches and shadows. In this collection of stories, award-winning writer Paro Anand exposes the secrets and sorrows and courage that are part of today’s life.

A girl dealing with grief; another who is witness to a horrible assault on a woman in broad daylight; a boy who pushes himself to the brink of extinction; teenagers coming to terms with their otherness. Her stories ask, how do you tell a friend that you are different from everyone else in a deep, fundamental way? How do you go back to school and face friends and teachers when your own family has betrayed you? And when you put your faith in Superman, does he deliver when the bullies come calling?

Dark yet uplifting, unflinching yet deeply positive, these stories are a searing portrayal of the minds of today’s teenagers. In Paro Anand’s the Other, we are forced to examine our actions and inactions and every reader will find a fragment of themselves in the stories. It is a book every young adult and adult must read.

Paro Anand has written several acclaimed fiction titles including Wingless: A Fairly Weird Fairy Tale, I’m Not Butter Chicken, and No Guns at my Son’s Funeral, which was on the IBBY honour list 2004-05. She conducts creative writing, reading and discussion workshops with teachers and children, through her program, Literature in Action. She holds a world-record for helping children make the world’s longest newspaper.