Enigma precedes existence. In the cosmic commerce of Being, the tussle between Life and Death has quite unrestrainedly preoccupied humans. I am reminded of a significant interaction in Samuel Beckett’s Endgame where Hamm questions Clov as to why he continues to stay with him. Clov counters the question by asking the reason for being retained. Hamm answers, in a very matter-of-fact way, “There is no one else”, and Clov surrenders to the conversation by declaring, “there is nowhere else.” Nestled between this world of no one else (koi nahi) and nowhere else (kahin nahi) is the world of Girgita Til Mas in Khalid Jawed’s The Book of Death , translated from the Urdu by A Naseeb Khan, and it is here in this wastescape of a place that we meet our unnamed protagonist.

The novella, spanning

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