Ten minutes with… is a special series presented by Coode Street that sees readers and booklovers from around the world talk about what they’re reading right now and what’s getting them through these difficult times.

Only recently back from several months in India, Vandana Singh joins Gary to talk about what experiencing the lockdown was like near Delhi and the hardships of day workers suddenly laid off and walking long distances back to their villages, the challenges to a speculative fiction writer of unexpectedly living in a ‘bad science fiction novel’ and some of the comforts of reading poetry, a novel set in remote Nagaland, ‘magical realism’ in the stories of Gogu Shyamala, and even Harry Potter.

Books mentioned include:

• Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories by Vandana Singh
• When the River Sleeps by Easterine Kire
• Father May Be an Elephant and Mother Only a Small Basket, But… by Gogu Shyamala