About the Author

Shome Dasgupta is the author of eleven books, including The Seagull And The Urn (HarperCollins India), Cirrus Stratus (Spuyten Duyvil), Spectacles (Word West Press), i am here And You Are Gone (Winner of the 2010 OW Press Fiction Contest), Anklet And Other Stories (Golden Antelope Press), and a poetry collection, Iron Oxide (Assure Press). His novel, The Muu-Antiques, is forthcoming from Malarkey Books. A hybrid collection of prose called Histories Of Memories will be published by Belle Point Press. His writing has appeared in McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Hobart, New Orleans Review, X-R-A-Y, Arkansas Review, American Book Review, New Delta Review, Magma Poetry, and elsewhere. His fiction and poetry have been anthologized in Best Small Fictions 2019 and Best Small Fictions 2021, The &Now Awards 2: The Best Innovative Writing, and Poetic Voices Without Borders 2. His work has been featured as a storySouth Million Writers Award Notable Story, and his stories and poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, Best Of The Net, and the Orison Anthology. He is the series editor of the Wigleaf Top 50. He lives in Lafayette, LA and can be found at www.shomedome.com and @laughingyeti

Reviews

“In evocative, concise, effectively disturbing prose, Shome Dasgupta creates a novel that juxtaposes two seemingly matched forces: death drive versus family love. The tenderness with which Ravi contemplates his childhood with his brother is always of equal intensity to Ravi's many convincing and well-rendered moments of numbness and despair. Shome Dasgupta makes a unique and important contribution to diverse diasporic South Asian literature and we are lucky to have this book.”

—Chaya Bhuvaneswar, author of White Dancing Elephants: Stories

“Shome Dasgupta has a deep understanding of how the traumatic saturates the quotidian, the dead haunt the living, the imaginary infiltrates the real, and our longing for isolation competes against our need for connection following a concussive tragedy. This novel’s compact size and narrative restraint belie its generous animating spirit—and the resonant humanity of Ravi & Vavi.”

—Elise Blackwell, author of Hunger and The Lower Quarter

“Tentacles Numbing opens with a dream of death and follows a cast of strange and struggling characters as they navigate relationships complicated by the past. With sharp prose and disarming vulnerability, Shome Dasgupta offers a sensitive novel about grief, human connection, and holding onto reasons to live—even when they sting.”

—Anuja Varghese, author of Chrysalis