‘This book is a haunting meditation.'—Ann Waldman

Through these spare poems, Sharmistha Mohanty weaves together, inseparably, the contemporary and the almost primal. The result is a singular voice, new and old at the same time. In its oral quality, in its questioning and assertion, in its vigour and vulnerability, it seems to be uttering anew what was once collective, and perhaps still is, under the surface. The poems in The Gods Came Afterwards are a calling out, far beyond the personal, through an unusually pared down English language and a long Indic heritage.

‘These poems are like hymns thrown up from the deepest depths of the self. They are upward rising, a solitary being’s verses of praise. They utter the purest parts of the soul.'—Joy Goswami

harmistha Mohanty is the author of three works of prose, Book One, New Life, and Five Movements in Praise. She has also translated a selection of Rabindranath Tagore’s fiction, Broken Nest and Other Stories. Her prose and poetry have appeared in several journals including Granta, Poetry, World Literature Today, and The Caravan. Mohanty is the founder editor of the online journal Almost Island, begun in 2007 and the initiator of the Almost Island Dialogues series, an annual international writers meet held in New Delhi since 2006. She was invited to be on the International Faculty for the Creative Writing MFA at the City University of Hong Kong. She lives in Mumbai.

‘This book is a haunting meditation.'—Ann Waldman

Through these spare poems, Sharmistha Mohanty weaves together, inseparably, the contemporary and the almost primal. The result is a singular voice, new and old at the same time. In its oral quality, in its questioning and assertion, in its vigour and vulnerability, it seems to be uttering anew what was once collective, and perhaps still is, under the surface. The poems in The Gods Came Afterwards are a calling out, far beyond the personal, through an unusually pared down English language and a long Indic heritage.

‘These poems are like hymns thrown up from the deepest depths of the self. They are upward rising, a solitary being’s verses of praise. They utter the purest parts of the soul.'—Joy Goswami

Mohanty’s engagement with language reaches a level of abstraction in this collection that feels unprecedented in her work. Emotions are conveyed by the broken fragments of lines that unfold over the page like precariously hanging flights of stairs.
—SomakGhoshal, Mint Lounge