Description: Joshi's fiction is animated by his extraordinary sensitivity to the uncanny and inexplicable dimensions of experience that underlie and sometimes infiltrate our lives governed by routines. He has an admirable gift for portraying normality as it begins to slide by degrees towards chaos, without raising the emotional temperature of his prose.
Brief description: PRAKASH BAL JOSHI is a multifaceted personality with four decades in journalism, creative writing and international recognition as an artist. He has four books to his credit: Prakash Bal Joshi Yanchya Katha (Prakash Bal Joshi's Stories) and Maitrinichi Goshta (Story of a Friend) - both collections of short stories, while Gateway explores the complexities and contradictions of urban life in Mumbai, accompanied by sketches, and Poll Book 2000. He has held several solo and group shows of his paintings: oil on canvas, in India as well as in Bressuire in France, Chicago, Las Vegas and Minneapolis in the USA, Basel (Switzerland), Lisbon (Portugal), Moscow (USSR), Osijek (Croatia) and other centres in Europe, Izmir (Turkey), and Thimphu (Bhutan). He was appointed a jury member for an international art competition organized in London at Belgravia Art Gallery in Mayfair, an international art hub. A veteran Mumbai-based journalist, Prakash has worked with several national publications including The Times of India. He was chairman of the Mumbai Union of Journalists. (website: www.prakashbaljoshi.com)
Review Quotes:
'Mirror in the Hall and other stories is a collection of fifteen short stories written by Prakash Bal Joshi explores contemporary themes revolving around strained relationships, changing values and women empowerment among middle-class people in both rural and urban settings.'
The Afternoon DC, 5 July 2019
'Readers of all hues will find Joshi's stories right up their streets. Swaddled in contemporaneous set-ups, aspirations and dreams, his stories instantaneously strike a rapport with the readers and they think for a moment, isn't this character very much known to us, nay like us? And here lies this book's success and readability quotient.'
Free Press Journal, 7 July 2019
'The first thing that struck me was that they read like a painting fusing between abstraction and Impressionism. They become lucid and blurred interchangeably but eventually attain a remarkable cohesion as one whole . . . they capture atmospherics with the dexterity of a writer who has observed life in an unhurried fashion.'
South Asia Daily, 29 April 2019
'He deals with words, paint and drawing with equal ease. He is basically an expressionist. With his strong observations, he wants to express himself either through words or colour.His contribution to Marathi literature is remarkable with his continuous efforts to experiment with language and sensitive handling of contemporary issues.'
Lokmat, 23 June 2019