A Reading Circle
About:
‘The mainstream media is lying to you.’
This is a common chant of conspiracy theorists, whether it is about the Moon landing, 9/11 or the ‘truth’ about the Congress being bankrolled by the ISI. When we think of ‘fake news’, we tend to think of ludicrous WhatsApp forwards, inflammatory speeches and small events blown out of proportion.
But while many of these conspiracy theories are patently ridiculous, we often forget to question the ‘legitimate news sources’ as well, or entirely neglect the nature of their political backing as long as they provide us with peace of mind.
In Strange Folk, we analyse how (and why) news sources aimed at middle-class readers regularly suppress, warp or simply ignore several issues. With the coverage of crime news and atrocities in focus, we’ll be picking apart the techniques the media uses to gain information, and the ones they use to hide it.
Reading List
- ‘Fiends Pursue Osages’. Contemporary article on the Osage murders. Shawnee News-Star (Oklahoma, 12 March 1925).
- ‘Osage Indian Reign of Terror’. Contemporary article on the Osage murders. Haskell News (Oklahoma, 18 February 1926).
- ASSMANN, Jan. ‘Communicative and Cultural Memory’ in P. Meusburger, M. Heffernan, E. Wunder (eds), Cultural Memories. Knowledge and Space, VOL 4. Dordrecht: Springer, 2011.
- BANNERJI, Himani. ‘The Mirror of Class: Class Subjectivity and Politics in 19th Century Bengal’. Economic and Political Weekly 24(19) (1989): 1041–51.
- DE, Pranab. ‘Rajarhat: When the Government Loots’. Sanhati (1 August 2012).
- GUNN, Simon. ‘Class, Identity and the Urban: The Middle Class in England, c.1790-1950’. Urban History 31(1) (2004): 29–47.
- KLEIN, Christopher. ‘The FBI’s First Big Case: The Osage Murders’. History (24 April 2017).
- NEIGER, Motti, Oren Meyers and Eyal Zandberg. ‘On Media Memory: Editors’ Introduction’ in On Media Memory. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
This series is conducted by Aurko Maitra, author of The Spider (Seagull Books, 2025).
Raised in Singapore, Aurko is a writer who has been interviewing figures involved in organized crime and political violence since 2018. His work has been published in the magazines Provoke, Agni, and Third Lane. He divides his time between London, Kolkata, and Singapore.
A tale of mercenaries and myths, set amid the political turmoil of Bengal.
In the largely undocumented sphere of political violence in eastern India, Qadir the Spider is a quasi-mythological killer and casanova, known for the various assassinations and liaisons he carries out across the region. His oldest son Rahim is the latest entry to the field. A 13-year-old killer, the boy bides his time like his father—killing, farming, and getting high as the battles go on around him. In a world where they only follow orders, mutilation becomes their only expression, the nature of violence their only meaningful form of autonomy in the various power struggles of interior Bengal.
After his first year in the field, as the child is groomed by his father to carry on the ways of their mercenary clan, he begins to confront the various legends surrounding the Spider. However, while roaming the strange, spectral forests surrounding his ancestral village, his chance encounter with a pair of wandering musicians leads him to question the killings that pattern his life. As he searches for the answers around him, he is slowly led to confront the man his father truly is, as well as the man he knows he will become.
A gripping tale of inherited violence and identity in politically volatile Bengal, Aurko Maitra’s The Spider contains a powerful, disturbing exploration of contemporary conflicts. Boldly interrogating our concepts of autonomy and survival in chaos, this revelatory novel explores the impact of political violence and timeless issues of legacy and intergenerational violence.
Fact or Value 