This volume of Civil Lines carries the most diverse collection of new short fiction from Indian writers comprising a total of seven stories by Amit Chaudhuri, Amitava Kumar, Avtar Singh, Mina Kumar and Suketu Mehta. Civil Lines–5 also features some exceptional non-fiction where Sonia Jabbar gives us an account of life and death in Kashmir, while Urvashi Butalia revisits the partition with brilliant hybrid narratives—part essay, part travelogue—that make places, people and their histories come alive. And Anita Roy reminds us, amusingly and poignantly, that all writers begin as obsessive readers.