Naga poet and novelist Easterine Kire won The Hindu Prize, 2015, for her novel When the River Sleeps: a book about a lone hunter, Vilie, seeking a faraway river, to take from it a stone that will give him untold powers. K Satchidanandan, one of the judges, described it as “a sample of how the mythopoeic imagination can work in our times”.

For Vilie, it’s a dangerous quest. As he forges ahead to catch the sleeping river in order to extract the “heart-stone” from its depths, he not only comes face to face with supernatural spirits that are as real as men and women, but also sorceresses, demons and armed men.

One can see Kire looking to escape from rapid urbanisation and, through the “heart-stone”, reaching the heart of Nagas’ rich but eroding culture – “their rituals and beliefs, their reverence for the land, their close-knit communities, and the rhythms of a life lived in harmony with their natural surroundings.” Also, by setting her story in the deep mountains of Nagaland with its idyllic villages and forests, she challenges the age-old image of her state as a warn-torn and bloodied.

“Kire’s oeuvre is diverse,” notes Mint. “From textbooks on Nagaland like A Terribly Matriarchy, to numerous volumes of poetry, novels and children’s books, she travels around the world, though she is currently living in Norway and her home is in Kohima, Nagaland’s capital.” A mother of three children, two daughters and a son, she travels in Europe with the band Jazzpoesi (with saxophonist Ola Rokkones and drummer Jon Eirik Boska) that sets jazz music to her poems.

Published in 2014.