Issue 2 includes an exclusive interview with Salman Rushdie, a special focus feature on New Canadian writing and art (at over 200 words, this section is an extremely deep focus) and a selection of beautiful sketched of the writers featured within by artist, Heather Spears, alongside a great selection of international fiction, poetry and novel extracts.

Although much of the work in Atlas is specially commissioned, the magazine also accepts high quality unsolicited submissions for which it has a refreshingly democratic anonymous selection policy.

In Tim Parks’ story, ‘After All I Gave Up For Him,’ a woman meets up with an ex-lover to confide in him about a sexual indiscretion her current partner may/may not have been involved in regarding a sex/insurance scam by two Bulgarians and ends up having her illusions shattered in more ways than one.

In an extract from C.P. Surendran’s novel, ‘An Iron Harvest,’ Maoist activists descend on the house of a feudal lord who has previously raped one of the activists wives, to serve a death sentence.

My particular favourites amongst the poetry in the first half of the book are Malayali poet, K. Satchidanandan’s ‘Old Women’ - “There are swings still / in their half-blind eyes, / lilies and Christmases / in their failing memory. / There is one folktale / for each wrinkle on their skin,” Tariq Latif’s wonderfully rich and vivid, ‘The Punjabi Weddings,’ ‘Variations in History’ and ‘Iqbal’s Halal Shop,’ four poems by Saleem Peeradina and Patience Agbabi’s wonderful, ‘Problem Pages: Sonnets.’

In the Canadian special focus section, I enjoyed the three poems by Alexander Hutchison, Heather Spears’ haunting ‘It’s Not New’ - “This happened way back when I was a child / the reasons have hardly changed / Onishu not Osama, Kamikaze not al Khaida / it’s still about honour and obedience and how to hate / and the certain dream of being right and good / and immortal…”

David Bergen’s ‘Leo Fell’ is an engaging, Carver-like tale about a man trying to re-adjust after his wife leaves him for a doctor. The characters, especially the waitress, Girlie who he takes up with, are all beautifully drawn and despite the stories deceptive simplicity, the reader gets a real sense of the lives lived within it and feels an incredible empathy with them.

In Ian Colcord’s ‘Proof,’ an illegal immigrant wakes up in hospital with no recollection of how he got there or sustained the injuries he is being treated for. As he recovers in hospital, he mind is bombarded with vivid, sensual dreams and visions of his childhood and places where he does not belong and is befriended by a nurse who takes him under her wing. This ultimately is an effecting and moving story about belonging and identity.

In Jaspreet Singh’s beautiful story, ‘Elephants’ a dead grandmother tries to communicate with her grandson and tell him the things she never got the chance to in life from her coffin as the family wait at an airport in Texas to take her body back to Kashmir, as a white woman on the next table observes the same family and suspect them of being terrorists.

Peggy Herring’s ‘On Seeing Tilda Again’ has a lovely rhythm and information, conversational air, despite being in the 3rd person, which gives it a feeling of being narrated in person to the reader. When the tone suddenly turns dark, this makes the readers empathy with the central character, Laura, intense to an almost unbearable extent. That said, the turn the story takes after Laura’s encounter with Gray, seems too condensed and would benefit from developing further. Nonetheless, the story’s final image is as chilling as the character is herself.

With further contributions from a myriad of big names (Vikram Seth, Seamus Heaney, David Malouf, Ruth Padel…) and other lesser known but thoroughly engaging writers, Atlas 2 has a lovely mix of word and images and gives some wonderful insights into the world we live in. I can’t wait to read more.