To Cut A Long Story Short, published by Om Books International in October 2025, is a debut collection of short fiction from the experienced pen of neophyte author Ranjan Sen.
The stories travel across time and place. Some are set against historical backdrops, others unfold in contemporary settings. A few carry an undercurrent of suspense, while others dwell on private, interior conflicts.
The collection is not bound by the limitations of any single genre. Instead, the stories focus on how individuals respond when uncertainty looms and choices have to be made, some small and seemingly easy, others that are bigger, tougher and sometime historical.
“These stories were born while I was working from home during Covid,” Sen says. “That period enforced such crushing social isolation that we all started to yearn for the little nuances of daily life, which makes up each of our own stories.”
The collection looks at how different people in differing circumstances each react differently to life’s greatest truth – the we must all die. The strength of the narrative lies in building relatable characters who start out in familiar situations. Death appears not as spectacle but as a quiet force that sharpens perspective, compelling the characters to weigh what endures and what cannot be retrieved.
The title reflects both structure and sensibility. Sen has long been drawn to short fiction, a form that demands restraint and precision. “Short stories encourage you to enter a world for a brief time and then leave for the next one,” he says. “There is something exciting about that kind of compression.”
Though this is his first book, Sen has been writing for many years. His stories have appeared in literary journals in India and overseas, including The Contemporary Literary Review of India, the Indian Literature journal of the Sahitya Akademi, and publications based in the United States and Singapore. These early publications helped shape a style defined by imagination, clarity, and emotional control.
Beyond literature, Sen is widely recognised for a career in international banking that spans more than three decades and several regions. He has held senior leadership roles, including overseeing International Countries for HSBC in the Middle East and North Africa, and as DCEO of Ahli United Bank. In 2021, he stepped away from full-time corporate responsibilities and began dividing his time between early-stage investing and writing.
Born and educated in what was then Calcutta and later pursuing higher studies in Delhi, Sen showed an early interest in public speaking, radio, and journalism. Those early engagements with language and audience, sharpened during his corporate years, have now found renewed expression through fiction.
Sen currently lives in Delhi with his wife, Manisha, and their college-going son. While his professional life criss-crossed borders, the emotional terrain of his fiction remains grounded in relationships, memory, and moments that feel immediate and lived.
With To Cut A Long Story Short, Ranjan Sen presents a debut that engages and entertains while provoking thought. The collection introduces a writer concerned less with outward action than with the quiet moments that shape a life, and with the lasting weight of choice, chance, and consequence.