‘An exceptionally well-written book’ Ian Talbot
In over three decades as a police officer, Kirpal Dhillon handled some of the most challenging assignments in independent India, from anti-dacoity operations in Madhya Pradesh to revamping a demoralized force as police chief of Punjab in the aftermath of Operation Blue Star. These memoirs describe his experiences in fascinating detail, and present vivid portraits of a range of people, including sadhus and swindlers, maharajas and brigands, scheming politicians and back-stabbing colleagues.
There are evocative descriptions of his village in Punjab, of Partition, and of the leaders he worked with, such as Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Morarji Desai. He writes with insight and expertise about terrorism, law-and-order problems, the training of administrators and policemen, and what can be done to ensure that they function with greater autonomy, accountability and humanity.
Ex-Files is the story of a woman, who despite her best efforts to save her marriage, finds herself facing a divorce petition. But instead of wallowing in self-pity, Vandana picked up the pieces of her shattered life and moved straight on. She not only finds a job and becomes self-sufficient, she also starts India’s first divorce support group, and deals inappropriate and hurtful remarks with grace and equanimity.
While being true to both the pain and challenges of divorce, Vandana’s personal stories reveal the hardships and joys of moving through emotional upheaval and emerging stronger with her positive thinking and humour intact. The book also deals with the legal and social aspects of a divorce which are so often overlooked while women are dealing with the emotional upheaval of divorce.
At once funny, tragic and uncompromisingly honest, this memoir will resonate with anyone who has endured the end of a marriage and come out changed.
An ageless tale, now in a stunning graphic novel edition
Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay’s classic Bengali novel Chander Pahar paints a portrait of Africa that is hauntingly beautiful and terrifying at the same time. This adaptation brings Bandopadhyay’s vivid descriptions of the vast continent to life, while keeping the essence of the original story untouched. Join Shankar and his friend Alvarez as they make their way through the rugged wilderness of pre-First World War Africa and encounter wild beasts, lost tribes, labyrinthine trails, raging volcanoes and mythical monsters that seem all too real, in search of the fabled diamond mines of Richtersveld, the mountain of the moon. A powerful tale of wanderlust and adventure, Moon Mountain is all about giving wings to your dreams.
In Devgarh, a fictional town, the boys of the Star Eleven cricket team are the good and bad boys of the Holy Mission School. Captained by Ajay but led by Aakash, the team, both individually and together, get into all kinds of scraps with only one goal in sight-being the best cricketing school side in Devgarh. Follow their capers as they go through a gamut of experiences, from learning the value of money and honesty to first love, examination blues, and victory and defeat.
Full of action and fun, this hugely exciting story of friendship and rivalry maps the pleasures and perils of life in a small town.
All eleven-year-old Noel wants to do is live a normal life-something that’s the tiniest bit difficult when your dad is Santa Claus. Just as Noel is struggling to cope with her dysfunctional family, her father goes missing in prime Santa Claus season!
When rumours of his disappearance start leaking, a reluctant Noel is packed off on a quest to prevent worldwide elfish panic. And if that wasn’t enough, Gilmore, Coral and Bean, three elves with personality disorders, are along for the ride. This ragtag team has one week to visit six toy factories around the world and stop them from falling into chaos.
With crazy adventures at every turn and Santa still refusing to budge from the missing persons list, saving Christmas seems just a little out of their league
Simran Kaur Banga-a quiet, reserved girl living with her conservative Sikh family in Southall, London-is a poet at heart. But a brutal rape and rejection by her own family lands her in Amritsar where amidst strangers begins her nightmare of loneliness. Then one day she finds a friend-or so it seems to her.
Unknowingly, however, she’s become privy to an extreme terror plot.
Accompanied by Captain Suvir, she starts her battle to quell the storm that is brewing in the by-lanes of Punjab, of drugs and dera god-men.
Blood Song is a coming-of-age story of a woman scorned.
A superb art book of one of the most arresting art movements in the world today
Pakistan’s contemporary art scene is arguably the most exciting in South Asia. Well-known curator, artist and teacher Salima Hashmi gives us a superb overview in this lavishly designed book, which includes interviews with artists such as Rashid Rana and pieces by writers like Kamila Shamsie and Mohsin Hamid.
The threedecadelong conflict tore apart the Tamils’ world in Sri Lanka. This anthology, framed by war, brings together poems, stories and a memoir by Tamil writers living there and in the diaspora. Wideranging and from recent decades, till the war’s ending, these pieces have been translated with great skill for the first time into English. Stark, and sometimes lyrical, distilling memory, history, mythology and classical literary tropes, they powerfully echo the Tamils’ sorrows and deep fears, their longings and hopes for tomorrow. Laments about youths felled by gunfire, their forced disappearances, the loss of family and homes, desecration of shrines, repeated displacements, becoming international refugees alternate with remembrance of the beauteous forests and sea, of celebrations of Tamil language and culture, and the compassion of women providing people succour.Accompanied by an introduction to set the context, this rich and moving volume reveals the spirit of a wounded island and brings its voices to a new audience.
A major poet in English, Kamala Das’s taboo-breaking work explores themes of love and betrayal, the corporeal and the spiritual, while celebrating female sexuality and remaining deeply rooted in the poet’s ancestral tradition and landscape.
A rigorous selection from her oeuvre-six published volumes and other uncollected and previously unpublished poems-this edition offers a unified perspective on her poetic achievement. An illuminating introduction to her poetry by Devindra Kohli traces the sources of its ferment, and showcases its originality of style and its acts of resistance.
In 2009, after several years in China, journalist Pallavi Aiyar moved to Brussels, the headquarters of the European Union, to discover a Europe plagued by a financial crisis, and unsure of its place in a world where new Asian challengers are eroding its old and comfortable certainties. With a lively mix of memoir, reportage and analysis, Aiyar takes the reader on a romp across the continent as she meets workaholic Indian diamond merchants in Antwerp, upstart Chinese wine barons in Bordeaux, Sikh farmhands in the Italian countryside, and Indian engineers running offshore energy turbines in Belgium. In the Europe of today everything is in a flux, as she discovers through conversations with Muslim immigrants struggling to define their identities, the austere bosses of Germany’s worldbeating companies, and bewildered Eurocrats struggling to save the EU from splitting apart. Examining the diverse challenges the continent faces today-among them, bloated welfare states, the accommodation of Islam, the European ambitions of Indian and Chinese entrepreneurs, and the fissures that threaten to break up this union of diverse nations-Punjabi Parmesan takes a panoramic look at Europe’s firstworld crisis from a unique India-China perspective.
