A prophetic and incisive novel on the persisting fault lines between communities
Remembering her late husband, Asad, Mala relives the heady days of love and optimism they had shared, while she struggles to understand how the world around them has changed so radically. Their daughter, Sara, embarks on a journey that takes her to Ahmedabad, where-across a lately created ‘border’-she meets Yasmin, a survivor of mayhem. Together, Sara and Yasmin search for the future, for hope, amid lives caught in a mesh of memory and anguish.
Marked by an astonishing clarity of observation and deep compassion, Fugitive Histories exposes the legacy of prejudice that continues to erupt into hatred and violence in present-day India.
Ever since he first read Graham Greene, Pico Iyer has been obsessed by the figure of the writer and by one of the great themes of Greene’s work: what it means to be an outsider. Wherever he has travelled-usually as an outsider himself-Iyer has found reminders of Greene’s life, observed scenes that might have been written by Greene, written stories that recall Greene. Yet, as Iyer recounts the history of his obsession, another phantom image begins to assert itself, one that Iyer had long banished from his inner life-that of his father.
Dev and Simran. A couple living in the heart of Bombay and grappling with everyday married life and the loss of a child. Then Dev dies and Simran is left to pick up the pieces with the help of a close-knit group of friends. Grieving in their own personal ways for Dev, they try, as best they can, to support Simran through her ordeal. As this diverse group of people interact, reminisce and navigate some of life’s harshest, funniest and most ordinary moments, we share their agonies and joys, their personal hang-ups, their insecurities and strengths. Intense, witty and moving, Dev and Simran is a quiet and graceful tribute to life.
Two-time Winner of the Giller Prize
Munir Khan, a recent widower from Toronto, meets the charming and witty Mohini Singh, a married liberal newspaper columnist, in the bar of the high-brow Delhi Recreational Club. An enigma surrounds the Kenya-born, westernized and agnostic Munir, and an inexplicable attraction takes root. Delhi’s streets, monuments and ruins become the setting of their passionate affair.
A terror attack shakes the city just as Jetha Lal and his acolytes, self-proclaimed protectors of cows and Hindu women, raise decibel levels at the Club. Meanwhile, Mohini’s parents’ wounded memory of the Partition and a family trip to Shirdi only serve to exacerbate her anxieties and deep sense of guilt. And even as Jetha Lal’s menacing shadow looms over them, Munir and Mohini cannot let each other go. At what cost their passion?
Written with trademark sensitivity and a sharp, affecting vision, A Delhi Obsession is M.G. Vassanji’s most urgent novel yet. Set in contemporary times, it unravels an unexpected yet prophetic story of passion, love and faith, amidst the placid environment of an elite Delhi club. Cutting close to the bone, this searing novel will compel you to confront your profoundest dilemmas.
Isha is a girl who loves animals but struggles in the confines of school. When she is sent away to live with her grandparents on the Indian countryside, she discovers a sacred grove where a young Bengal tiger has taken refuge. Isha knows that the ever-shrinking forests of India mean there are few places left for a tiger to hide. When the local villagers also discover the tiger, Isha finds herself embroiled in a life or death cultural controversy.
Isha’s crusade to save the tiger becomes the catalyst of an arduous journey of awakening and survival across the changing landscape of modernizing India. Her encounters with tribal people, elephants, and her search for the wild jungle are the source of her revelations about the human relationship to the natural world. The Girl and the Tiger is a gripping story of determination, discovery and coming of age.
A swimming instructor is determined to re-enact John Cheever’s iconic short story, ‘The Swimmer’, in the pools of Mumbai. A famous Indian chef breaks down on a New York talk show. A gangster’s wife believes a penguin at the Mumbai Zoo is the reincarnation of her lost child. An illegal immigrant in Vancouver plays a fateful game of cricket. A kindly sweets-shop owner’s hope for a new life in Canada leads to a terrible choice.
By turns quirky and clever, poignant and powerful, Anosh Irani’s stories deftly reveal the human condition in all its vitality and vulnerability. Bookending the seven tales in this collection is a gorgeous, emotionally raw ‘translation’ of the author’s singular experience of being an immigrant, ingeniously blurring the line between fiction and fact as it shuttles between two worlds-Vancouver, where he miraculously realized his seemingly impractical dream of becoming a writer; and Mumbai, the city he could never fully leave behind.
Filled with moments of great beauty and clarity, Translated from the Gibberish confirms Anosh Irani as a unique, inventive and vitally important voice in contemporary fiction.
Will a series of brutal killings destroy the very foundation of Parsuvarta, an ancient kingdom?
A series of murders have taken place in Parsupur, the capital city of Parsuvarta. Kasyapa and Agastya, two students training to become priests, are asked by their guru to investigate the deaths. Around the same time, there is great turmoil brewing in the city-a palace coup and a battle for supremacy between the traditional Indra worshipers and the new sect of Varuna followers.
It is an age when Vedic gods are worshiped, religious sacrifices are performed regularly, commerce flourishes and kings are guided by their loyal head priests. But beneath this façade of order lie prejudices and political rivalries, jealousy and power games. This is why the murders, which at first seem to be unconnected, soon lead in the same direction. It is now up to Kasyapa and Agastya to find out the common thread and identify the killer.
The First Aryan is a one-of-its-kind murder mystery set in the Vedic times.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019
In a tour-de-force that is both an homage to an immortal work of literature and a modern masterpiece about the quest for love and family, Booker Prize-winning, internationally bestselling author Salman Rushdie has created a dazzling Don Quixote for the modern age.
Inspired by the Cervantes classic, Sam DuChamp, mediocre writer of spy thrillers, creates Quichotte, an ageing travelling salesman who falls in impossible love with a TV star. Together with his imaginary son Sancho, Quichotte sets off on a picaresque quest across America to prove worthy of her hand. Meanwhile his creator, in a midlife crisis, has equally urgent challenges of his own.
Just as Cervantes wrote Don Quixote to satirise the culture of his time, Rushdie takes the reader on a wild ride through a country on the verge of moral and spiritual collapse. And with the kind of storytelling magic that is the hallmark of his work, the fully realised lives of DuChamp and Quichotte intertwine in a profoundly human quest for love and a wickedly entertaining portrait of an age in which fact is so often indiscernible from fiction.
After Nehru, Victor Jai Bhagwan is Mahatma Gandhi’s favourite Indian-a brilliant young man with the temperament of a leader and fiercely committed to his country. Though Victor adores and respects Gandhi, he disagrees with the Mahatma’s vision for the future of India. He returns from university in England determined to bring the benefits of modern industry to the subcontinent, and within a few years of India’s independence, becomes the country’s biggest tycoon. But this is not the only ideal of Gandhi’s that he defies: facing a midlife crisis, he falls passionately in love with a tantric god-woman (who keeps a tiger as her pet and has a dubious past). She introduces him to the pleasures of unbridled sexuality, but also becomes the reason for his downfall.
Comic, tender and erotic by turns, Burial at Sea is vintage Khushwant Singh.
Mano Majra is a place, Khushwant Singh tells us at the beginning of this classic novel, where Sikhs and Muslims have lived together in peace for hundreds of years. Then one day, at the end of the summer, the ‘ghost train’ arrives, a silent, incredible funeral train loaded with the bodies of thousands of refugees, bringing the village its first taste of the horrors of the civil war. Train to Pakistan is the story of this isolated village that is plunged into the abyss of religious hate. It is also the story of a Sikh boy and a Muslim girl whose love endures and transcends the ravages of war.
Regarded as one of the most heart-rending testimonials of the partition of 1947, the Train to Pakistan is an ideal novel for those who wishes to learn more about India’s past and is looking for more than the socio-political scenario behind the partition.
