The best selling author of The Inscrutable Americans and Making the Minister Smile returns with another entertaining story in The Department of Denials. In this latest venture, Babar Thakur” Babs to his friends” a youth fresh out of college in search of an identity and direction in life, sets off on a trip to fulfil his dream of becoming the prime minister of India one day.In the best traditions of all heroic odysseys, he starts out on his quest alone. Soon, he is on a roller coaster ride through the corridors of power, witness to the shenanigans of netas and babus. Chief among them is the minister Balak Kumar, who, repeatedly at the receiving end of various allegations from the Opposition, finally decides to centralize all denials under one authority, namely, the Department of Denials. And he asks Babs’s father, Bahadur Prasad Thakur, to head the newly created department. The stage is thus set for an unending run of situations, alternately bizarre and funny.
Catagory: Fiction
Fiction main category
Mulk Raj Anand Omnibus
the Mulk raj anand Omnibus is a tribute to one of the founding fathers of the Indian novel in English. Mulk Raj Anand (1905-2004) is best known for the impassioned social critique contained in his writings. This special commemorative edition published on the eve of his 100th birth anniversary brings together three of Anand’s finest novels which capture the ambivalence of a nation caught between tradition and modernity: Untouchable (1935), coolie (1936) and private Life of an Indian prince (1953)c
Sultry Days
On a sultry, rainy Bombay day, Nisha, an impressionable teenager, meets God in the college canteen and falls in love with his ragged, bearded looks and crude, streetwise manners. God patronizingly accepts her in his ‘group’ and it is in this way that their long and passionate romance begins. God’s driving ambition leads him into the unreal world of pseudo poetry, art for hire and compromised journalism while Nisha lands a job in advertising. Sychophants, court jesters, whores, dirty old men, fixers, pretty boys and party girls drift in and out of their lives as their careers take off with dizzying speed. And then, abruptly and harrowingly, everything about their lives goes wrong.
Loom Of Time
Kalidasa is the greatest poet and playwright in classical Sanskrit literature and one of the greatest in world literature. Kalidasa is said to have lived and composed his work at the close of the first millennium BC though his dates have not been conclusively established. In all, seven of his works have survived: three plays, three long poems and an incomplete epic. Of these, this volume offers, in a brilliant new translation, his two most famous works, the play Sakuntala, a beautiful blend of romance and fairy tale with elements of comedy; and Meghadutam (The Cloud Messenger), the many-layered poem of longing and separation. Also included is Rtusamharam (The Gathering of the Seasons), a much-neglected poem that celebrates the fulfillment of love and deserves to be known better. Taken together, these works provide a window to the remarkable world and work of a poet of whom it was said: Once, when poets were counted, Kalidasa occupied the little finger; the ring finger remains unnamed true to its name; for his second has not been found
The Manticore’s Secret
Simoqin Prophecies
India’s first ever sff (science fiction/fantasy) genre novel in English
The Simoqin Prophecies marks the debut of an assured new voice. Written with consummate ease and brimming with wit and allusion, it is at once classic sff and subtle spoof, featuring scantily clad centauresses, flying carpets, pink trolls, belly dancers and homicidal rabbits. Monty Python meets the Ramayana, Alice in Wonderland meets The Lord of the Rings and Robin Hood meets The Arabian Nights in this novel—a breathtaking ride through a world peopled by different races and cultures from mythology and history.
The Prophecies foretell the reawakening of the terrible rakshas, Danh-Gem, and the arrival of a hero to face him. But heroes do not appear magically out of nowhere; they have to be found and trained. And sometimes the makers of prophecies don’t know everything they need to know…
As the day of Danh-Gem’s rising draws closer and the chosen hero is sent on a quest, another young man learns of terrible things he must do in secret and the difficult choices he must make in order to save the world from the rakshas.
Drawn from a variety of sources ranging from Greek and Indian epics to spy novels, fairy tales to superhero comics, The Simoqin Prophecies is a compelling tale, marked by meticulous plotting and artful storytelling—a page-turner sure to grip you from start to finish.
The Way Home
The Way Home” brings together in one volume fourteen stories representing the very best of contemporary Bengali short fiction. Showcasing some of Bengal’s finest writers at their creative best – Bibhuti Bhushan Bandopadhyay and Rajshekhar Basu, Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay and Ashapurna Devi – these stories deal with a myriad human themes that are at once individual and universal. From “The Brahmin”, Tarashankar Bandopadhyay’s treatise on greed, gluttony and tragic human experience, to “The Fugitive and the Stalkers”, Sunil Gangopadhyay’s trenchant tale of violence and retribution set in the days of the Naxal movement in Bengal; from Samaresh Basu’s harrowing look at poverty and its degrading effect in “The Crossing” to Narendranath Mitra’s lyrical take on the impact of triple talaq on Muslim women in “Sap”, the collection evokes different lifestyles, while reflecting problems and issues with which we can all identify.
Six Acres And A Third
This sly and humorous novel by Fakir Mohan Senapati—one of the pioneering spirits of modern Indian literature and an early activist in the fight against the destruction of native Indian languages—is both a literary work and a historical document. Set in Orissa in the 1830s, Six Acres and a Third provides a unique ‘view from below’ of Indian village life under colonial rule.
This graceful translation faithfully conveys the rare and compelling account of how the more unsavory aspects of colonialism affected life in rural India.
A Bowstring winter
It was the code of friendship. Like a bowstring: tight. Like an arrow: straight.’
When John Dkhar arrives at Kaizang restaurant, Shillong, one cold November evening, he has no premonition that his life is about to change forever. A loner by nature, and the very epitome of culture and refinement, John comes across people he will soon be involved with in a deadly game of passion and hatred, trust and treachery: James Kharlukhi, tough and uncompromising, a leader born with a lust for danger; Jennifer d’Santos, companion to James, whose love for John can only lead to tragedy; Charlie, aloof, enigmatic, and cursed with an ugly face which might prove to be his undoing; and Dor Kharkongor, ace archer, the spirit of the hills, caught between single-minded loyalty to James and paternal affection for John.
Set against the lush landscape of ShiIlong, Dhruba Hazarika’s tale of revenge and violence brilliantly evokes the sights and smells of North-East India while narrating a dynamic tale which addresses the universal themes of friendship, loyalty and the inherent loneliness of man.
Byomkesh Bakshi (1)
Byomkesh Bakshi’s appeal as the self-styled inquisitor, a detective not by profession but by passion, found him a dedicated following among generations of readers. This collection of stories, all set in Kolkata of the 1950s and 1960s, brings together four mysteries that put the sleuth’s remarkable mental agility to the ultimate test. In ‘the Menagerie’ (adapted by master film-maker Satyajit Ray for his 1967 film Chiriakhana) Byomkesh cracks a strange case involving broken motor parts, a seemingly natural death and the peculiar inhabitants of Golap Colony who seem capable of doing just about anything to safeguard the secrets of their tainted pasts. In ‘the Jewel Case’ he investigates the mysterious disappearance of a priceless necklace, while in ‘the Will That Vanished’ he solves a baffling riddle to fulfil the last wish of a close friend. And, in ‘the Quills of the Porcupine’, the shrewd detective is in his element as he expertly foils the sinister plans of a ruthless opportunist. Sreejata Guha’s translation captures brilliantly the thrill and ingenuity of Byomkesh’s exploits just as it does Saradindu Bandyopadhyay’s remarkable portrayal of a city struggling to overcome its colonial past and come into its own.