‘His ideas and his contribution to Indian literature were . . . revolutionary’ -The Hindu
Divya leads a blissful life within the secure walls of the palace even as the world outside rages with caste politics and religious strife, until one night of pleasure changes her entire world. She gets pregnant only to be spurned by her lover. To preserve her high born family’s name she leaves her sheltered existence and trudges through life on her own, first as a slave and then as a court dancer. Adversity finally opens her eyes to the truth-a woman of a high family is not free. Only a prostitute is free. Divya decides that, by enslaving her body, she will preserve the freedom of her mind.
Set in the first century BC against a background of the conflict for supremacy between Hindu and Buddhist ideologies, Divya is a poignant tale that combines vivid imagination with rich historical details.
‘Reminiscent of George Orwell . . . Here too is the biting satire of society as seen through the savage eye of an uncompromising non-conformist’-Dawn
Nobody – and the whole of Boteju Land agreed – could cook like Maudiegirl. She wielded a wizard’s wand not only in the kitchen but also over domestic problems, however large in magnitude; from predicting the sex of an unborn child to knowing more than a dozen ways to cook eels; from cutting a goat in the right way to setting failing marriages straight; from nursing the ailing to health to keeping the best kitchen, Maudiegirl had a solution to every little problem. Her home was her castle and the kitchen her domain.
In the fourth serving of his Burgher chronicles, Carl Muller reverts to his favourite family, the von Blosses of his first ‘Burgher’ book, The Jam fruit Tree. A hungry family and a wonderful cook, a kind paedophile, a cantankerous mother-in-law, a disloyal husband, good-for-nothing uncles, prudish Pentecostals, Dunnyboy’s exhibitionism, Sonnaboy’s show-of-strength- the author captures the hallmarks of the von Blosses’ days and ways in his quintessentially irreverent, witty and heart-warming style.
Maudiegirl and the von Bloss Kitchen features many of Maudiegirl’s famous recipes making the book a treat not only for Muller fans but also for the senses!
Set in a village in southern India shortly after India gained Independence, Nectar in a Sieve portrays, through the lives of its characters ?? Rukmani, Nathan and their children ?? the hopes and aspirations of a young nation recently embarked on the path of development, surmounting many obstacles along the way. Few novels ever published have celebrated the human spirit, its sheer resilience, with greater success.
Originally published in 1954 to instant acclaim, Nectar in a Sieve became an international best-seller and was translated into seventeen languages. This edition introduces a whole new generation to this classic of modern literature.
Palash Krishna Mehrotra writes about prostitutes; cross dressers; murderers; drug addicts; students and stalkers; portraying their perversions and vulnerabilities with equal insight; taking us deep into the dark and seamy soul of India.
Set in the murky underbelly of big cities and small towns; slums and dotcoms; college hostels and rented rooms; Eunuch Park: Fifteen Stories of Love and Destruction is a collection like no other. Gritty; grim and depraved; these are candid vignettes of an India most of us are afraid to acknowledge.
Among the thousands of orphaned children adopted after 47 there are a few less than twenty who were planted here by Jinnah’s men . . .
At thirty-eight, feeling ancient and used up, Colonel Rajan Menon Raja knows his best years as a commando are behind him. But he is soon tested as never before. The Prime Minister s granddaughter has been abducted, and the kidnappers want some sensitive diaries in the possession of the CBI, the contents of which, if made public, can throw the country into turmoil. Raja works out a meticulous rescue plan, but the raid ends in a disaster the girl is killed, not a single kidnapper is captured and the diaries disappear. And all the evidence points to Raja s complicity. Hounded by the police and, inexplicably, a ruthless psychopath, Raja is on the run, determined to clear his name. As he makes his harrowing journey towards the truth, a sinister plot unfolds an astounding account that began in 1947 . . .
Kamala Markandaya, author of the classic Nectar in a Sieve, published ten novels in all, the last of which appeared in 1982. For the next two decades, till her death in 2004, she lived a life of near anonymity in the outskirts of London. But she hadn’t stopped writing; shortly after her death, her daughter discovered the finished typescript of a new, unpublished novel: The Catalyst: Alias, Bombay Tiger.
Set in the 1980s, Bombay Tiger tells the story of Ganguli—mercurial and larger-than-life—who arrives in Bombay with little more than ruthless ambition, and becomes the city’s biggest industrialist. A Citizen Kane-like figure—destined to become one of the most memorable protagonists in Indian fiction—Ganguli is emblematic of a changing India, post the era of high socialism, beginning to be transformed by private enterprise. This sweeping novel, poignant and comic by turns, traces his dramatic rise and fall, his loves and losses, and his eventual redemption.
Gloriously rich in incident and character and marked by Markandaya’s deep humanity, Bombay Tiger is the work of a major writer at the height of her powers.
Why did I do it? Why did I enter the country of deceit? What took me into it? I hesitate to use the word love, but what other word is there?’
Devayani chooses to live alone in the small town of Rajnur after her parents’ death, ignoring the gently voiced disapproval of her family and friends. Teaching English, creating a garden and making friends with Rani, a former actress who settles in the town with her husband and three children, Devayani’s life is tranquil, imbued with a hard-won independence. Then she meets Ashok Chinappa, Rajnur’s new District Superintendent of Police, and they fall in love despite the fact that Ashok is much older, married, and-as both painfully acknowledge from the very beginning-it is a relationship without a future.
Deshpande’s unflinching gaze tracks the suffering, evasions and lies that overtake those caught in the web of subterfuge. There are no hostages taken in the country of deceit; no victors; only scarred lives. This understated yet compassionate examination of the nature of love, loyalty and deception establishes yet again Deshpande’s position as one of India’s most formidable writers of fiction
One of the most unconventional yet immensely popular deities in the Hindu pantheon, goddess Kali essentially represents the dark and contrary aspects of the cosmos. Her naked form and association with violence, blood and gore challenge the very concept of divinity. Yet, over the centuries, she has come to represent a whole gamut of conflicting images-from bloodthirsty ogress to benign goddess. So today while she is venerated as Chamunda, a deity who verges on the macabre and grotesque, she is also adored in household shrines in one of her milder forms, Dakshina-Kali.
It is this evolution of Kali-from her origin as a tantric goddess to her metamorphosis into a divinity in mainstream religion-that Seema Mohanty captures brilliantly in this book. Drawing upon a variety of sources-rituals associated with the worship of Kali, tales from the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Puranas, the Tantras and Agamas, folklore and films-she has succeeded in portraying in engrossing detail the myriad manifestations of the enigmatic deity that is Kali.
‘You belong to one side, if you don’t you belong to the other. SOME INNER FURY It is as simple as that . . . There is no in between. You have shown your badge, you have taken your stance . . . it was there in your face, the colour of your skin, the accents of your speech, in the clothes on your back.’
Kamala Markandaya’s Some Inner Fury is the story of Mirabai, a young woman from a partly Westernized Hindu family in pre-Independent India. Previously confident of her place in society and her love for her country, Mira begins to question beliefs when her brother Kit returns from Oxford bringing with him a new lifestyle and his friend Richard. Mira’s love for Richard grows as the country’s agitation against the British gains intensity. Caught in the crossfire are Kit, now a district magistrate, his wife Premala and Govind, Kit’s and Mira’s adoptive brother, who is rumoured to be the mastermind behind the anti-British violence. Events come to a head when tragedy befalls the family and Mira is forced to choose between her love for Richard and duty towards her country.
Some Inner Fury is Kamala Markandaya’s assertion of how no one can stand apart, undecided, when a country is divided.
It is 1953 in colonial Kenya, and eightyearold Vikram Lall witnesses the celebration of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation, even as the Mau Mau guerilla war challenges British rule. Vic and his sister Deepa, whose grandfather came to Kenya from Punjab to build the railways, must find their place in this uncertain world of violent upheaval, confusing loyalties and conflicting ideologies. And among their newly acquired playmates, the brother and sister, neither Black nor White, find themselves in between British Bill and Annie, and the African Njoroge. These friendships will haunt them the rest of their lives. We follow Vic from the changing Africa of the fifties, to the sixties— a time that holds immense promise. But when that hope is betrayed by the corruption, fear and repression of the seventies and eighties, Vic finds himself drawn into the official orbit of graft and powerbrokering. Njoroge, on the other hand, can abandon neither the idealism of his youth nor his love for Deepa. Neither the cynicism of the one nor the idealism of the other can avert the tragedies that await. Acute and bittersweet, vividly portrayed and finely nuanced, The InBetween World of Vikram Lall is told in the voice of the exiled Vic from the shores of Lake Ontario, as he contemplates the historical events that have shaped him— `one of Africa’s most corrupt men’— and the choices he has made.
