Bapsi Sidhwa’s brilliant fourth novel chronicles the adventures of a young Pakistani girl in America with an enormously satisfying story and characters… The extended family of Feroza Ginwalla, a lively and temperamental girl, agonizes over the decision to send her to America for a three-month holiday. This act of apparent audacity arises from concern over Feroza’s conservative attitudes, which stem from Pakistan’s rising tide of fundamentalism. Feroza’s chaperone in America, an uncle only six years her senior, is her guide, friend, and the bane of her existence. Her relationship and adventures shape her alternatively hilarious and terrifying perceptions of the US. Feroza’s family in Pakistan, meanwhile, is in delicious turmoil over the possibility that American ways will ruin her…
Catagory: Fiction
Fiction main category
How to Get Filthy Rich In Rising Asia
Cast in the mould of a self-help guide to getting rich, this is the extraordinary story of a young boy, born into a poor family. As the years pass, he moves to a slum in the city, gets a brief education, flirts with militancy, and then, hungry for advancement, sets up a bottled water business, the ultimate symbol of the modern South Asian city-a place where nothing works but everything can be had at a price. But as he leaves his past behind, one thing remains
constant and true-his love for the girl he met as a teenager.
How I Got Lucky
‘I was with Lucky… Lucky Star. He showed me what he was wearing to the Cannes Film Festival. He’s given me an Exclusive.’
Raman Malhotra is thirty five, uninitiated in the matters of love, and endlessly confused about his sexuality. A journalist with The Weekly, his search for front page scoops come to a screeching halt when he’s assigned the Bollywood beat. Throw into the mix the shenanigans of an overpowering lesbian photographer, a dirt-swapping PR queen, a webcam model doling out sexual favours, and a rising Bollywood star.
Raman’s blah existence is dramatically thrown off-kilter when he finds himself being pursued and courted by the bisexual king of Bollywood, Lucky Star. Puckered into a world of celebrity, malicious gossip, and meaningless shags—Raman wrestles with his sense of self, ideas of love, and the monstrous caricatures of entertainment.
Journey To Ithaca
Sophie and Matteo are young and in love, sharing a dissatisfaction with their bourgeois Italian upbringing. Naturally, like so many other young Westerners in the sixties and seventies, they go to India. But the realities of life in an ashram ignite their differences; Sophie wants to be a tourist and go to Goa and eat shrimp, which Matteo scorns, seeking the ‘real’ India. Pragmatic Sophie is disillusioned by the hardships they encounter, while her husband, who yearns for spiritual fulfillment, sees only the purity of ascetic life, leading him to Mother, a charismatic guru.
Trying to reclaim an ailing Matteo, Sophie embarks on a new journey in search for a different truth; that of Mother’s mysterious past. Soon, she finds that the immortal has a history of her own; born in Cairo, she was once Laila, a dancer who toured the world before coming to Bombay to search for ‘divine love’. What each of the three people discover, on their individual quests, is at its heart that ancient truth: that wisdom is found in the journey itself.
A stirring, profound exploration of emotional exile, of sacred and profane loves, Journey to Ithaca is a masterful novel.
The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Internationally acclaimed director Mira Nair offers the reader an exclusive behind-the-scenes look into the creation of her most ambitious film yet: The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Covering every aspect of the film-making process, this magnificently designed film book comprises an incredible array of images as well as short essays by those involved in the film-making process. Mira Nair discusses how the novel was turned into a screenplay; Mohsin Hamid reminisces about his first experience on a film set; production designer Michael Carlin recounts the thrill of transforming Old Delhi into contemporary Lahore; lead actor Riz Ahmed reveals how he got under the skin of his character Changez; and editor Shimit Amin demystifies some of his tricks on the editing table. This book also features a series of gorgeous black-and-white photographs by celebrated photographer Brigitte Lacombe.
Seventeen And Done
Rinki has everything she needs to go crazy with: bickering boys, a bitchy grandma, boring books and the Biggest B of them all, Board Exams. Rinki and her wolf pack are back in action and they have company in the form of Google (Mr Know-it-all) and Adit (Mr Goody Two-shoes). At last, Rinki has her wish fulfilled. She has two boys fighting over her, er, mostly with her! Meanwhile, Rinki’s brand new grandmother, Mausiji, is raising hell at home. Her dad (lucky fellow!) is away in Coimbatore and it’s all up to Rinki to cool tempers down. At school, things are no better. Board Exams are looming large and Princy is making her feel smaller than ever. Her grades are shrinking and her waistline is growing. School life is about to get over, but not before things get a lot more crazy. Read the next instalment in the Rinki series and discover why turning seventeen is no walk in the park!
Cracked
Ever since my mom was murdered, I’ve been completely alone. I live in the shadows, because there’s no one like me. I have no choice because I have to fight the Hunger, the Hunger that drives me to hunt people and eat their souls. And I have to fight it if I want to stay out of the darkness.
WHO AM I? I’M MEDA MELANGE. WHAT AM I? I DON’T KNOW-BUT I’M NOT HUMAN. AND NOW, I FINALLY HAVE THE CHANCE TO FIND OUT.
Foreign
In a village in India, a forsaken man is about to kill himself in quiet despair. A million miles away, Katya Misra is celebrating a perfect evening in her fine, academic life in Seattle . . . until she is informed that her teenage son Kabir has run away to India in search of a father he has never met. Contemptuous of her homeland and determined to bring Kabir back where he belongs, Katya must follow her son into the home of a suicidal farmer, in a village where, every eight hours, a man kills himself. Here, as Kabir’s father inspires his son with his selfless social work, Katya finds an ally in the farmer’s wife Gayatribai, who saves Kabir’s life by damaging her own, and in return asks for Katya’s help in keeping her husband alive in the suicide epidemic that has gripped this treacherously changing nation.
Whipped up in a world of violent protest rallies, mass weddings, inglorious suicides, and a love that demands to be rekindled, Katya must learn whose life can be saved and whose she should just let go.
The Best Of Faiz
Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s poetry continues to inspire and enthral contemporary readers. The Best of Faiz consists of Shiv K. Kumar’s translations of Faiz’s most popular Urdu poems into English. The collected poems include ‘Mujh Se Pehli Si’, ‘Subhe Azadi’, ‘Sochne Do’ and ‘Bol’. This edition also includes a translator’s foreword and the original poems in nastaliq and devanagari scripts.
Amreekandesi
Akhil Arora, a young, dorky engineer in Delhi, can’t wait to get away from home and prove to his folks that he can be on his own. Meanwhile in a small town in Punjab, Jaspreet Singh, aka Jassi, is busy dreaming of a life straight out of American Pie. As fate would have it, they end up as roommates in Florida. But the two boys are poles apart in their perspectives and expectations of America. While Akhil is fiercely patriotic and hopes to come back to India in a few years, Jassi finds his Indian identity an uncomfortable burden and looks forward to finding an American girl with whom he can live happily ever after.
Laced with funny anecdotes and witty insights, Amreekandesi chronicles the quintessential immigrant experience, highlighting the clash of cultures, the search for identity, and the quest for survival in a foreign land.