After freeing her darling son, Jonkers, from the clutches of his low class, slutty secretary, Aunty Pussy has charged Butterfly with finding him a new wife—a rich, fair, beautiful, old family type. Quickly. But who wants to marry poor, plain, die-vorced Jonkers? As Butterfly schemes her way through shaadis, GTs (oho baba, Get Togethers!), and kitty parties trying to find a suitable girl from the right bagground, she discovers to her dismay that her hapless cousin has his own ideas about his perfect mate. And secretly she may even agree!
Full of wit and wickedness, Tender Hooks is another delightful romp through Pakistani high society from the bestselling author of The Diary of a Social Butterfly.
Alice Bhatti has just come out of prison and is looking for a second chance. She’s hungry, tough, and full of fight, but being a Catholic choohra in Karachi means she also needs good luck. A lot of it. Alice’s prayers are answered when she gets a job as Junior Nurse at the Sacred Heart Hospital, a squalid public hospital full of shoot-out victims and homeless drug addicts. There she meets Teddy Butt, a trigger happy, ex-body builder, and a part-time goon for the police. The two could not be further apart and that’s why they fall in love—Teddy with sudden violence, Alice in cautious hope. How will their unlikely romance end?
In A Case of Exploding Mangoes, Mohammed Hanif tore into the corruption of the army and General Zia’s dictatorship; in this novel he draws a dark and compelling portrait of Pakistan today where killers fall in love and lovers are forced to make impossible choices. Written with savage humour and in sizzling prose, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti is a tour de force from one of the most brilliant young writers today.
Is the memory of happiness that has passed, sad or happy?
Four middle aged men sit together in a railway station, waiting for dawn to break. To pass their time, each tells a story of a woman they loved secretly in their youth…
Romantic, elegant, suffused with melancholy, My Kind of Girl is a classic love story from one of Bengal’s great writers.
Moving from the elegant drawing rooms of Lahore to the mud villages of rural Multan, a powerful collection of short stories about feudal Pakistan.
An impoverished young woman becomes a wealthy relative’s mistress; an electrician on the make confronts his desperate assailant to protect his most prized possession; a farm manager rises far in the world-but his family discovers after his death the transience of power; a maid, who advances herself through sexual favours, unexpectedly falls in love. In these linked stories about the family and household staff of the ageing KK Harouni, we meet masters and servants, landlords and supplicants, politicians and electricians, village women, and Karachi housewives.
2009—year of the slump. America is in the grip of severe economic hardship and unemployment. The only numbers that are on the rise is the suicide rate. Arun Gupta, entrepreneur, lothario, Aramis cologne user, evangelist of new India’s new dreams, sees a glimmer of a business plan form out of the American crisis. He wants to save lives. And he wants to do it sitting in his baroque Navi Mumbai office. His idea is simple. If everything can be outsourced to India, why not the saving of American lives? Part rant, part satire, 1888 Dial India documents, through the politically incorrect words of its anti-hero, the dreams of corporate India.
An unlikely friendship helps create beauty and luxury in a coastal paradise. When British multinational AIDCORP lands a project to build a tourist complex—Shalimar—in a coastal village in south India, Mr Tully, one of the directors, arrives at the village to oversee the construction. There he meets Rikki, an orphaned fisher boy, and a deep and abiding friendship arises between the two, notwithstanding the gulf between their lives. The fisher community is torn when half the fishermen begin to work with the company, leaving the other half to suffer from a shrinking catch. Rikki must find a way to pay off his parents’ debt, but he cannot abandon his life near the sea. Thanks to his fluent English, learned from an old English couple who used to live in the village, he begins to work for Tully. Though they come from vastly different worlds, Tully and Rikki learn to accept and value each other: a human relationship forged from the shared human need for goodwill, affection and understanding. It is with the help of this alliance of mutual respect that Shalimar is successfully built, and Tully manages to restore Avalon, a mansion his grandfather built in the area. Pleasure City explores the issues of the interaction between East and West, native tradition and imported technology, in the context of the scientific and technical development of an India that is, well after Independence, racing ahead to forge its postcolonial identity. It is an identity that, like Shalimar, grows from collaboration between East and West, and mutual exchange of ideas and knowledge.
A stunningly lyrical work, The Great Golden Sacrifice of the Mahabharata reinterprets Vyasa’s epic from Arjuna’s point of view. As Arjuna relives the battle of Kurukshetra, he senses a profound change coming upon himself. He begins to understand the true meaning of surrender and sacrifice.
The book comprises three parts, narrated principally by Arjuna. Part I takes us through the childhood and youth of the Pandavas and Kauravas, the game of dice, the Pandavas’ exile, and ends with the armies arrayed for battle at Kurukshetra. Part II recounts the battle itself, and the teachings of the Bhagvad Gita. Part III presents a moving and brilliantly original take on the Mahabharata, as Lidchi-Grassi gives a voice to the forgotten victims of every war—the ordinary citizens who must pick themselves up, and resume the business of life. An old order has been swept away, but can the new age—the Kali Yuga—help lessen human strife and misery? Vastly ambitious in scope and epic in scale, The Great Golden Sacrifice of the Mahabharata is an astonishing read.
Leela—alluring, taciturn, haunted—is moving back to Delhi from New York. She knows her return will unsettle many lives. Twenty-five years ago her sister was seduced by Vyasa, a young university lecturer. Now Vyasa, an eminent Sanskrit scholar, is preparing for the unlikely marriage of his son, Ash, to the child of a Hindu nationalist. Compounding Leela’s disruptive presence, Vyasa’s hedonistic daughter Bharati arrives from London, reluctantly leaving her cosmopolitan university life to see Ash married. He, meanwhile, has fallen in love with his brother-in-law to be.
Gleefully presiding over the drama is Ganesh—divine, elephant-headed scribe of India’s great epic, the Mahabharata. The family patriarchs may think they have arranged the wedding for their own selfish ends, but according to Ganesh it is he who is directing events—in a bid to save Leela, his beloved heroine, from his devious enemy Vyasa.
Turning to fiction after an award-winning travel book, Alice Albinia has written a brilliantly playful and genre-defying first novel. Ambitious and entertaining, Leela’s Book weaves a tale of contemporary Delhi that crosses religious and social boundaries, reaching back into the origins of the Mahabharata itself.
Oozing with men, money, and Maseratis, Dubai is the ultimate playground for the woman who knows her Louboutins from her Louis Vuittons.
But for some, there’s a lot more at stake than a Hermes Birkin. Leila has been in search of a wealthy husband for over a decade. Nadia moves to Dubai to support her husband’s career, only to have her sacrifices thrown in her face. Sugar escapes the UK in an attempt to escape her past. Lady Luxe, the rebellious Emirati heiress, scoffs at everything her culture holds sacred. Until the day her double life starts unravelling at the seams.
Set against a backdrop of luxury hotels and manmade islands, Desperate in Dubai tells the tale of four desperate women as they struggle to find truth, love, and themselves.
aman is a fast rising marketing executive at a global drinks company; Shagun is his extraordinarily beautiful wife. With his glittering future, her vivid beauty, and their two adorable children-eight year old Arjun who looks just like her and two year old Roohi who looks just like him-the pair appear to have everything.
Then Shagun meets Raman’s dynamic new boss Ashok and everything changes. Once lovers and companions, husband and wife become enemies locked in an ugly legal battle over their two children. Caught in their midst is the childless Ishita who is in love with the idea of motherhood.
Custody is the riveting story of how family-love can disintegrate into an obsession to possess children, body and soul, as well as a chilling critique of the Indian judicial system. Told with nuance, sympathy, and clear-sightedness, it confirms Manju Kapur’s reputation as the great chronicler of the modern Indian family.
