Linda, in her thirties, begins to question the routine and predictability of her days. In everybody’s eyes, she has a perfect life: happy marriage, children, and a career. Yet what she feels is an enormous sense of dissatisfaction. All that changes when she encounters a successful politician who had, years earlier, been her high-school boyfriend. As she rediscovers the passion missing from her life, she will face a life-altering choice.
Catagory: Fiction
Fiction main category
The Spy
When Mata Hari arrived in Paris she was penniless. Within months she was the most celebrated woman in the city.
As a dancer, she shocked and delighted audiences; as a courtesan, she bewitched the era’s richest and most powerful men.
But as paranoia consumed a country at war, Mata Hari’s lifestyle brought her under suspicion. In 1917, she was arrested in her hotel room on the Champs Elysees, and accused of espionage.
Told in Mata Hari’s voice through her final letter, The Spy is the unforgettable story of a woman who dared to defy convention and paid the ultimate price.
Ib’s Endless Search for Satisfaction
SHORTLISTED FOR THE JCB PRIZE FOR LITERATURE 2019
SHORTLISTED FOR THE SHAKTI BHATT PRIZE 2019
‘And then finally I felt sadness, aided perhaps by those futile notes, by the dust that keeps thickening, by the untouchable past, the inevitable future, and by everything else that pushes us around.’
Ib lives with his schizophrenic father and his ‘nice’ mother negotiating life, not knowing what to do, steered by uncaring winds and pushy people. From his slimy, unmiraculous birth to the tragic death of a loved one, Ib wanders the city, from one thing to another, confused, lost and alone, all the while reflecting on his predicament. He is searching for something-what he does not know-and must overcome many obstacles: family, religion, love and, finally, death. Will he be defeated by ‘this wreckage of modern life?’ Will a mysterious woman lift him out of the ‘cement’ in his soul?
In this journey of sadness and self-reflection, Ib tranforms into an ordinary man from an ordinary boy and along the way, tries to figure out life and understand himself.
In this audacious debut that is insightful, original and deeply disturbing, Roshan Ali’s play of language is nothing less than masterful.
Kanthapura
‘The first literary manifesto to point to an Indian way of appropriating the English language’
-Guardian
Regarded as the first major Indian novel in English, Kanthapura is the story of how Gandhi’s struggle for Independence came to a casteist south Indian village. Young Moorthy, back from the city, brimming with new ideas, seeks to cut across ancient barriers and unite the villagers in non-violent action. The story emerges through the eyes of a delightful old woman, who comments on the villagers’ actions with sharp-eyed wisdom, evoking the spirit of India’s traditional folk epics.
‘The finest novel to come out of India in recent years’
-E.M. Forster
The Serpent And The Rope
‘Lyrical, fluid, colloquial’—The New York Times
Rama, a young scholar, meets Madeleine at a university in France. Though they seem to be made for each other, both alike in temperament and character, at times they are divided, a huge gulf separating them. Rama’s trip back to India for his father’s illness forcibly reminds him of the underlying contrasts between India and Europe, and of a certain conflict between them in himself. When he returns to France, Rama and Madeleine must face the problems in their marriage. Can they preserve their identities, or must one sacrifice one’s inheritance to make the relationship a success?
‘More than any other writer of his generation [Rao] established the status of Indian literature in English’—The Hindu
The Cat And Shakespeare
‘A teasing comedy of manners exploring metaphysical themes’—Telegraph
The Cat and Shakespeare is a gentle, almost teasing fable of two friends. Govindan Nair, an astute, down-to-earth philosopher and clerk, tackles the problems of routine living with extraordinary common sense and gusto, and his refreshing and unorthodox conclusions continually panic Ramakrishna Pai, Nair’s friend, neighbour and narrator of the story. This evocative novel brings alive the raw texture of Indian life, and delights in its humour.
‘[A] pathbreaker of Indian writing in English’—Guardian
Qahar
Vimal promised himself that he would move to Delhi and live a normal life as a family man with his wife and child; erasing every memory of his haunting past. He promised to forget that he had spent his life scraping bloody words into the wall of time.
But one day, a whirlwind puts a sudden end to the calm before the storm and he is blown away like a twig. When he opens his eyes, he finds himself in that place where he promised never to venture again.
What A Loser!/The Story of an IAS Aspirant/Hilarious Saga of Mukherjee Nagar
Pandey Anil Kumar Sinha (PAKS) comes to Delhi with precisely three
things: One, his jaded old trunk full of sattu and achaar; Two, a borrowed
dream of becoming an IAS officer from his clerk father; and three, to sleep
with a milky white Punjabi girl.
However, PAKS’s goals begin to change when he falls in love, enrols for
English classes and finds cool friends. Then suddenly he is pushed to the
forefront of college elections and he becomes a hero!
PAKS is living his ultimate dream … or is he?
What will happen next? Will he ever get what he really wants?
Find out in this laughathon full of clichés straight from the cow belt of
India!
Ishqiyapa
Love was not what they were looking for and yet they found it
Sweety, the ill-tempered loud-mouthed daughter of a local MLA, dreams of becoming a famous pop diva like Britney Spears.
Lallan is the Patna’s ‘Ambani in making’. He wants to start a ‘kidnapping insurance’ business.
Their flickering dreams ignite like a flame when they meet!
Sweety takes him to meet her father Kali Pandey, the in-house expert on kidnapping. And, in return, Lallan decides to help her fulfil her passion.
Somewhere along the way, the plan does not remain simple and sweet!
Set in Patna and Bombay, this serpentine comedy of errors is the story of two young lovers caught in the Ishqiyapa of love and life.
Love Curry
Three flatmates in London begin to see how different their lives are and at the same time how similar their backgrounds. And when life begins to deal its rough cards, how easy things become when they are all together!
Ali is a Pakistani chef with the dream of setting up his own nihari restaurant. Shehzad is a cool tattoo artist from Bangladesh with a broken past, and Rishi is an Indian with nondescript skills.
They all make one mistake: that of falling in love with the same girl. They become arch-rivals. But when their worlds turn topsy-turvy, they have no one but each other to turn to, learning that love is as much about letting go as it is about possessing.