A paying guest seems like a win-win proposition to the Joshi family. He’s ready with the rent, he’s willing to lend a hand when he can and he’s happy to listen to Mrs Joshi on the imminent collapse of our culture.
But he’s also a man of mystery. He has no last name. He has no family, no friends, no history and no plans for the future.
The siblings Tanay and Anuja are smitten by him. He overturns their lives. And when he vanishes, he breaks their hearts.
Elegantly wrought and exquisitely spare, Cobalt Blue is a tale of rapturous love and fierce heartbreak told with tenderness and unsparing clarity.
Catagory: Fiction
Fiction main category
Dawn: The Warrior Princess of Kashmir
It is AD 3000. Hiding from the world in a cave in Mount Kailash, Dawn encounters two strange beings on her sixteenth birthday. They urge the long-lost princess of Kashmir to fulfil the prophecy of fighting the Troika. This nefarious trinity-the merciless leader Arman, the AI war machine AIman and their supreme, omniscient overlord Dushita-is a vicious manipulator of stories, minds and histories. With an army of weaponized AIs and mind-controlled automatons based in Kashmir, they rule over a deadly world where men have lost their souls and women have been slain-all heading to Sarvanash, the Great Apocalypse.
With a motley group of five outlaw boys, Dawn sets upon a tumultuous journey across Time and Space to battle the most technologically lethal empire known to humanity. Her only hope is to seek out secrets hidden in the Niti folk tales of Kashmir and unlock the powers within her to become the ultimate warrior.
As the only female left in the world, Dawn will decide the fate of the Universe. But can she unleash her body, mind and spirit and ignite the fiery cosmic power of all the women who have ever lived?
A sci-fi saga that reveals eternal truths as it traverses the terrains of the Kashmir Valley-the birthplace of the greatest stories ever.
The Death Of Bunny Munro
‘I am damned,’ thinks Bunny Munro in a sudden moment of self-awareness reserved for those who are soon to die. He feels that somewhere down the line he has made a grave mistake, but this realisation passes in a dreadful heartbeat and is gone—leaving him in a room at the Grenville Hotel, in his underwear, with nothing but himself and his appetites.
Bunny Munro drinks too much, smokes too much and thinks of sex all the time. Following his wife’s suicide, he takes his nine-years-old son on a trip to recover from the tragedy. But he is about to discover that his days are numbered.
Dark, funny and raunchy, The Death of Bunny Munro is the story of a man full of emotional atyachar. Written in the high octane, charged prose that has made Nick Cave one of the world’s most acclaimed lyricists, it is an unforgettable book.
Chokher Bali
The literature of the new age seeks not to narrate a sequence of events, but to reveal the secrets of the heart. Such is the narrative mode of Chokher Bali’ – Rabindranath Tagore, Preface to Chokher Bali
Chokher Bali explores the forbidden emotions unleashed when a beautiful young widow enters the seemingly harmonious world of a newly married couple. This path-breaking novel by Rabindranath Tagore weaves a tangled web of relationships between the pampered and self-centred Mahendra, his innocent, childlike bride Asha, their staunch friend Bihari, and the wily, seductive Binodini, whose arrival transforms the lives of all concerned.
Radha Chakravarty’s translation brings the world of Tagore’s fiction to life, in lucid, idiomatic prose.
The Shadow Of The Crescent Moon
Fatima Bhutto’s stunning fiction debut begins and ends one rainswept Friday morning in Mir Ali, a small town in the troubled tribal region of Waziristan. Three brothers meet for breakfast. Soon after, the eldest, recently returned from America, hails a taxi to the local mosque. The second brother, a doctor, goes to check in at his hospital. His troubled wife does not join the family that morning for no one knows where Mina goes these days. And the youngest, the idealist, leaves for town on a motorbike. Seated behind him is a beautiful, fragile girl whose world has been overwhelmed by war. Three hours later, their day will end in devastating circumstances.
Beautifully written, full of emotion and heartbreak, The Shadow of the Crescent Moon is an extraordinary novel.
The Secret Of Falcon Heights
Sandeep and his younger brother, Manish, are not looking forward to spending three months in the remote, Internet-challenged hill station of Pahadpur, especially under the eagle eye of their military-minded great aunt. Apart from taking care of their kid sister, Chubs, who has a tendency to wander off on her own, the boys have absolutely nothing to do in the holidays. But there is more to Pahadpur than meets the eye. Sandeep and Manish discover that the neighbours next door, at Falcon Heights, are shunned and called ‘lepers’ by all the townsfolk. Who is the sullen, mysterious girl who lives there and flies a falcon every morning? Why do perfectly respectable citizens get up and leave, muttering darkly,every time she enters a shop or cafe? As Sandeep unravels the mystery, two terrible but seemingly plausible stories emerge, only one of which can be true.
Godsong
Born in the United States into a secularized Hindu family, Amit Majmudar puzzled over the many religious traditions on offer and found that the Bhagavad-Gita had much to teach him with its “song of multiplicities.” Chief among them is that “its own assertions aren’t as important as the relationships between its characters . . . The Gita imagined a relationship in which the soul and God are equals.” It is, he believes, “the greatest poem of friendship . . . in any language.” His verse translation captures the many tones and strategies Krishna uses with Arjuna-strict and berating, detached and philosophical, tender and personable.
The listener’s guides to each section expand on the main text and what is happening between the lines in accessible terms. Godsong is an instant classic in the field, from a poet of skill, fine intellect, and-perhaps most important-devotion.
Sitayana
Countless retellings, translations, and reworkings of the Ramayana’s captivating story exist-but none are as vivid, ingenious and powerful as Amit Majmudar’s Sitayana.
Majmudar tells the story of one of the world’s most popular epics through multiple perspectives, presented in rapid sequence-from Hanuman and Ravana, down to even the squirrel helping Rama’s army build the bridge.
However, above all, Majmudar focuses on the fierce resistance of Sita, letting us hear her voice as we have never heard it before.
The Runaways
AN EXPLOSIVE NEW NOVEL THAT ASKS DIFFICULT QUESTIONS ABOUT MODERN IDENTITY IN A WORLD ON FIRE
Anita Rose lives in a concrete block in one of Karachi’s biggest slums, languishing in poverty with her mother and older brother. Determined to escape her stifling circumstances, she struggles to educate herself, scribbling down English words-gleaned from watching TV or taught by her elderly neighbour-in her most prized possession: a glossy red notebook. All the while she is aware that a larger destiny awaits her.
On the other side of Karachi lives Monty, whose father owns half the city. But Monty wants more than fast cars and easy girls. When the rebellious Layla joins his school, he knows his life will never be the same again.
And far away in Portsmouth, Sunny fits in nowhere. It is only when he meets his charismatic, suntanned cousin Oz-whose smile makes Sunny feel found-that that he realizes his true purpose.
These three disparate lives will cross paths in the middle of a desert, a place where life and death walk hand-in-hand, and where their closely guarded secrets will force them to make a terrible choice.
Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line
Nine-year-old Jai drools outside sweet shops, watches too many reality police shows and considers himself to be smarter than his friends Pari and Faiz. When a classmate goes missing, Jai decides to use the crime-solving skills he has picked up from TV to find him. He asks Pari and Faiz to be his assistants, and together they draw up lists of people to interview and places to visit.
But what begins as a game turns sinister as other children start disappearing from their neighbourhood. Jai, Pari and Faiz have to confront terrified parents, an indifferent police force and rumours of soul-snatching djinns. As the disappearances edge ever closer to home, the lives of Jai and his friends will never be the same again.
Drawing on real incidents and a spate of disappearances in metropolitan India, Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line is extraordinarily moving, flawlessly imagined and a triumph of suspense. It captures the fierce warmth, resilience and bravery that can emerge in times of trouble and carries the reader headlong into a world that, once encountered, is impossible to forget.