A publisher, who is at war with his industry and himself, embarks on a radical experiment in his own life and the lives of those connected to him; an academic exchanges one story for another after an accident brings a stranger into her life; and a family in rural India have their lives destroyed by a gift. These three ingeniously linked but distinct narratives, each of which has devastating unintended consequences, form a breathtaking exploration of freedom, responsibility, and ethics. What happens when market values replace other notions of value and meaning? How do the choices we make affect our work, our relationships, and our place in the world? Neel Mukherjee’s new novel exposes the myths of individual choice, and confronts our fundamental assumptions about economics, race, appropriation, and the tangled ethics of contemporary life.
Choice is a scathing, compassionate quarrel with the world, a masterful inquiry into how we should live our lives, and how we should tell them.
Catagory: Fiction
Fiction main category
The Life Impossible
The remarkable next novel from Matt Haig, the author of #1 New York Times bestseller The Midnight Library, with more than nine million copies sold worldwide
“What looks like magic is simply a part of life we don’t understand yet…”
When retired math teacher Grace Winters is left a run-down house on a Mediterranean island by a long-lost friend, curiosity gets the better of her. She arrives in Ibiza with a one-way ticket, no guidebook and no plan.
Among the rugged hills and golden beaches of the island, Grace searches for answers about her friend’s life, and how it ended. What she uncovers is stranger than she could have dreamed. But to dive into this impossible truth, Grace must first come to terms with her past.
Filled with wonder and wild adventure, this is a story of hope and the life-changing power of a new beginning.
Leech and Other Stories
Leech dives into the stories and lives of contemporary Nepalis struggling to belong to new worlds. In Kathmandu, they are caught between tradition and progress. In America, it is no different.
A leech caught inside a man’s nostril reveals fissures of class; a middle-aged Nepali man tries to come to terms with his sexuality in a deeply conventional social system; a professor worries about his immigrant status; a young couple try to bridge the silences in their relationship after moving to America.
Each story explores the distance between home and abroad, desire and reality, allegiance and treachery.
The Scent of Fallen Stars
A scholarly loner and a musical prodigy come to India for answers, over twenty years apart…
In 1995, thirty-six-year-old Will arrives in newly liberalized India. Smarting from the collapse of his academic dreams, he finds little fulfilment in his well-paying telecommunications job or the social confines of New Delhi’s expat community.
One monsoon night, he encounters young, enigmatic Leela, who blazes into his world and unleashes a storm of passion and devastation that will alter it forever.
Twenty-three years later, Aria lands in the city on a quest to find the mother whom she believed to be dead. Estranged from her convalescing father, her journey leads her to unravel the mysteries of her parents’ story and her mother’s life—from her childhood in an orphanage to a doomed love affair and finally, the remote shores of asceticism.
As she searches for answers and a sense of belonging, Aria stumbles upon lost worlds, haunting memories, and the explosive secret that torpedoed her father’s life, the reverberations of which will be cataclysmic for her own.
Like Being Alive Twice
Is there a moment, so pliant, that we can nudge it towards any future we desire?
Sometimes I believe that there is such a moment. In a lifetime, once.
In an unnamed nation that’s about to rupture, Priyamvada (Poppy), a Hindu and Tariq, a Muslim are in love. In a few hours, Tariq intends to propose; Poppy intends to say yes. Both assume that they’ll fend off political blowback. For, surely, their privilege will protect them.
But will it? Will Poppy and Tariq sustain a love so wholesome, so cossetted, that it remains impervious to a dystopian state? Or will the two be rent apart by chance and circumstance? What will their lives look like as they plunge into a brave new future, together or apart?
Written in alternating chapters, Like Being Alive Twice trails fact and possibility—the tale as-it-was and the tale as-it-could-have-been-if-only—arranging and rearranging, tweaking and nudging; hoping to find a lasting peace in one or the other story; hoping, above all else, that such peace will prevail over murderous times.
Politically urgent, stylistically intrepid, and relentless in its commitment to scrutinizing love, loss and the language of privilege, Like Being Alive Twice tells of the frantic pursuit of life piled upon life, even as a bloodied world closes in.
The Hidden Hindu Boxset
Prithvi, a twenty-one-year-old, is searching for a mysterious middle-aged Aghori—a Shiva devotee—Om
Shastri, who was last traced more than 200 years ago, before he was captured and sent to a high-tech facility. When a team of specialists drugged and hypnotized the Aghori for interrogation, he claimed to have witnessed all the four yugas (epochs in Hinduism) and to have even played a part in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.
The first battle is lost. What seemed to be the end of all wars was just the beginning of an incredible journey in search of a hidden verse. Om is still incomplete without the knowledge of his past, but he is not alone anymore. Two of the mightiest warriors of all time stand by his side. Two mysterious warriors stand unconditionally with Nagendra too or is there a hidden agendas behind all the allies?
Who are LSD and Parimal? Will Om finally know about his past? Who is Devdhwaja: Nagendra or Om? Where are the remaining words hidden? Will Nagendra find them all and complete the verse, or will the immortals be able to stop him?
Unravel the unexpected mystery of the doomed immortals running out of time.
Lal Quila/लाल किला
अगर इतिहास को सरल तरीके से, रोचकता के साथ प्रस्तुत किया जाए तो हर पाठक दिलचस्प के साथ पढ सकता है, क्योंकि उसे युद्धों और संधियों की तिथियाँ याद रखने में कोई दिलचस्पी न होगी। इसी सिलसिले में आचार्य चतुरसेन शास्त्री जी की रचना ’लाल किला’ एक पठनीय रचना के रूप में में उपलब्ध है। उन्होंने इतिहास को बहुत रोचक तरीके से प्रस्तुत किया है। हालांकि यह इतिहास लाल किले को आधार बना कर लिखा गया है, जिसमें हुमायूँ से लेकर अंतिम मुगल शासक बहादुर शाह जफर तक का वर्णन मिलता है, परंतु यह मुगल काल का अनछुआ इतिहास है।
लाल किला सदियों से भारत की आन-बान-शान का प्रतीक रहा है। लाल किला में रहकर सारे हिन्दुस्तान पर शासन चलाने वाले मुग़ल बादशाहों की रोचक और मार्मिक दास्तान को इस उपन्यास में बड़ी ही बारीकी और सजीवता से उकेरा गया है।
Omprakash Valmiki ki Yaadgari Kahaniyan/ओमप्रकाश वाल्मीकि की यादगारी कहानियाँ
स्त्री को पुरुष समाज कितना भी कमज़ोर समझे, लेकिन वह कमज़ोर नहीं है। ओमप्रकाश वाल्मीकि ने अपनी कहानियों में ऐसी ही अदम्य साहस से परिपूर्ण स्त्रियों का चित्रण किया है। वाल्मीकि जी की कहानियों में सिर्फ दलित चिंतन ही नहीं है बल्कि स्त्री शोषण, अत्याचार आदि पर भी उनकी लेखनी उतनी ही पैनी है, जितनी दलित शोषण और चिंतन को लेकर। अपनी कहानियों के माध्यम से वाल्मीकि जी ने समाज तथा परिवार में हो रहे स्त्री शोषण का बहुत ही बारीकी से चित्रण किया है। इनकी कहानियों में स्त्री पात्रों तथा उनके शोषण को पढ़कर ऐसा लगता है कि ये स्त्री चरित्र सिर्फ वाल्मीकि की कहानियों का ही प्रतिनिधित्व नहीं करतीं, बल्कि हमारे समाज की अधिकांश स्त्रियों का प्रतिनिधित्व करती हैं। जो हमेशा इस समस्या से टकराती है। यह समस्या हमारे समाज में कोढ़ की तरह है जो दिन पर दिन घटने के बजाय बढ़ती जा रही है। हम 21वीं सदी के प्रांगण में प्रवेश तो कर गए हैं लेकिन स्त्री के प्रति हमारा जो नज़रिया है वह आज भी पुरातन वाला है। समाज के नज़रिए का प्रतिरोध करती वाल्मीकि जी की ये यादगारी कहानियॉं अपने आपमें बेजोड़ हैं।
Fool Bahadur
A delightful caper through colonial Bihar, Fool Bahadur by Jayanath Pati is a humorous reflection on the state’s erstwhile society and bureaucracy—told through the story of a young law officer, who hustles his way through the bureaucratic corridors to win the coveted British title of Rai Bahadur. The first-ever translation of this forgotten Magahi novel into English by Abhay K. is a tour de force that will leave you chuckling at the characters dotting its intriguing plot.
Manjhali Didi Badi Didi/मंझली दीदी बड़ी दीदी
शरत् बाबू मस्तिष्क से अधिक हृदय को छूते हैं। ममतामयी नारी की वेदना का तो उन्होंने ऐसा हृदय-द्रावक चित्र अपनी कृतियों में प्रस्तुत किया है कि पाठक को बरबस रुलाई आ जाती है। न जाने पीड़ा से उन्हें क्यों इतना प्यार है। वे पात्रों के दुख-दर्द को पाठक के हृदय में उतार देते हैं। मंझली दीदी-बड़ी दीदी उनकी ऐसी ही मार्मिक रचना है। इस कहानी पर एक उत्कृष्ट फिल्म का निर्माण मंझली दीदी के नाम से हो चुका है।