But it contains much more than conflict. An epic masterpiece of huge sweep and magisterial power, “a hundred times more interesting” than the Iliad and the Odyssey, writes Wendy Doniger in the introduction, the Mahabharata is a timeless work that evokes a world of myth, passion, and warfare while exploring eternal questions of duty, love, and spiritual freedom. A seminal Hindu text, which includes the Bhagavad Gita, it is also one of the most important and influential works in the history of world civilization.Innovatively composed in blank verse rather than prose, Carole Satyamurti’s English retelling covers all eighteen books of the Mahabharata. This new version masterfully captures the beauty, excitement, and profundity of the original Sanskrit poem as well as its magnificent architecture and extraordinary scope.

    Suffering under her strict mother, she ran away from home and never turned back. Iris leads us on an enchanted journey around the world and through the Far East to what were then remote colonies of European empires during the 1930’s. Reaching Hong Kong, she falls in love, but soon after, the Japanese invade the island and bomb her new home with her and her young family inside it. Opting to escape prison camp, they flee across China, over the “Hump” of the Himalayas, to India, Kashmir and beyond. Her outgoing and positive personality captivates the reader, and her old photos and postcards add an extra dimension of interest to this historical account of her extraordinary life as a rebellious, independent woman in a bygone era of colonial powers and decadence, of the brutal war in the Pacific, and of the growth of the Far East into the powerhouse that Asia is today.

    Here she also encounters Cris, a struggling film critic whose passionate loathing for bad local movies reflects his views of modern Filipino sociaty.Coming from completely different worlds, the two eventually learn from each other. Through Cris, Halina gets a quick course on Manila life, from driving through midnight traffic to listening to the Eraserheads, while she helps him gain a newfound appreciation of living in his own country.From National Book Award-winning author Arnold Arre, creator of The Mythology Class , After Eden , Ang Mundo ni Adnong Agimat , and Trip to Tagaytay comes Halina Filipina , a story about friendship, understanding, and love; about finding one's identity and experiencing the joy of finally having a place to belong.

    However, bunkers can also become real homes, a small Japanese girl and an American POW briefly understand each other and a miraculous tree feeds starving children...This is war, no doubt, but told by someone who understands how children truly experience war and its aftermath - the bombings and parents' deaths, the life of orphans who roam the streets, the starvation and blind violence in a society beyond destruction.Akiyuki Nosaka remembers what it was like to be a child caught in war-torn Japan in 1945, and he retells his experiences in this collection of powerful and beautifully expressive stories for children.

    

    Celebrated Gond artist Bhajju Shyam now gathers together these tales for the first time. By linking the cosmic with the everyday, he expresses the essence of each myth in ten sequential images. This extraordinary visual narrative of cyclical time takes us from the germinal moment to the turnaround point, where death once again transits into renewal.

    It is a must read."—Nancy Hatch Dupree, Afghanistan Centre at Kabul UniversityA groundbreaking collection of poetry by eight contemporary Afghan women poets in English translation en face with the original Persian Dari text. These poets live in Herat, the ancient epicenter of literature and the arts.Frazana Marie is a Ph.D. candidate in Middle Eastern literature at the University of Arizona. She served as an active duty officer for over six years including two years of deployed service in Afghanistan. She is president of Civil Vision International, a nonprofit focusing on influencing international relationships.

    In their rocks and plants, empty spaces and intimate details—Kyoto's gardens manifest a unique ability to provoke thought and delight in equal measure. These varied landscapes meld the sensuality of nature with the disciplines of cosmology, poetry and meditation. Japanese aristocrats created these gardens to display not just wealth and power, but cultural sensitivity and an appreciation for transcendent beauty. A class of professional gardeners eventually emerged, transforming Japanese landscape design into a formalized art. Today, Kyoto's gardens display an enormous range of forms—from rock gardens display of extreme minimalism and subtle hues, to stroll gardens of luscious proportions and vibrant colors.In Kyoto Gardens Simmons' photographs present a fresh and contemporary look at Kyoto's most important gardens. Their beauty is enhanced and humanized by gardeners tending the grounds using the tools of their art. Clancy's graceful text provides historical, aesthetic and cultural context to the Japanese gardens. Combining wonder and rigor, she describes how Kyoto's most beloved gardens remain faithful to their founders' creative spirit and conception. Journey to Kyoto's thirty gardens with just a turn of a page, or use the handy maps to plan your trip.

    The result is a surprising and moving meditation on memory, loss, and the bonds of family. Award-winning novelist Wu Ming-Yi is also an artist, designer, photographer, literary professor, butterfly scholar, environmental activist, traveller and blogger, and is widely considered the leading writer of his generation in his native Taiwan.

    It speaks of trees, flowers, fruits, birds, snakes, insects and animals that populate Delhi and its surroundings through the twelve months of the year. It is a book of wonder, noting the beauty of the many fairs and festivals celebrated in the country; telling the story of clouds, of what their shapes and movements mean; investigating why hailstorms come in spring and early summer and not in winter; writing about how bird communicate with each other and why their calls vary with the seasons. Woven into the text are poems by Kalidasa, Guru Nanak, Meyer Taqi Meer, Mirza Ghalib, Akbar Allahbadi, Rabindranath Tagore, Rudyard Kipling and many others. Delhi through the seasons is Khushwant Singh's collaboration with Suddhasattwa Basu, one of India's finest painters of the natural phenomena. A rare treasure.

    Neither does Abhi.However, when a daunting episode brings them together, neither can fight against the attraction they feel towards each other. As the romance gradually blossoms, it is all they can do to hold back from the giddily emotional tumult."Of Knights and Lilies" follows the story of Shruti and Abhi, and what happens when they get closer to that magnificent sentiment called 'love'. Several questions arise when they are at their closest to it. Will the stars align to allow them that happiness? Or will they throw in a few obstacles? Will Abhi be able to save Shruti again?Most important of all: Will their love remain unspoken? Will it survive?

    Transience is a poetry anthology that connects the different transient stages of love and romance in a failed love story.

    These conflicts are immense and various, singular and commonplace. Throughout the epic, characters face them with no clear indications of what is right and what is wrong; there are no absolute answers. Thus every possible human emotion features in the Mahabharata, the reason the epic continues to hold sway over our imagination. In this superb and widely acclaimed translation of the complete Mahabharata, Bibek Debroy takes on a great journey with incredible ease.

    His mother and sister find it hard to tolerate a high-spirited, solar topee wearing 'foreigner'.She has sacrificed her life of privilege in India, to live in England with her new husband's family. As WW2 takes hold, his regiment is posted overseas.Phyllis is left to defend herself from her in-law's cold and increasingly brutal attitude. She struggles to rescue her baby from being snatched away by her childless sister-in-law. Dance with Fireflies is based on a true story. Thoughtfully written, it explores the prejudice facing an Anglo-Indian woman arriving in England from the decaying Raj.