Best of
India

1956

Shadow of the Moon


M.M. Kaye - 1956
    SHADOW OF THE MOON is the story of Winter de Ballesteros, a beautiful English heiress come home to her beloved India. It is also the tale of Captain Alex Randall, her protector, who aches to possess her. Forged in the fires of a war that threatens to topple an empire, their tale is the saga of a desperate and unforgettable love that consumes all in its thrall. Filled with the mystery of moonlit palace gardens and the whisperings of passion and intrigue, M. M. Kaye evokes an era at once of its time, yet timeless."Another splendid tale of India." (Wall Street Journal)

The Room on the Roof


Ruskin Bond - 1956
    Written when the author was seventeen, it brilliantly describes the hopes and passions that capture young minds and hearts. A moving tale of love and friendship, it has endured as Bond’s most beloved novel.

Bugles and a Tiger: My Life in the Gurkhas


John Masters - 1956
    He went to Sandhurst in 1933 at the age of eighteen and was commissioned into the 4th Gurkha Rifles in time to take part in some of the last campaigns on the turbulent north-west frontier of India. John Masters joined a Gurhka regiment on receiving his commission, and his depiction of garrison life and campaigning on the North-West Frontier has never been surpassed. BUGLES AND A TIGER is a matchless evocation of the British Army in India on the eve of the Second World War. Still very much the army depicted by Kipling, it stands on the threshold of a war that will transform the world. This book is the first of three volumes of autobiography that touched a chord in the post-war world.

ചെമ്മീൻ | Chemmeen


Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai - 1956
    Unable to live with the man she loves, Karutthamma marries Palani, who, despite the scandal about his wife's past, never stops trusting her, a trust that is reaffirmed each time he goes to sea and comes back safe since the 'sea-mother' myth among the fishermen community goes that the safe return of a fisherman depends on the fidelity of his wife. Then, one night, Karutthamma and Pareekkutty meet and their love is rekindled while Palani is at sea, baiting a shark ... The hugely successful novel was adapted into a film of the same name, and won critical acclaim and commercial success. Anita Nair's evocative translation brings this classic of Indian literature to a new generation that hasn't had the opportunity to savour this tale of love and longing.

The Nature Of Man According To The Vedanta


John Levy - 1956
    In this book he makes the classic argument against subject- object duality and determines that the true Self cannot be known.

Train to Pakistan


Khushwant Singh - 1956
    By the time the monsoon broke, almost a million of them were dead, and all of northern India was in arms, in terror, or in hiding. The only remaining oases of peace were a scatter of little villages lost in the remote reaches of the frontier. One of these villages was Mano Majra.”It is a place, Khushwant Singh goes on to tell us at the beginning of this classic novel, where Sikhs and Muslims have lived together in peace for hundreds of years. Then one day, at the end of the summer, the “ghost train” arrives, a silent, incredible funeral train loaded with the bodies of thousands of refugees, bringing the village its first taste of the horrors of the civil war. Train to Pakistan is the story of this isolated village that is plunged into the abyss of religious hate. It is also the story of a Sikh boy and a Muslim girl whose love endured and transcends the ravages of war.Introduction by Arthur Lall

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on Education


Sri Aurobindo - 1956
    Education does not mean that learning is just for the sake of earning money through one's life, although that too is a necessary objective, but the education should indeed involve all parts of our being, physical, vital, mental, psychic and spiritual.