Khaak aur Khoon / خاک اور خون


Naseem Hijazi - 1950
    On June 3, 1947 Lord Mountbatten announced that district of Gurdaspur was to be assigned to Pakistan but Redcliffe, Head of the Boundary Commission, conspired with Indian politicians such as Nehru and modified the geographic boundaries of the two newly formed countries in order to include the district of Gurdaspur in India’s map. As a result, the Muslim population of Gurdaspur set out in search of a safe home in Pakistan but many dangers awaited them on their journey to their new homeland

Netaji: Living Dangerously


Kingshuk Nag - 2016
    Did Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose die in an air crash in Taihoku (Taipei, Taiwan) on 18 August 1945? Was he sent off to Siberia by Joseph Stalin? Did he die there? Or did he escape? Or was he let off, eventually to make his way back to India? Was he the mysterious Gumnami Baba of Faizabad, Uttar Pradesh? If so, how did he find his way back? Why did Bose leave India when he did? Was it on account of his political approach, which was opposed by the then high command of the Congress party that wanted a quick transfer of power from the British?The past comes alive as journalist and author Kingshuk Nag seeks answers to these and related questions at a time when there is a considerable renewal of interest in Netaji’s fate with old records tumbling out, the latest being the declassification of files by the government.Netaji: Living Dangerously is a riveting account of the life of one of India’s most charismatic leaders and an in-depth analysis of one of the world’s best kept secrets.

Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape


Susan Brownmiller - 1975
    In lucid, persuasive prose, Brownmiller has created a definitive, devastating work of lasting social importance.Chosen by THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW as One of the Outstanding Books of the Year

The Bloodstone Papers


Glen Duncan - 2006
    Kate Lyle is a headstrong young woman desperate to escape a sexually predatory household. Both are Anglo-Indians, members of a race that helped turn the wheels of Empire for years. But Empire days are numbered, and as India sheds its colonial skin, the young lovers must face their own tryst with destiny.In twenty-first-century England, Owen Monroe is writing this story of his parents' lives in an effort to avoid the problems in his own: lost love, relentless libido, dreams of death, and a world full of headlines he can't understand and doesn't want to. But keeping past and present apart isn't as easy as it seems, and before long Owen is deep in the one story he never wanted to tell....Epic in its scope yet never losing sight of the telling, gorgeous detail, The Bloodstone Papers is an extraordinarily rich and beautiful read that manages to ask the big questions without fuss and to accept that the big answers aren't always what we want to hear.

A Strange Kind of Paradise: India Through Foreign Eyes


Sam Miller - 2014
    Sam Miller investigates how the ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese, Arabs, Africans, Europeans and Americans - everyone really, except for Indians themselves - came to imagine India. His account of the engagement between foreigners and India spans the centuries from Alexander the Great to Slumdog Millionaire. It features, among many others, Thomas the Apostle, the Chinese monk Xuanzang, Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta, Vasco da Gama, Babur, Clive of India, several Victorian pornographers, Mark Twain, EM Forster, Allen Ginsberg, the Beatles and Steve Jobs. Interspersed between these tales is the story of Sam Miller's own 25-year-long love affair with India. The result is a spellbinding, 2500-year-long journey through Indian history, culture and society, in the company of an author who informs, educates and entertains in equal measure, as he travels in the footsteps of foreign chroniclers, exposes some of their fabulous fantasies and overturns longheld stereotypes about race, identity and migration. A tour de force that is at once scholarly and thought-provoking, delightfully eccentric and laugh-out-loud funny, this book is destined to become a much-loved classic.

A Mirrored Life


Rabisankar Bal - 2013
    More than half a century may have passed since his death, but his poetry remains alive, inscribed in every stone and tree and pathway. Rumi’s followers entrust Ibn Battuta with a manuscript of his life stories to spread word of the mystic on his travels. As Battuta reads and recites these tales, his listeners discover their own lives reflected in these stories—fate has bound them, and perhaps you, to Rumi. A Mirrored Life reaffirms the magical powers of storytelling, making us find Rumi in each of our hearts.

Warrior: The Legend Of Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen


Peter Hathaway Capstick - 1998
    At the time of his death, the world-renowned adventure writer was putting the finishing touches on this, a stirring and vivid biography of Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, a man with whom he felt he had much in common. Edited and prepared for publication by his widow, Fiona Capstick, this riveting book is Capstick's farewell to his fans and the final addition to the bestselling Peter Capstick Library.Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen was one of those rare men whom fate always seems to cast in the dramas that shape history. As a young officer, he served in India and Africa during the glory days of the British Empire, defending the crown's dominions and exploring its darkest reaches. His exploits in the bloody colonial wars of turn-of-the-century East Africa earned him a reputation as one of the most fierce and ruthless soldiers in the Empire, yet it was during those years spent roaming the silent places of the Serengeti, hunting its game and learning its secrets, that Meinertzhagen developed a fascination with Africa that would last a lifetime.But there were other adventures to come, and Capstick narrates them all with his trademark skill and wit: daring commando raids against German forces in Africa and the Mideast during World War I, covert missions to the USSR and Nazi Germany between the wars, work as an OSS agent during World War II, and Meinertzhagen's ceaseless support of Israeli nationhood are all woven together into an epic adventure, a powerful chronicle that follows the tracks of a twentieth-century legend.

The Parted Earth


Anjali Enjeti - 2021
    Her secret Muslim boyfriend Amir, who sends her origami love notes, must now flee with his sister Layla and their parents to Lahore, Pakistan. Amir promises to return to Delhi to marry Deepa after the violence of Partition has ended. Soon after Amir’s departure, Deepa’s parents are killed. Her God-parents, fearful that Deepa is in grave danger, force her to move with them to London. Nine months later, Deepa gives birth to Vijay. She never sees or hears from Amir again.After a devastating miscarriage in Atlanta in the present day, 40-year-old newly unemployed Shanthi (“Shan”) Johnson must confront her husband Max about his reckless spending. While grieving both her pregnancy loss and her marriage’s subsequent implosion, she finds clues that lead her to believe that the real reason her deceased father Vijay had abandoned her and her mother 30 years earlier to move to New Delhi was because he was in search of his father, a man he’d never known. To kickstart her life again, Shan moves out of her marital home, searches for a new job, and resumes her father’s search for her grandfather, whose name, she later learns, is Amir. To find Amir, Shan must first track down her estranged 86-year-old grandmother Deepa, a prickly woman who never wanted to have anything to do with Shan. During Shan's search, which eventually takes her to Amsterdam and New Delhi, she comes to realize that the origami love notes Amir once sent to Deepa may be the clue to their reunion.

Stories I Must Tell: The Emotional Life of an Actor


Kabir Bedi - 2021
    That first magical encounter with the Beatles as a student in Delhi. The sudden move to Bombay, away from home, friends and college. His exciting years in advertising, his extraordinarily successful career abroad and his many painful setbacks. His relationships with the irrepressible Protima Bedi and the dazzling Parveen Babi that changed the course of his life. Of the scars they left, and the trauma of three divorces, and how he finally found fulfilment. And why his beliefs have changed.These are tumultuous stories set in Hollywood, Bollywood and Europe. The joys of blazing new trails abroad, and the dangers of them. He also tells the fascinating love story of his Indian father, a philosopher in Europe, and his British-born mother, the world’s highest-ranked Buddhist nun. And most poignant of all, the battle to save his schizophrenic son.Stories I Must Tell is the unusually candid and compelling memoir of a man who holds nothing back, in love or in storytelling. It is the story of a middle-class boy from Delhi whose career now spans the globe. Equally, it is the tale of how he survived the roller-coaster journey of the making, unmaking and remaking of him as a person.

The Legend of Amrapali


Anurag Anand - 2011
    Vaishali, the capital of the Confederacy and that of the illustrious Lichchavis was not only a center of commerce and political activity but also the blessed motherland of Amrapali.The Legend of Amrapali is the story of mayhem and turmoil brought about by the obstinate desires of one man – a man blinded by the intoxication of power. It is a story of sinister plots and political wizardry, of chaste love and unbridled passion, of naked ambitions and dogged loyalties that lead to the transformation of an innocent young girl into one of the most revered, even worshipped, and occasionally feared personalities of her times. A gripping cocktail of fantasy, fiction, fable and history that retains its charismatic appeal through the centuries gone by!

The World's 100 Greatest Speeches


Terry O'Brien - 2016
    These speeches−by kings and queens, presidents and prime ministers, freedom fighters and political leaders, dictators and writers−have made a mark in world history. These speeches not only give us an insight into the past, but also inspire us with their demands for equality, cries of freedom, a call to arms, rooting for the cause of the individual or the nation.Learn from the inspirational words of King Charles, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Adolf Hitler, Mohandas K. Gandhi, George Washington, Rabindranath Tagore, Anne Besant, Theodore Roosevelt and Subhas Chandra Bose, among many others.

Churchill's Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India During World War II


Madhusree Mukerjee - 2008
    But while he has been widely extolled for his achievements, parts of Churchill's record have gone woefully unexamined. As journalist Madhusree Mukerjee reveals, at the same time that Churchill brilliantly opposed the barbarism of the Nazis, he governed India with a fierce resolve to crush its freedom movement and a profound contempt for native lives. A series of Churchill's decisions between 1940 and 1944 directly and inevitably led to the deaths of some three million Indians. The streets of eastern Indian cities were lined with corpses, yet instead of sending emergency food shipments Churchill used the wheat and ships at his disposal to build stockpiles for feeding postwar Britain and Europe.Combining meticulous research with a vivid narrative, and riveting accounts of personality and policy clashes within and without the British War Cabinet, Churchill's Secret War places this oft-overlooked tragedy into the larger context of World War II, India's fight for freedom, and Churchill's enduring legacy. Winston Churchill may have found victory in Europe, but, as this groundbreaking historical investigation reveals, his mismanagement--facilitated by dubious advice from scientist and eugenicist Lord Cherwell--devastated India and set the stage for the massive bloodletting that accompanied independence.

Ghosts in the Forest (Kindle Single)


Corinne Purtill - 2015
    They did not know that the war they were fleeing had in fact ended—25 years earlier. Corinne Purtill was one of the first journalists to meet the families upon their incredible return to society. Years later she returned to Cambodia to learn the truth about their time on the run. What she found was a darker and more complicated tale than the one they first shared, a story of terror, isolation, fierce loyalty, appalling choices and murder. The result is a story that examines the unyielding human need for family and connection and the meaning of survival. Corinne Purtill is a journalist who has reported around the world for publications including Quartz, GlobalPost, CNN, Salon and the Cambodia Daily. She lives in California with her family. Cover design by Hannah Perrine Mode

Vikram and the Vampire: Classic Hindu Tales of Adventure Magic and Romance


Anonymous - 1870
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

A Brief History of the Great Moghuls


Bamber Gascoigne - 1971
    The book deals with one of the most interesting periods of Indian history, the 16th and 17th centuries, providing a picture of the country's most flamboyant rulers, their sublime palaces, their passions, art, science and religion, and their system of administration.