Book picks similar to
This Is Not That Dawn by यशपाल
india
partition
fiction
classics
Days of Longing
Nirmal Verma - 1964
The professional meeting explodes into an intense, passionate relationship. Prague in winter is a beautiful and moody setting to the feverish love affair. The complicated and inevitably short-lived romance is poignant and deeply moving in its telling by the master of the modern Hindi novel, Nirmal Verma.This book is translation of original novel in Hindi, called Ve Din.
Mother of 1084
Mahasweta Devi - 1974
This novel focuses on the trauma of a mother who awakens one morning to the shattering news that her son is lying dead in the police morgue, reduced to a mere numeral: Corpse No. 1084. Through her struggle to understand his revolutionary commitment as a Naxalite, she recognizes her own alienation—as a woman and a wife—from the complacent, hypocritical, and corrupt feudal society her son had so fiercely rebelled against.
Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found
Suketu Mehta - 2004
He approaches the city from unexpected angles, taking us into the criminal underworld of rival Muslim and Hindu gangs; following the life of a bar dancer raised amid poverty and abuse; opening the door into the inner sanctums of Bollywood; and delving into the stories of the countless villagers who come in search of a better life and end up living on the sidewalks.
The Mirror of Beauty
Shamsur Rahman Faruqi - 1998
The splendour of imperial Delhi flares one last time. The young daughter of a craftsman in the city elopes with an officer of the East India Company. And so we are drawn into the story of Wazir Khanam: a dazzlingly beautiful and fiercely independent woman who takes a series of lovers, including a Navab and a Mughal prince--and whom history remembers as the mother of the famous poet Dagh. But it is not just one life that this novel sets out to capture: it paints in rapturous detail an entire civilization.Beginning with the story of an enigmatic and gifted painter in a village near Kishangarh, The Mirror of Beauty embarks on an epic journey that sweeps through the death-giving deserts of Rajputana, the verdant valley of Kashmir and the glorious cosmopolis of Delhi, the craft of miniature painting and the art of carpet designing, scintillating musical performances and recurring paintings of mysterious, alluring women. Its scope breathtaking, its language beguiling, and its style sumptuous, this is a work of profound beauty, depth and power.
The Year of the Runaways
Sunjeev Sahota - 2015
They have almost no idea what awaits them.In a dilapidated shared house in Sheffield, Tarlochan, a former rickshaw driver, will say nothing about his life in Bihar. Avtar and Randeep are middle-class boys whose families are slowly sinking into financial ruin, bound together by Avtar's secret. Randeep, in turn, has a visa wife across town, whose cupboards are full of her husband's clothes in case the immigration agents surprise her with a visit. She is Narinder, and her story is the most surprising of them all. The Year of the Runaways unfolds over the course of one shattering year in which the destinies of these four characters become irreversibly entwined, a year in which they are forced to rely on one another in ways they never could have foreseen, and in which their hopes of breaking free of the past are decimated by the punishing realities of immigrant life. A novel of extraordinary ambition and authority, about what it means and what it costs to make a new life—about the capaciousness of the human spirit, and the resurrection of tenderness and humanity in the face of unspeakable suffering.
The House of Blue Mangoes
David Davidar - 2001
As the thalaivar, or headman, of Chevathar, he seeks to preserve the village from both catastrophe and change, and the decisions he makes will mark his family for generations to come.A gripping family chronicle, The House of Blue Mangoes spans nearly half a century and three generations of the Dorai family as they search for their place in a rapidly changing society. The novel brings vividly to life a small corner of India, while offering a stark indictment of colonialism and reflecting with great poignancy on the inexorable social transformations of the subcontinent.
Harbart
Nabarun Bhattacharya - 1993
He has killed himself. Why? Was it a threat to his business which brought him money, respect, a standing in the family, more clients and fame? Or was it a different ghost from his shadow life, where he was constantly haunted by his own unfulfilled dreams and delusions? And as the explosive events following his suicide reveal, as in his life, Harbart remains a mystery in death. Nabarun Bhattacharya’s first novel is a landmark in modern Bengali literature for its unconventional story-telling, uncompromising language and brutal honesty. Arunava Sinha’s equally uncompromising translation brings this classic work of black humour to readers in English.
An Unrestored Woman
Shobha Rao - 2016
Caught in extreme states of tension, in a world of shifting borders, of instability, Rao's characters must rely on their own wits. When Partition established Pakistan and India as sovereign states, the new boundary resulted in a colossal transfer of people, the largest peacetime migration in human history. This mass displacement echoes throughout Rao's story couplets, which range across the twentieth century, moving beyond the subcontinent to Europe and America. Told with dark humor and ravaging beauty, An Unrestored Woman unleashes a fearless new voice on the literary scene.
The Gypsy Goddess
Meena Kandasamy - 2014
Landlords rule over a feudal system that forces peasants to break their backs in the fields or be punished. As a small spark of defiance begins to spread among communities, the landlords vow to break them; party organizers suffer grisly deaths and the flow of food into the marketplaces dries up. But it only strengthens the villagers' resistance. Finally, the landlords descend on one village to set an example for the others. An exciting new release from this Chennai-based poet, writer and activist.
Ladies Coupé
Anita Nair - 2001
In the intimate atmosphere of the all-women sleeping car - the 'Ladies Coupe' - Akhila asks the five women the question that has been haunting her all her adult life: can a woman stay single and be happy, or does she need a man to feel complete?This wonderfully atmospheric, deliciously warm novel takes the reader into the heart of women's lives in contemporary India, revealing how the dilemmas that women face in their relationships with hunsbands, mothers, friends, employers and children are the same world over.
The Walls of Delhi: Three Stories
Uday Prakash - 2012
One of India’s most original and audacious writers, Uday Prakash, weaves three tales of living and surviving in today’s globalized India. In his stories, Prakash portrays realities about caste and class with an authenticity absent in most English-language fiction about South Asia. Sharply political but free of heavy handedness.
Anandamath
Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay - 1882
The plot of the novel reveals the various dimensions of life in the backdrop of the Sannyasi Rebellion—such as the plight of the people wrecked by lack of food and hunger that drove them to the brink of cannibalism, the militant rebels, and women’s participation alongside their husbands. It is considered one of the most remarkable works of Bangla language and Indian literature. The rebellion was fought by the sannyasi’s or monks and the common multitudes who took up arms against the tyranny of the British colonisers and their excesses, especially taxes in such a time of privation. Bankim also gave us the song ‘Vande Mataram’ which became the rallying call for rebels. The first two stanzas eventually became the National song of India. One of the gems of Indian Literature, ‘Anandmath’ carries a deep sentiment of nationalism which was the essence of the freedom struggle.
Maps for Lost Lovers
Nadeem Aslam - 2004
Jugnu and Chanda have disappeared. Like thousands of people all over England, they were lovers and living together out of wedlock. To Chanda’s family, however, the disgrace was unforgivable. Perhaps enough so as to warrant murder.As he explores the disappearance and its aftermath through the eyes of Jugnu’s worldly older brother, Shamas, and his devout wife, Kaukab, Nadeem Aslam creates a closely observed and affecting portrait of people whose traditions threaten to bury them alive. The result is a tour de force, intimate, affecting, tragic and suspenseful.
The Death of Vishnu
Manil Suri - 2001
As the action spirals up through the floors of the building, the dramas of the residents' lives unfold: Mr. Jalal's obsessive search for higher meaning; Vinod Taneja's longing for the wife he has lost; the comic elopement of Kavita Asrani, who fancies herself the heroine of a Hindi movie.Suffused with Hindu mythology, this story of one apartment building becomes a metaphor for the social and religious division of contemporary India, and Vishnu's ascent of the staircase parallels the sours progress through the various stages of existence. As Vishnu closes in on the riddle of his own mortality, he begins to wonder whether he might not be the god Vishnu, guardian not only of the fate of the building and its occupants, but of the entire universe.