High-Rise


J.G. Ballard - 1975
    In this visionary tale, human society slips into violent reverse as once-peaceful residents, driven by primal urges, re-create a world ruled by the laws of the jungle.

Butcher's Crossing


John Williams - 1960
    With Butcher’s Crossing, his fiercely intelligent, beautifully written western, Williams dismantles the myths of modern America.It is the 1870s, and Will Andrews, fired up by Emerson to seek “an original relation to nature,” drops out of Harvard and heads west. He washes up in Butcher’s Crossing, a small Kansas town on the outskirts of nowhere. Butcher’s Crossing is full of restless men looking for ways to make money and ways to waste it. Before long Andrews strikes up a friendship with one of them, a man who regales Andrews with tales of immense herds of buffalo, ready for the taking, hidden away in a beautiful valley deep in the Colorado Rockies. He convinces Andrews to join in an expedition to track the animals down. The journey out is grueling, but at the end is a place of paradisal richness. Once there, however, the three men abandon themselves to an orgy of slaughter, so caught up in killing buffalo that they lose all sense of time. Winter soon overtakes them: they are snowed in. Next spring, half-insane with cabin fever, cold, and hunger, they stagger back to Butcher’s Crossing to find a world as irremediably changed as they have been.

ঠাকু'মার ঝুলি


Dakshinaranjan Mitra Majumder - 1907
    Dakshinaranjan Mitra Majumder was the person who first collected some folk-stories of Bengal and published it under the name of Thakurmar Jhuli in 1907 (1314 of Bengali calendar). The Nobel-Laureate, Rabindra Nath Thakur wrote the introduction to the compilation. Since then, it has become a favourite of Bengali children. Over the years, it has become a household name in West Bengal and Bangladesh.Some characters and stories like Lalkamal-Nilkamal and Byangoma-Byangomi have gained a legendary status, especially among the children. Hundreds of edition of the book have been published from Bangladesh and West Bengal since the original publication. An English translation by Rina Pritish Nandy has been available lately

I, Krishnadevaraya


Ra. Ki. Rangarajan - 2017
    Ki. Rangarajan. The Tamil actor Kamal Hassan suggested that Ra. Ki. translate I, Claudius by Robert Graves into Tamil. Instead, Ra. Ki. decided to present a first-person narrative of the story of Krishnadevaraya, the emperor of Vijayanagar.Ra. Ki.’s hero is like any other young man his age—his romantic attachments overshadowing everything else in his life—until his minister and mentor, Appaji, reminds him that his duty ought to take precedence over his love life.Coming to the throne under difficult circumstances, Krishnadevaraya had to wage a relentless battle to preserve the Vijayanagar empire. Circumstances prevented him from marrying the woman he loved or pursuing literature, his true passion. Overcoming all of this, Krishnadevaraya went on to become the greatest emperor of the Vijayanagar empire.I, Krishnadevaraya takes you into the inner world of the emperor, providing a vivid picture of his thinking, his insecurities and his decision-making. Ably translated by Suganthy Krishnamachari, I, Krishnadevaraya is a fascinating look at one of India’s greatest kings.

Revolutionary Road


Richard Yates - 1961
    Perhaps they married too young and started a family too early. Maybe Frank's job is dull. And April never saw herself as a housewife. Yet they have always lived on the assumption that greatness is only just around the corner. But now that certainty is now about to crumble. With heartbreaking compassion and remorseless clarity, Richard Yates shows how Frank and April mortgage their spiritual birthright, betraying not only each other, but their best selves.

Wolf Among Wolves


Hans Fallada - 1937
    Set in Weimar Germany soon after Germany's catastrophic loss of World War I, the story follows a young gambler who loses all in Berlin, then flees the chaotic city, where worthless money and shortages are causing pandemonium. Once in the countryside, however, he finds a defeated German army that has camped there to foment insurrection. Somehow, amidst it all, he finds romance - it's The Year of Living Dangerously in a European setting. Fast-moving as a thriller, fascinating as the best historical fiction, and with lyrical prose that packs a powerful emotional punch, Wolf Among Wolves is the equal of Fallada's acclaimed Every Man Dies Alone as an immensely absorbing work of important literature.

When the Wildflowers Bloom


Rupa Bhullar - 2021
    

Wish Her Safe at Home


Stephen Benatar - 1982
    Out of nowhere, a great-aunt leaves her a Georgian mansion in another city--and she sheds her old life without delay. Gone is her dull administrative job, her mousy wardrobe, her downer of a roommate. She will live as a woman of leisure, devoted to beauty, creativity, expression, and love. Once installed in her new quarters, Rachel plants a garden, takes up writing, and impresses everyone she meets with her extraordinary optimism. But as Rachel sings and jokes the days away, her new neighbors begin to wonder if she might be taking her transformation just a bit too far.In Wish Her Safe at Home, Stephen Benatar finds humor and horror in the shifting region between elation and mania. His heroine could be the next-door neighbor of the Beales of Grey Gardens or a sister to Jane Gardam's oddball protagonists, but she has an ebullient charm all her own.

The Joke


Milan Kundera - 1967
    Now though, a quarter century after The Joke was first published, and several years after the collapse of the Soviet-imposed Czechoslovak regime, it becomes easier to put such implications into perspective in favor of valuing the book (and all Kundera 's work) as what it truly is: great, stirring literature, that sheds new light on the eternal themes of human existence.The present edition provides English-language readers an important further means toward revaluation of The Joke. For reasons he describes in his Author's Note, Milan Kundera devoted much time to creating (with the assistance of his American publisher-editor) a completely revised translation that reflects his original as closely as any translation possibly can: reflects it in its fidelity not only to the words and syntax but also to the characteristic dictions and tonalities of the novel's narrators. The result is nothing less than the restoration of a classic.

The House of Hidden Mothers


Meera Syal - 2015
    Their relationship may look like a cliché, but despite the news from her doctor that she no longer has any viable eggs, Shyama's not ready to give up on their dream of having a baby. So they decide to find an Indian surrogate to carry their child, which is how they meet Mala, a young woman trapped in an oppressive marriage in a small Indian town from which she's desperate to escape. But as the pregnancy progresses, they discover that their simple arrangement may be far more complicated than it seems.In The House of Hidden Mothers, Meera Syal, an acclaimed British actress and accomplished novelist, takes on the timely but underexplored issue of India's booming surrogacy industry. Western couples pay a young woman to have their child and then fly home with a baby, an easy narrative that ignores the complex emotions involved in carrying a child. Syal turns this phenomenon into a compelling, thoughtful novel already hailed in the UK as "rumbustious, confrontational and ultimately heartbreaking . . . Turn[s] the standard British-Asian displacement narrative on its head" (The Guardian).Compulsively readable and with a winning voice, The House of Hidden Mothers deftly explores subjects of age, class, and the divide between East and West.

Mister God, This is Anna


Fynn - 1974
    He took her back to his mother's home, and from that first moment, their times together were filled with delight and discovery. Anna had an astonishing ability to ask--and to answer--life's largest questions. Her total openness and honesty amazed all who knew her. She seemed to understand with uncanny certainty the purpose of being, the essence of feeling, the beauty of love. You see, Anna had a very special friendship with Mister God. . . .

The Virgin Suicides


Jeffrey Eugenides - 1993
    Twenty years on, their enigmatic personalities are embalmed in the memories of the boys who worshipped them and who now recall their shared adolescence: the brassiere draped over a crucifix belonging to the promiscuous Lux; the sisters' breathtaking appearance on the night of the dance; and the sultry, sleepy street across which they watched a family disintegrate and fragile lives disappear.

We the Living


Ayn Rand - 1936
    It tells of a young woman’s passionate love, held like a fortress against the corrupting evil of a totalitarian state.We the Living is not a story of politics, but of the men and women who have to struggle for existence behind the Red banners and slogans. It is a picture of what those slogans do to human beings. What happens to the defiant ones? What happens to those who succumb? Against a vivid panorama of political revolution and personal revolt, Ayn Rand shows what the theory of socialism means in practice.

The Marble Collector


Cecelia Ahern - 2015
    A discovered life.What if you only had one day to find out who you really were?When Sabrina Boggs stumbles upon a mysterious collection of her father’s possessions, she discovers a truth where she never knew there was a lie. The familiar man she grew up with is suddenly a stranger to her.An unexpected break in her monotonous daily routine leaves her just one day to unlock the secrets of the man she thought she knew. A day that unearths memories, stories and people she never knew existed. A day that changes her and those around her forever.The Marble Collector is a thought-provoking novel about how the most ordinary decisions we make can have the most extraordinary consequences for how we live our lives. And how sometimes it’s only by shining on a light on someone else, that you can truly understand yourself.

Theophilus North


Thornton Wilder - 1973
    Setting out to see the world in the summer of 1926, Theophilus North gets as far as Newport, Rhode Island, before his car breaks down. To support himself, Theophilus takes jobs in the elegant mansions along Ocean Drive, just as Wilder himself did in the same decade. Soon the young man finds himself playing the roles of tutor, spy, confidant, lover, friend, and enemy as he becomes entangled in the intrigues of both upstairs and downstairs in a glittering society dominated by leisure.Narrated by the elderly North from a distance of fifty years, Theophilus North is a fascinating commentary on youth and education from the vantage point of age, and deftly displays Wilder's trademark wit juxtaposed with his lively and timeless ruminations on what really matters about life, love, and work at the end of the day—even after a visit to Newport.