Divided by class but united in fandom, they remain steadfast in their search for intimacy, independence and fun. Embracing Hindi film idol Shah Rukh Khan allows them a small respite from an oppressive culture, a fillip to their fantasies of a friendlier masculinity in Indian men. Most struggle to find the freedom-or income-to follow their favourite actor.Bobbing along in this stream of multiple lives for more than a decade-from Manju's boredom in 'rurban' Rampur and Gold's anger at having to compete with Western women for male attention in Delhi's nightclubs, to Zahira's break from domestic abuse in Ahmedabad-Bhattacharya gleans the details on what Indian women think about men, money, movies, beauty, helplessness, agency and love. A most unusual and compelling book on the female gaze, this is the story of how women have experienced post-liberalization India.

    And about men surprised by women who are unconventional, unafraid and independent. It is the story of Meena, rebellious and unexamined, and Yuri, as complex as Meena is naive. Of Hajime, outsider to two cultures, and Prakash, unable to see beyond his limited horizons. It is also the story of Haruko who has dedicated herself to her art, and of Leela who is determined to break gender roles and learn the traditional gold-craft of her community. Set between Japan and Jaipur, Kintsugi follows the lives of these characters as they intersect and diverge, collide and break and join again in unexpected ways. The result is a brilliantly original novel as profound as it is playful, as emotionally moving as it is gripping.

    This tongue-in-cheek guide is full of advice designed to help you manage Aunty meddling and encourages you to pursue your passions—from someone who has been through it all. Qamar confesses to throwing sweatshirts over crop-tops to get out of the house without being questioned, hiding her boyfriend in a closet, and enduring overbearing parents endless pressuring her to become a doctor, lawyer, or engineer. Holding onto your cultural identity is tough. Always interfering Aunties make it even harder. But ultimately, Aunties keep our lives interesting. As an Aunty-survivor and a woman who has lived the cross-cultural experience, Qamar defied the advice of her aunties almost every step of the way, and she is here to remind you: Trust No Aunty.

    Asiya dreams of her daughter’s happiness. Sajida dreams of becoming a doctor. Subaida dreams of the day when her family will become free of woes. Parveen dreams of a little independence, a little space for herself in the world. Mothers, daughters, aunts, sisters, neighbours… In this tiny Muslim village in Tamil Nadu, the lives of these women are sustained by the faith they have in themselves, in each other, and the everyday compromises they make. Salma’s storytelling – crystalline in its simplicity, patient in its unravelling – enters this interior world of women, held together by love, demarcated by religion, comforted by the courage in dreaming of better futures.A beautiful novel by writer and activist Salma, translated from Tamil by Meena Kandasamy.

    Damayanthi, along with the bunch of unsuitable prospective husbands her Amma throws at her, a dead-end job as an accountant in a decrepit firm, the oppressiveness of Chennai. When she finally jettisons her job and some of her inhibitions to join a bank in Mumbai, Amma's parting words are: 'Be good. Don't do anything silly.' Translation: 'Stay away from sex and alcohol! ' Soon Damayanthi is negotiating competitive corporate corridors and big-city life. Aided by dubious words of wisdom from the cherub-faced Jimmy, she must impress the intellectual C.G., who has a low opinion of her; battle Sonya Sood, flatmate and size-zero sophisticate, for the TV remote; choose between resisting or giving in to temptation in the form of the seductive Rahul; deal with the moral dilemma of 'stealing' a million-dollar idea for her project. Can a good girl have a really good time? Can the conservative, curd-rice-eating Damayanthi become a cool, corporate babe? Keep the Change is a rollicking, wickedly witty story of every girl's journey to fulfill her dreams and find her own place in the world.

    Gatwood's poems deftly deconstruct traditional stereotypes. The focus shifts from childhood to adulthood, gender to sexuality, violence to joy. And always and inexorably, the book moves toward celebration, culminating in a series of odes: odes to the body, to tough women, to embracing your own journey in all its failures and triumphs.

    The voices speak of a plot to murder a wife who has failed to produce a child and whose family has failed to produce the promised dowry...Megha is sick with horror when she realizes she is the intended victim. Her husband -- the very man who tied the sacred necklace of marriage around her neck -- and his mother are plotting to kill her! In the moment of panic, she runs for her life. Frantically racing through Palgaum's deserted streets, her way lit only by the lights strung up for the Diwali festival, her single goal is to escape death by fire. But fleeing from her would-be-killers seems impossible -- unless she can find someone to help her...To approach her best friend would bring scandal to an innocent woman's doorstep, and turning to her own strict, conservative family is out of the question. Instead, with nothing but the sari she wears and a memory of kindness, Megha finds her way to Kiran, the one man who has shown her friendship and respect. Hiding her in his apartment, Kiran becomes her protector. But the forbidden attraction that grows between them can only bring more danger...Caught between tradition and the truths buried in her heart, a dowry bride will discover the real cost of the only things worth having in life...

    Poornima's father hires Savitha to work one of their sari looms, and the two girls are quickly drawn to one another. Savitha is even more impoverished than Poornima, but she is full of passion and energy. She shows Poornima how to find beauty in a bolt of indigo cloth, a bowl of yogurt rice and bananas, the warmth of friendship. Suddenly their Indian village doesn't feel quite so claustrophobic, and Poornima begins to imagine a life beyond the arranged marriage her father is desperate to lock down for her. But when a devastating act of cruelty drives Savitha away, Poornima leaves behind everything she has ever known to find her friend again. Her journey takes her into the darkest corners of India's underworld, on a harrowing cross-continental journey, and eventually to an apartment complex in Seattle. Alternating between the girls’ perspectives as they face relentless obstacles, Girls Burn Brighter introduces two heroines who never lose the hope that burns within them. In breathtaking prose, Shobha Rao tackles the most urgent issues facing women today: domestic abuse, human trafficking, immigration, and feminism. At once a propulsive page-turner and a heart-wrenching meditation on friendship, Rao's debut novel is a literary tour de force.

    Filmmaker and writer Anungla Zoe Longkumer brings together, for the first time, a remarkable set of stories, poems, first-person narratives, and visuals that showcase the breadth of Naga women’s creative and literary expression. The essays are written in English, a language the Nagas—who had no tradition of written literature—made their own after the arrival of Christianity in the region during the nineteenth century. In The Many That I Am, each writer speaks of the many journeys women undertake to reclaim their pasts and understand their complex present.

    Suleri; of her tenacious grandmother Dadi and five siblings; and of her own passage to the West."Nine autobiographical tales that move easily back and forth among Pakistan, Britain, and the United States. . . . She forays lightly into Pakistani history, and deeply into the history of her family and friends. . . . The Suleri women at home in Pakistan make this book sing."—Daniel Wolfe, New York Times Book Review"A jewel of insight and beauty. . . . Suleri's voice has the same authority when she speaks about Pakistani politics as it does in her literary interludes."—Rone Tempest, Los Angeles Times Book Review"The author has a gift for rendering her family with a few, deft strokes, turning them out as whole and complete as eggs."—Anita Desai, Washington Post Book World"Meatless Days takes the reader through a Third World that will surprise and confound him even as it records the author's similar perplexities while coming to terms with the West. Those voyages Suleri narrates in great strings of words and images so rich that they left this reader . . . hungering for more."—Ron Grossman, Chicago Tribune"Dazzling. . . . Suleri is a postcolonial Proust to Rushdie's phantasmagorical Pynchon."—Henry Louise Gates, Jr., Voice Literary Supplement

    Landing like a bombshell on his comfortable life, just as he's started a steamy affair with a brilliant woman, the news prompts him to launch an urgent investigation into the lives of his aspiring murderers - a ragtag group of street thugs and village waifs - and their mastermind. Who wanted him dead, and why? But the investigation forces him to reexamine his own life, too - to confront his own notion of himself, his job, and his treatment of the women in his life, as well as his own complex feelings about the country that crafted his would-be killers. Part thriller and part erotic romance, full of dark humor and knife-edged suspense, The Story of My Assassins is a piercing literary novel that takes us from the lavish, hedonistic palaces of India's elite to its seediest slums. It is a novel of corruption, passion, power, and ambition; of extreme poverty and obscene wealth. It is an awesome adventure into the heart of today's India.

    Dawood Ibrahim, Karim Lala, Varadara- jan Mudaliar: these are names that any Indian would recognise. Analysed in print, immortalised on film, their lives, their gangs, their 'businesses' are out there for anyone who wants the information. But there have been women, too, who have been part of this murky side of the city, walking along side, sometimes leading and manipulating men in the Underworld to run their own illegal businesses. Here, for the first time, crime journal- ists S. Hussain Zaidi and Jane Borges explore the lives of some of these women, and how, in cold blood, they were able to make their way up in what was certainly a man's world. From Kamathipura to Dongri, from assassins to molls, this is a collection that tells the stories of women who have become legend in Mumbai's streets, lanes and back-alleys. Absorbingly told, impeccably researched, Mafia Queens of Mumbai reveals a side of Mumbai's Underworld that has never been seen before.

    Somlata has just married into the dynastic but declining Mitra family. At eighteen, she expects to settle into her role as a devout wife in this traditional, multi-generational family. But then Somlata, wandering the halls of the grand, decaying Mitra mansion, stumbles upon the body of her great aunt-in-law, Pishima.A child bride widowed at twelve, Pishima has finally passed away at the ripe old age of seventy. But she isn’t letting go just yet. Pishima has long harbored a grudge against the Mitras for keeping her in perpetual widowhood, never allowed to fall in love.. Now, her ghost intends to meddle in their lives, making as much mischief as possible. Pishima gives Somlata the keys to her mysterious box of gold to keep it out of the Mitras’ hands. However, the selfless Somlata, witnessing her new family waste away their wealth to the brink of bankruptcy, has her own ideas.

    His handicraft imports business has unexpectedly collapsed and cash is drying out quickly, his wife thinks he is a loser and society considers him irrelevant. Meanwhile, his closest friends and family all seem to be running flourishing businesses and living luxurious lives in Surat, the diamond capital of India. A trip to China to scout for a new consumer goods business offers a glimmer of hope. But Raghu instead gets sucked into the black-market trade in the back alleys of Beijing. Everything about this new opportunity goes against his god-fearing, vegetarian, middle-class mindset - can he quash his natural instincts to make a success of it? Darkly comical, 'Made in China' is a soul-stirring and thrilling entrepreneurial journey of a man willing to do anything he can to make it big.

    Limón has often been a poet who wears her heart on her sleeve, but in these extraordinary poems that heart becomes a “huge beating genius machine” striving to embrace and understand the fullness of the present moment. “I am beautiful. I am full of love. I am dying,” the poet writes. Building on the legacies of forebears such as Frank O’Hara, Sharon Olds, and Mark Doty, Limón’s work is consistently generous and accessible—though every observed moment feels complexly thought, felt, and lived.