A House for Mr Biswas


V.S. Naipaul - 1961
    Shuttled from one residence to another after the drowning of his father, he yearns for a place he can call home. He marries into the Tulsi family, on whom he becomes dependent, but rebels and takes on a succession of occupations in a struggle to weaken their hold over him.

Made in China


Parinda Joshi - 2019
    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.

The Golden Son


Shilpi Somaya Gowda - 2015
    When his father dies, Anil becomes the de facto head of the Patel household and inherits the mantle of arbiter for all of the village’s disputes. But he is uneasy with the custom, uncertain that he has the wisdom and courage demonstrated by his father and grandfather. His doubts are compounded by the difficulties he discovers in adjusting to a new culture and a new job, challenges that will shake his confidence in himself and his abilities.Back home in India, Anil’s closest childhood friend, Leena, struggles to adapt to her demanding new husband and relatives. Arranged by her parents, the marriage shatters Leena’s romantic hopes and eventually forces her to make a desperate choice that will hold drastic repercussions for herself and her family. Though Anil and Leena struggle to come to terms with their identities thousands of miles apart, their lives eventually intersect once more—changing them both and the people they love forever.

रश्मिरथी


Ramdhari Singh 'Dinkar' - 1981
    It is one of the most appreciated works of Dinkar other than "Kurukshetra".Karna was first born son of Kunti whom she had abandoned at birth as he was an illegitimate son. Karna grew up in a lowly family, yet became one of the best warriors of his time. In the Great Mahabharata war, Karna was obliged to fight from the side of Duryodhana as Duryodhana recognizing his merits had made him a king and adopted him as a close friend. Karna fighting from Kaurava's side was a great worry of Pandavas as he was reputed to be unconquerable in war. The way Dinkar has presented the story of Karna with all hues of human emotions trapped in moral dilemmas, is simply marvelous. The rhythm and meter is lilting. Choice of words and purity of language is exhilarating. The work has a timeless relevance and is a must read.

The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches (Yuasa)


Matsuo Bashō - 1702
    The sketches are written in the "haibun" style--a linking of verse and prose. The title piece, in particular, reveals Basho striving to discover a vision of eternity in the transient world around him and his personal evocation of the mysteries of the universe.

Smokes and Whiskey


Tejaswini Divya Naik - 2018
    I hope that this book makes everyone feel what I felt while writing it, and that love is a universal thing, and my story is not unique. And I hope that this makes them see that there is a beyond and that they can come out happy and clean. And, that this makes them braver than they already are, and gives them that little extra push and strength that they probably need

The Englishman's Cameo


Madhulika Liddle - 2009
    One of whom, Faisal, stands accused of murder. When the body of Mirza Murad Begh is found stabbed in the chest, lying in a water channel in the Qila, poor Faisal is the only one around. But what of the fact that, minutes before his demise, the victim had stepped out of the haveli of Shahjahanabad’s most ravishing courtesan? Could not the sultry Mehtab Banu and her pale, delicate sister, Gulnar have something to do with the murder? Determined to save his friend, Muzaffar decides to investigate, with only a cup now and then of that new-fangled brew – ‘Allah, so bitter’ – called coffee to help him. A trail of clues leads him from Mehtab’s haveli out into the streets of seventeenth-century Dilli – rife with rumours of Dara Shukoh’s strange leanings and Prince Aurangzeb’s rebelliousness – into a conspiracy far more sinister than he had imagined...

Paradise Lost and Other Poems


John Milton - 1674
    They ring with the unmistakable clarity of genius, with majesty of language, splendor and wealth of detail, and with the deep conviction of a powerful mind. Milton's masterpieces reflect the light of a many-faceted tradition; the intellectual freedom of Greek classicism, the moral passion of Hebrew prophets, the Protestant sense of an abiding religious belief.Here is the ageless art, vital throughout the centuries, of the Puritan who undertook to "explain the ways of God to man."The new annotations for this Mentor edition include the more interesting textual variations of the poems; and record, for the first time in any edition, the far-flung repetitions of phrases, and the scattered fixed epithets, within (and between) Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes.

The Dragonfly Sea


Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor - 2019
    When a sailor named Muhidin, also an outsider, enters their lives, Ayaana finds something she has never had before: a father. But as Ayaana grows into adulthood, forces of nature and history begin to reshape her life and the island itself--from a taciturn visitor with a murky past to a sanctuary-seeking religious extremist, from dragonflies to a tsunami, from black-clad kidnappers to cultural emissaries from China. Ayaana ends up embarking on a dramatic ship's journey to the Far East, where she will discover friends and enemies; be seduced by the charming but unreliable scion of a powerful Turkish business family; reclaim her devotion to the sea; and come to find her own tenuous place amid a landscape of beauty and violence and surprising joy. Told with a glorious lyricism and an unerring sense of compassion, The Dragonfly Sea is a transcendent story of adventure, fraught choices, and of the inexorable need for shelter in a dangerous world.

Sultana's Dream


Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain - 1905
    In this utopian world, women rule and men are content with their places in the kitchen. The queen of this kingdom explains how women won and kept their peace against men and their war-like ways.This edition of a feminist utopian classic is a conversation across time; Durga Bai, a contemporary tribal woman artist from Central India, brings her own vision to bear on a Muslim gentlewoman’s radical tale.

We Were Always Eating Expired Things


Cheryl Julia Lee - 2014
    The poems deal with the impossibility of such an endeavor and celebrate our persistence in striving anyway.At its core, the collection is built around a very wise line from a Beatles song: I want to hold your hand. I want to hold your hand with no further expectations. I want to hold your hand instead of telling you I understand when I don’t. I want to hold your hand although we don’t always get along. I want to hold your hand despite the calluses, scratches, and scars that get in the way. I want to hold your hand knowing I’ll have to let it go one day.I just want to hold your hand.

The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde


Audre Lorde - 1997
    Lorde published nine volumes of poetry which, in her words, detail "a linguistic and emotional tour through the conflicts, fears, and hopes of the world I have inhabited." Included here are Lorde's early, previously unavailable works: The First Cities, The New York Head Shop and Museum, Cables to Rage, and From a Land Where Other People Live.

Girls Burn Brighter


Shobha Rao - 2018
    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.

Difficult Daughters


Manju Kapur - 1998
    Virmati, a young woman born in Amritsar into an austere and high-minded household, falls in love with a neighbour, the Professor--a man who is already married. That the Professor eventually marries Virmati, installs her in his home (alongside his furious first wife) and helps her towards further studies in Lahore, is small consolation to her scandalised family. Or even to Virmati, who finds that the battle for her own independence has created irrevocable lines of partition and pain around her.

Dictee


Theresa Hak Kyung Cha - 1982
    A classic work of autobiography that transcends the self, Dictée is the story of several women: the Korean revolutionary Yu Guan Soon, Joan of Arc, Demeter and Persephone, Cha's mother Hyung Soon Huo (a Korean born in Manchuria to first-generation Korean exiles), and Cha herself. The elements that unite these women are suffering and the transcendence of suffering. The book is divided into nine parts structured around the Greek Muses. Cha deploys a variety of texts, documents, images, and forms of address and inquiry to explore issues of dislocation and the fragmentation of memory. The result is a work of power, complexity, and enduring beauty.