Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Marthandavarma, Khasakkinte Itihasam, Yanthram. Source: Wikipedia. Free updates online. Not illustrated. Excerpt: Marthandavarma ( IPA: Malayalam: , ) is a novel by C.V. Raman Pillai published in 1891. It is presented as a historical romance recounting the history of Venad (Travancore) during the final period of Rajah Rama Varmas reign and subsequently to the accession of Marthanda Varma. The action of story takes place in Kollavarsham 901-906 (Gregorian calendar: 1727-1732). The story revolves around the main protagonists, Ananthapadmanabhan, Subhadra, Mangoikkal Kurrup who are trying to secure the title character from the plans of Padmanabhan Thampi

    Drawing from real-life characters and incidents, these sketches are as varied as people can be and quite interesting.The stories in Vyakti Aani Vyalli were written over a period of more than 20 years, from 1944 to 1968. Of the 20 stories in the book, the one about Bhaiyya Nagpurkar was the earliest one written by the author. The lead character is a Brahmin by birth, but he is often mistaken for a Muslim for various reasons. He is wealthy man with a bad reputation, but he admires Gandhiji, the Father of Nation. He even avoids drinking alcohol on the days when Mahatma is fasting.There are a lot of other varied sketches in this book. Narayan helps in arranging marriages and also ensures that the functions go smoothly. The author reveals an interesting side of Narayan.There is Parophari Gampu who would go out of the way to help people, and then there is the washer-man Namu Parit. The washer-man breaks buttons and uses his customers clothes on himself, and never delivers on time. He has every other evil habit imaginable but has no idea that the things he do are wrong.There is also a school boy named Sakharam Gatne, who speaks classical Marathi and is addicted to books. Lakhu Risbud, who is another interesting character, is a disillusioned writer who wanted to change the world with his pen, but ends up working as a sub-editor in some obscure magazine.The list goes on, with a fine variety of characters reflecting the ironies of life. Vyakti Aani Vyalli earned the writer a Sahitya Akademi Award.

    Without him I could never have known what it is like to be Indian."—Graham GreeneOffering rare insight into the complexities of Indian middle-class society, R. K. Narayan traces life in the fictional town of Malgudi. The Dark Room is a searching look at a difficult marriage and a woman who eventually rebels against the demands of being a good and obedient wife. In Mr. Sampath, a newspaper man tries to keep his paper afloat in the face of social and economic changes sweeping India. Narayan writes of youth and young adulthood in the semiautobiographical Swami and Friends and The Bachelor of Arts. Although the ordinary tensions of maturing are heightened by the particular circumstances of pre-partition India, Narayan provides a universal vision of childhood, early love and grief."The experience of reading one of his novels is . . . comparable to one's first reaction to the great Russian novels: the fresh realization of the common humanity of all peoples, underlain by a simultaneous sense of strangeness—like one's own reflection seen in a green twilight."—Margaret Parton, New York Herald Tribune"The novels of R.K. Narayan are the best I have read in any language for a long time. . . . His work gives the conviction that it is possible to capture in English, a language not born of India, the distinctive characteristics of Indian family life."—Amit Roy, Daily Telegraph

    His friends go to Yale and Harvard. August himself has just landed a prize government job. The job takes him to Madna, “the hottest town in India,” deep in the sticks. There he finds himself surrounded by incompetents and cranks, time wasters, bureaucrats, and crazies. What to do? Get stoned, shirk work, collapse in the heat, stare at the ceiling. Dealing with the locals turns out to be a lot easier for August than living with himself. English, August is a comic masterpiece from contemporary India. Like A Confederacy of Dunces and The Catcher in the Rye, it is both an inspired and hilarious satire and a timeless story of self-discovery.

    As chief of the country's defence research and development programme, Kalam demonstrated the great potential for dynamism and innovation that existed in seemingly moribund research establishments. This is the story of Kalam's rise from obscurity and his personal and professional struggles, as well as the story of Agni, Prithvi, Akash, Trishul and Nag-missiles that have become household names in India and that have raised the nation to the level of a missile power of international reckoning. This is also the saga of independent India's struggle for technological self-sufficiency and defensive autonomy-a story as much about politics, domestic and international, as it is about science.

    Unable to live with the man she loves, Karutthamma marries Palani, who, despite the scandal about his wife's past, never stops trusting her, a trust that is reaffirmed each time he goes to sea and comes back safe since the 'sea-mother' myth among the fishermen community goes that the safe return of a fisherman depends on the fidelity of his wife. Then, one night, Karutthamma and Pareekkutty meet and their love is rekindled while Palani is at sea, baiting a shark ... The hugely successful novel was adapted into a film of the same name, and won critical acclaim and commercial success. Anita Nair's evocative translation brings this classic of Indian literature to a new generation that hasn't had the opportunity to savour this tale of love and longing.

    It is a depiction of Nair society in the late nineteenth century with a love story at its core.

    Economic and social conflict in a north Indian village are brilliantly captured in the story of Hori, a poor farmer and his family’s struggle for survival and self-respect. Hori does everything he can to fulfill his life’s desire: to own a cow, the peasant’s measure of wealth and well-being. Like many Hindus of his time, he believes that making the gift of a cow to a Brahman before he dies will help him achieve salvation. An engaging introduction to India before Independence, Godaan is at once village ethnography, moving human document and insightful colonial history.

    His wife Mariamma stretches their money, raises their two boys, and, in her spare time, gleefully fantasizes about Ousep dying. One day, their seemingly happy seventeen-year-old son Unni—an obsessed comic-book artist—falls from the balcony, leaving them to wonder whether it was an accident. Three years later, Ousep receives a package that sends him searching for the answer, hounding his son’s former friends, attending a cartoonists’ meeting, and even accosting a famous neurosurgeon. Meanwhile, younger son Thoma, missing his brother, falls head over heels for the much older girl who befriended them both. Haughty and beautiful, she has her own secrets. The Illicit Happiness of Other People—a smart, wry, and poignant novel—teases you with its mystery, philosophy, and unlikely love story.

    He is unhurt, but emotionally scarred. Haunted by the blast for many days, he seeks redemption. One day, while wandering near the blast site, he finds a half-burnt diary, written by someone who died on that fateful day.The burnt diary entrusts Deb with a strange responsibility - the last words of a dead man.Shrey, his best buddy since college, and Avantika, his girlfriend, unknowingly join him on his road trip, as he tries to put together the pieces of the dead guy's intriguing story.

    Pretty and intelligent, Ankita has everything she wants: friends, boys in hot pursuit, and admission into a premier management school for her MBA. But six months later, she finds herself a patient in a mental health hospital. How did she get here and will she ever get back her life again? Somehow, everything that made up her world has been taken away - and now she must fight like she has never had to, to recover her rightful lot. A gripping story of the pains of growing up, the strength afforded by faith and the indestructibility of the spirit, here is an inspiring story for modern readers.

    All signs being auspicious, the villagers triumphantly assured Sampath's proud parents that their son was destined for greatness. Twenty years of failure later, that unfortunately does not appear to be the case. A sullen government worker, Sampath is inspired only when in search of a quiet place to take his nap. "But the world is round," his grandmother says. "Wait and see Even if it appears he is going downhill, he will come up the other side. Yes, on top of the world. He is just taking a longer route." No one believes her until, one day, Sampath climbs into a guava tree and becomes unintentionally famous as a holy man, setting off a series of events that spin increasingly out of control. A delightfully sweet comic novel that ends in a raucous bang, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard is as surprising and entertaining as it is beautifully wrought.

    The descendants of Ittykkora is believed to be active even now, living a secret life, controlling large number of business and power, following the gospel of Ittykkora with their own set of customs and rituals. Using medieval history as the base for his theme, Ramakrishnan does a good job in keeping the central theme intact, while exploring the other aspects of modern life across continents and culture.

    More than forty years passed before Devi read Bengal Nights, the novel Eliade had fashioned out of their encounter, only to find small details and phrases, even her given name, bringing back episodes and feelings she had spent decades trying to forget. It Does Not Die is Devi's response. In part a counter to Eliade's fantasies, the book is also a moving account of a first love fraught with cultural tensions, of false starts and lasting regrets.Proud of her intelligence, Maitreyi Devi's father had provided her with a fine and, for that time, remarkably liberal education — and encouraged his brilliant foreign student, Eliade, to study with her. "We were two good exhibits in his museum," Devi writes. They were also, as it turned out, deeply taken with each other. When their secret romance was discovered, Devi's father banished the young Eliade from their home. Against a rich backdrop of life in an upper-caste Hindu household, Devi powerfully recreates the confusion of an over-educated child simultaneously confronting sex and the differences, not only between European and Indian cultures, but also between her mother's and father's view of what was right. Amid a tangle of misunderstandings, between a European man and an Indian girl, between student and teacher, husband and wife, father and daughter, she describes a romance unfolding in the face of cultural differences but finally succumbing to cultural constraints. On its own, It Does Not Die is a fascinating story of cultural conflict and thwarted love. Read together with Eliade's Bengal Nights, Devi's "romance" is a powerful study of what happens when the oppositions between innocence and experience, enchantment and disillusion, and cultural difference and colonial arrogance collide. "In two novels written forty years apart, a man and a woman tell stories of their love. . . . Taken together they provide an unusually touching story of young love unable to prevail against an opposition whose strength was tragically buttressed by the uncertainties of a cultural divide."—Isabel Colegate, New York Times Book Review"Recreates, with extraordinary vividness, the 16-year-old in love that she had been. . . . Maitreyi is entirely, disarmingly open about her emotions. . . . An impassioned plea for truth."—Anita Desai, New Republic"Something between a reunion and a duel. Together they detonate the classic bipolarities: East-West, life-art, woman-man."—Richard Eder, New York Newsday"One good confession deserves another. . . . Both books gracefully trace the authors' doomed love affair and its emotional aftermath."—Nina Mehta, Chicago Tribune

    It was followed in 1932 by a sequel Aparajito, which was later also adapted into a film of the same name by Satyajit Ray.