They can both confine or release a consciousness. I Am Vidya is the story of one such journey: that of a declaration, of the claiming of an identity. It is an assertion of a consciousness that has suffered the agony of being trapped in a mould it does not belong to, a body it does not identify with. Vidya has lived through all the indignities forced upon a tirunangai, a transgender, by a society which divides and defines itself as men and women in terms of biology alone. From being spurned by her family, to begging on the streets as a social outcast, from donning a woman's clothes, to undergoing excruciating surgery to lose her 'manhood', from suffering emotional and physical harassment, to arriving at her true identity. A compelling narrative about a woman trapped within a man's body, this is a story of extraordinary courage and perseverance.

    With him ride his wives, his sisters, his daughters, his aunts and his distant female relatives. Unhindered by a relatively recent conversion to Islam, these women will help found a culture of such magnificence and beauty that it will become a by-word for opulence in the world. These Mughal women of Hindustan—unmarried daughters, eccentric sisters, fiery milk-mothers and beautiful wives, will contribute to the great syncretic culture of the Mughals by writing biographies, building monuments, engaging in diplomacy, and patronizing the arts. And even as the zenana changes from the earlier nomadic, tented spaces to the later more sequestered grandeur within the high stone walls of mighty qilas, the influence of the women remains visible and unquestioned. This book looks at the lives of these Mughal women, and the enigma of their disappearance, except as objects of curiosity, from our collective memory.

    How did he end up this way? In an astonishing debut, Aman Sethi brings him and his indelible group of friends to life through their adventures and misfortunes in the Old Delhi Railway Station, the harrowing wards of a tuberculosis hospital, an illegal bar made of cardboard and plywood, and into Beggars Court and back onto the streets. In a time of global economic strain, this is an unforgettable evocation of persistence in the face of poverty in one of the world's largest cities. Sethi recounts Ashraf's surprising life story with wit, candor, and verve, and A Free Man becomes a moving story of the many ways a man can be free.

    In her ambitious, brilliant sixth book, Olivia Laing charts an electrifying course through the long struggle for bodily freedom, using the life of the renegade psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich to explore gay rights and sexual liberation, feminism, and the civil rights movement.Drawing on her own experiences in protest and alternative medicine, and traveling from Weimar Berlin to the prisons of Joseph McCarthy’s America, Laing grapples with some of the most significant and complicated figures of the past century—among them Nina Simone, Christopher Isherwood, Andrea Dworkin, Sigmund Freud, Susan Sontag, and Malcolm X. Arriving at a moment in which basic bodily rights are once again imperiled, Everybody is an investigation into the forces arranged against freedom and a celebration of how ordinary human bodies can resist oppression and reshape the world.

    Born in China in 1943, she moved from Chongqing to Taiwan, Spain to Germany, the Canary Islands to Central America, and, for several years in the 1970s, to the Sahara.Stories of the Sahara invites us into Sanmao's extraordinary life in the desert: her experiences of love and loss, freedom and peril, all told with a voice as spirited as it is timeless.At a period when China was beginning to look beyond its borders, Sanmao fired the imagination of millions and inspired a new generation. With an introduction by Sharlene Teo, author of Ponti, this is an essential collection from one of the twentieth century's most iconic figures.

    He was arrested, interrogated and imprisoned by the communists, and watched illiterate Taliban soldiers burn piles of his books in the street. He even resorted to hiding most of his stock—almost ten thousand books—in attics all over Kabul.But while Khan is passionate in his love of books and his hatred of censorship, he also has strict views on family life and the role of women. As an outsider, Åsne Seierstad found herself in a unique position, able to move freely between the private, restricted sphere of the women—including Khan’s two wives—and the freer, more public lives of the men.It is an experience that Seierstad finds both fascinating and frustrating. As she steps back from the page and allows the Khans to speak for themselves, we learn of proposals and marriages, hope and fear, crime and punishment. The result is a genuinely gripping and moving portrait of a family, and a clear-eyed assessment of a country struggling to free itself from history.' to 'This mesmerizing portrait of a proud man who, through three decades and successive repressive regimes, heroically braved persecution to bring books to the people of Kabul has elicited extraordinary praise throughout the world and become a phenomenal international bestseller. The Bookseller of Kabul is startling in its intimacy and its details—a revelation of the plight of Afghan women and a window into the surprising realities of daily life in today’s Afghanistan.'

    Carefully reassembled with calm, steady hands, these shards tell the story of an ordinary family that somehow managed to survive the myriad persecutions and repressions of the last century. The family’s pursuit of a quiet, civilized, ordinary life—during such atrocious times—is itself a strange odyssey.In dialogue with thinkers like Roland Barthes, W. G. Sebald, Susan Sontag, and Osip Mandelstam, In Memory of Memory is imbued with rare intellectual curiosity and a wonderfully soft-spoken, poetic voice. Dipping into various genres—essay, fiction, memoir, travelogue, and history—Stepanova assembles a vast panorama of ideas and personalities and offers a bold exploration of cultural and personal memory.

    The child of two lawyers, they are staunchly anti-death penalty. But the moment convicted murderer Ricky Langley’s face flashes on the screen as they review old tapes—the moment they hear him speak of his crimes -- they are overcome with the feeling of wanting him to die. Shocked by their reaction, they dig deeper and deeper into the case. Despite their vastly different circumstances, something in his story is unsettlingly, uncannily familiar.Crime, even the darkest and most unsayable acts, can happen to any one of us. As Alex pores over the facts of the murder, they find themself thrust into the complicated narrative of Ricky’s childhood. And by examining the details of Ricky’s case, they are forced to face their own story, to unearth long-buried family secrets, and reckon with a past that colors their view of Ricky's crime.But another surprise awaits: They weren’t the only one who saw their life in Ricky’s.An intellectual and emotional thriller that is also a different kind of murder mystery, THE FACT OF A BODY is a book not only about how the story of one crime was constructed -- but about how we grapple with our own personal histories. Along the way it tackles questions about the nature of forgiveness, and if a single narrative can ever really contain something as definitive as the truth. This groundbreaking, heart-stopping work, ten years in the making, shows how the law is more personal than we would like to believe -- and the truth more complicated, and powerful, than we could ever imagine.

    We get on alone, we leave alone, and the decisions we make as we travel on the train are our responsibility alone.”A remarkable life story rooted in two different worlds, Unfinished offers insights into Priyanka Chopra Jonas’s childhood in India; her formative teenage years in the United States; and her return to India, where against all odds as a newcomer to the pageant world, she won the national and international beauty competitions that launched her global acting career. Whether reflecting on her nomadic early years or the challenges she has faced as she has doggedly pursued her calling, Priyanka shares her challenges and triumphs with warmth and honesty. The result is a book that is philosophical, sassy, inspiring, bold, and rebellious. Just like the author herself.From her dual-continent twenty-year-long career as an actor and producer to her work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, from losing her beloved father to cancer to marrying Nick Jonas, Priyanka Chopra Jonas’s story will inspire a generation around the world to gather their courage, embrace their ambition, and commit to the hard work of following their dreams.

    The book traverses through India’s contemporary history—most importantly the 1971 war; insurgency in the Northeast, Punjab, and Kashmir; the Emergency; the war in Afghanistan; and the intelligence imperatives and dispensation under Indira Gandhi, Morarji Desai, Rajiv Gandhi, V.P. Singh, Chandra Shekhar, and Narasimha Rao. Written with the purpose that a knowledge of the role played by R&AW in those events would possibly enable a better understanding of its strengths and weaknesses, it painstakingly avoids over-statements, exaggerations and spins.

    Our hero tells of his childhood: his passion for hunting, his love of the wild landscape of Romania, his ridiculous social snobbery. He leads us through his youth, and between fantastic and colourful stories of Bucharest in the late twenties and early thirties, he dissects his own complicated, at times agonizing, development as a moral creature. We are with him as the Nazis take over Austria; as his own anti-semitism - already such a mixture of belief, caprice, and compromise - is shaken to its core. And later on we meet him as a much older man, one haunted by his own protean character, by the beautiful but tragic web of memories and events that together form his history, and by the greatest love of his life, a beautiful Jewess.

    Through the years, though never meeting and separated both geographically and culturally, they share a winsome, sentimental friendship based on their common love for books. Their relationship, captured so acutely in these letters, is one that will grab your heart and not let go.

    All his life he has kept a palm leaf bearing an astrologer’s prophecy: “You will marry a girl who is not from the village, not from the district, not even from our country; she will be musical, own a jungle and be born under the sign of the ox.” But not until PK attends art school in New Delhi do his stars begin to align. One evening, while drawing portraits in a park, he meets a young Swedish woman, Lotta von Schendin — and this brief meeting will change the courses of their lives forever.This is the remarkable true story of how a young Indian man armed with nothing more than a handful of paintbrushes and a secondhand Raleigh bicycle made his way across Asia and Europe in search of the woman he loves.

    As part of the campaign, Kaur's post made her the target of an onslaught of social media vitriol. Kaur, the daughter of a Kargil martyr, suddenly became a focal point of a nationalism debate. Facing a trial by social media, Kaur almost retreated into herself. But she was never brought up to be silenced. ‘Real bullets killed my father. Your hate bullets are deepening my resolve,’ she wrote then. Today, Kaur is doubly determined not to be silent. Small Acts of Freedom is her story. This is the story of three generations of strong, passionate single women in one family, women who have faced the world on their own terms. With an unusual narrative structure that crisscrosses elegantly between past and present, spanning seventy years from 1947 to 2017, Small Acts of Freedom is about courage. It’s about resilience, strength and love. From her grandmother who came to India from Lahore after Partition to the whirlwind romance between her parents, from her father’s state funeral to her harrowing experiences since her days of student activism, Gurmehar Kaur’s debut is about the fierceness of love, the power of family and the little acts that beget big revolutions.

    Vivek was eight. He realized he was gay. Only he didn't: he just figured that he wanted to be different. And that he was in love -- for want of a better word -- with Deepak, his best friend. Then Mast Kalandar released, with Anupam Kher playing Pinku, a stereotypical gay character. And Vivek realized he didn't want to be Pinku. So he tried to walk differently, gesticulate differently, and speak in as gruff a voice as he could -- all to avoid being Pinku.Funny, poignant, heartwarming and heart-breaking all at once, this is a memoir of growing up gay in India in the 1990s, with Bollywood, books, and the Bombay sea for company.