An intricately researched and elegantly written epic history peopled with larger-than-life characters, it is the work of a major scholar at the peak of his abilities...

    Originally published in the Strand, in September 1929.

    Trains that once provoked awe and fear-they were viewed as fire chariots, smoke-spewing demons-have today become a nations lifeblood.Taking a walk along Indias first rail lines, the author stumbles upon fragments of the past-a clock at Victoria Terminus that offers a rare view of a city, a cannon near Masjid Bunder Station that is worshipped as a god, a watchtower overlooking Sion Station, believed to have housed a witch. Each pit-stop comes with stories of desire and war, ambition and death-by Dockyard Road Station, for instance, author Laurence Sternes beloved, Eliza Draper, followed a sailor into the sea or close to Parel Station, the wife of Indias governor general, Lord Canning found a garden rich in tropical vegetation this, she replicated at Barrackpore.Drawing from journals, biographies, newspapers and railway archives-and with nostalgic, first-time accounts of those who travelled by Indias earliest trains-the book captures the economic and social revolutions spurred by the countrys first train line. In this, Halt Station India is not just about the railways-it is the story of the growth of Indias business capital and a rare study of a nation.

    In stories that are more personal than any that she’s written before, Alice Munro pieces her family’s history into gloriously imagined fiction. A young boy is taken to Edinburgh’s Castle Rock, where his father assures him that on a clear day he can see America, and he catches a glimpse of his father’s dream. In stories that follow, as the dream becomes a reality, two sisters-in-law experience very different kinds of passion on the long voyage to the New World; a baby is lost and magically reappears on a journey from an Illinois homestead to the Canadian border. Other stories take place in more familiar Munro territory, the towns and countryside around Lake Huron, where the past shows through the present like the traces of a glacier on the landscape and strong emotions stir just beneath the surface of ordinary comings and goings. First love flowers under the apple tree, while a stronger emotion presents itself in the barn. A girl hired as summer help, and uneasy about her “place” in the fancy resort world she’s come to, is transformed by her employer’s perceptive parting gift. A father whose early expectations of success at fox farming have been dashed finds strange comfort in a routine night job at an iron foundry. A clever girl escapes to college and marriage. Evocative, gripping, sexy, unexpected—these stories reflect a depth and richness of experience. The View from Castle Rock is a brilliant achievement from one of the finest writers of our time.

    From the lovesick tiger who narrates the unforgettable opener, “The Infamous Bengal Ming” (he mauls his zookeeper out of affection), to the ex-CompUSA employee who masquerades as a doctor; from a railroad manager in a turn-of-the-century Indian village, to an elephant writing her autobiography; from a woman whose Thanksgiving preparations put her husband to eternal rest, to the newlywed executioner of the title, these characters inhabit a marvelous region between desire and death, playfulness and violence. At once glittering and savage, daring and elegant, here are wholly unforgettable tales where reality loops in Borgesian twists and shines with cinematic exuberance, by an author who promises to dazzle the universe of American fiction.

    Yeats included almost every sort of Irish folk in this marvelous compendium of fairy tales and songs that he collected and edited for publication in 1892.-- Yeats was fascinated by Irish myths and folklore, and joined forces with the writers of the Irish Literary Revival. He studied Irish folk tales and chose to reintroduce the glory and significance of Ireland's past through this unique literature.

    His characters, almost all of who are first-generation Indian Americans, subvert our expectations that they will sit quietly by. We meet two brothers caught in an elaborate web of envy and loathing; a young gay man who becomes involved with an older man whose secret he could never guess; three women who almost gleefully throw off the pleasant agreeability society asks of them; and, in the final pair of linked stories, a young couple struggling against the devastating force of community gossip. If You See Me, Don't Say Hi examines the collisions of old world and new world, small town and big city, traditional beliefs (like arranged marriage) and modern rituals (like Facebook stalking). The men and women in these stories are full of passion, regret, envy, anger, and yearning. They fall in love with the wrong people and betray one another and deal with the accumulation of years of subtle racism. They are utterly compelling. Ranging across the country, Patel’s stories -- empathetic, provocative, twisting, and wryly funny -- introduce a bold new literary voice, one that feels more timely than ever.

    In these three tales, superbly translated by Edward Seidensticker, erotic fantasy is underlaid with longing and memories of past loves.In the title story, the protagonist visits a brothel where elderly men spend a chaste but lecherous night with a drugged, unconscious virgin. As he admires the girl's beauty, he recalls his past womanizing, and reflects on the relentless course of old age. In One Arm, a young girl removes her right arm and gives it to the narrator to take home for the night; a surreal seduction follows as he tries to allay its fears, caresses it, and even replaces his own right arm with it.The protagonist of Of Birds and Beasts prefers the company of his pet birds and dogs to people, yet for him all living beings are beautiful objects which, though they give him pleasure, he treats with casual cruelty.Beautiful yet chilling, richly poetic yet subtly disturbing, these stories make compelling reading and reaffirm Kawabata s status as a world-class writer.

    The Argumentative Indian is "a bracing sweep through aspects of Indian history and culture, and a tempered analysis of the highly charged disputes surrounding these subjects--the nature of Hindu traditions, Indian identity, the country's huge social and economic disparities, and its current place in the world" (Sunil Khilnani, Financial Times, U.K.).

    Some are darkly humorous—from two mothers exchanging snide remarks through notes in their kids’ backpacks, to the young girl contemplating how best to notify her Facebook friends of her impending suicide—while others are devastatingly poignant—a new mother and funeral singer who is driven to madness with grief for the young black boys who have fallen victim to gun violence, or the teen who struggles between her upper middle class upbringing and her desire to fully connect with black culture.Thompson-Spires fearlessly shines a light on the simmering tensions and precariousness of black citizenship. Her stories are exquisitely rendered, satirical, and captivating in turn, engaging in the ongoing conversations about race and identity politics, as well as the vulnerability of the black body. Boldly resisting categorization and easy answers, Nafissa Thompson-Spires is an original and necessary voice in contemporary fiction.

    Here are thirty-eight brief, brilliant flashes of fiction, both classic and contemporary. Each work is superb, intense, and speaks to the human condition in a profound, often provocative way–a truly outstanding collection by some of the worlds greatest authors.

    Build lakes, plant trees. Gowda built a hundred lakes and lined the wide avenues of the city with leafy trees.After India gained independence, Bangalore became known as a pensioners’ paradise. In the early 1980s, the city reinvented itself once again, this time as the home of some of the world’s most outstanding entrepreneurs. Very rapidly, aided by the dozens of engineering schools that had sprouted in the city since Independence, Bangalore became the hub of India’s information technology (IT) revolution. In the twenty-first century, the city is trying to cope with the problems that have accompanied its explosive growth, and enormous success— crumbling infrastructure, traffic jams, soaring real estate prices, corruption and chaos. Despite the challenges it faces, Bangalore continues to be one of the world’s most distinctive and interesting cities. T. J. S. George walks us through both ‘old’ and ‘new’ Bangalore—from gleaming skyscrapers and lively dance studios to colonial-era bungalows marked by quaint little name-stones, from legendary eating places like Koshy’s and Mavalli Tiffin Room (MTR) to shining new eateries that serve craft beer.

    In his Introduction, Memon traces the evolution of the Urdu short story from its origins in the work of writers like Munshi Premchand the first professional short story writer in Urdu through the emergence of the Progressives in the late 1930s, whose writings were unabashedly political and underpinned their Marxist ideologies, to the post-Independence Modernist era, and today s generation of avant-garde, experimental writers of Urdu fiction. Every story in the anthology illustrates one or the other facet of the form in the Urdu literary tradition. But even more than for their formal technique and inventiveness, these stories have been included because of their power and impact on the reader. Death and poverty face off in Premchand's masterpiece The Shroud. In Khalida Asghar's The Wagon, a mysterious redness begins to cloak the sunset in a village by the Ravi. Behind closed doors and cracks in the windows lies desire but also a sense of queer foreboding in Naiyer Masud's Obscure Domains of Fear and Desire. The tragedy and horror of Partition are brought to life by Saadat Hasan Manto's lunatic (in Toba Tek Singh ) and the eponymous heroine of Rajinder Singh Bedi's Laajwanti. Despairing, violent, passionate, humorous, ironic and profound the fiction in The Greatest Urdu Stories Ever Told will imprint itself indelibly on your mind. M. U. Memon is a translator without parallel and this book, which brings together the best of short fiction in the literary Urdu tradition, is sure to be classic. This collection spans the entire spectrum of the Urdu literary tradition from Premchand, who is considered the first Urdu short-story writer, to contemporary writers like S. M. Ashraf and Tassaduq Sohail. In The Greatest Urdu Stories Ever Told, you will find much-loved gems like Premchand's Kafan , Rajinder Singh Bedi's Laajwanti , Saadat Hasan Manto's Toba Tek Singh as well as new classics like Sajid Rashid's Fable of a Severed Head and Anwer Khan's The Pose . This book is part of a continuing series that gave us the highly popular The Greatest Bengali Stories Ever Told.