He offers vivid portraits of local heroes, provincial icons and international stars.Following the narrative of his life intertwined and in love with the sport, Guha captures the magic of bat and ball that has ensnared billions.

    On one thing, Imran Khan's friends and enemies agree: it all began with the leopard print satin trousers. In November 1974, the Cricketer International published an article about the new elite group of young talented players, "into concepts like fashion and pop music," and bent on challenging cricket's eternal stereotypes. Of the five featured stars on the cover, a superbly hirsute 21-year-old wearing a tight black shirt and gaudy trousers, with a facial expression of supreme self-confidence, stood out. Imran Khan has always been a controversial figure, a man who gives rise to hot debate on account of his strong conviction and hard line views. From his achievements on the cricket field as the Pakistan captain who captured the World Cup and the game's best all-rounder in history, through to his racy social life—the practicing Muslim boogieing on the dancefloor of Annabel's; an "astonishing lovemaker," according to one overnight partner; praised by Diana Princess of Wales, close friend to his then wife Jemima Goldsmith, as a "devoted husband"—the Imran story is full of color and contradictions. Acclaimed biographer Christopher Sandford has approached a richly varied cast list of Imran associates past and present—from Geoff Boycott, Javed Miandad, Mike Brearley, David Gower, and John Major through to Nelson Mandela and close acquaintances such as Eric Clapton, Mick Jagger, John Major, Keith Richards, sources close to the late Princess of Wales, and Pakistan's General Musharraf. Imran Khan himself and his ex-wife Jemima have agreed to be interviewed for the book and given Sandford exclusive access to Imran's inner sanctum.

    He is the fastest bowler in the world, who set an official world record by achieving the fastest delivery when he clocked in at 161.3 km/ph (100.2 mph) twice in the same match. Having taken more than 400 wickets in international cricket, he is a phenomenal cricketer too.Tagged as being undisciplined, Akhtar’s career has been plagued by injuries, controversies and accusations of poor attitude. Here he tells his side of the story. The early years of deprivation, the relentless self-imposed discipline, the way he played both on the cricket grounds and outside. His is also the inside story of Pakistan cricket, no holds barred: the strange ways of the cricket board, the hierarchies and manipulations and, above all, the magic of the game itself.

    ONE OF BOOKLIST'S TOP TEN RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY BOOKS OF 2016. ONE OF BOOKLIST'S TOP TEN DIVERSE NONFICTION BOOKS OF 2017. Honorable Mention in the 2017 San Francisco Book Festival Awards, Spiritual Category A 2019 United Methodist Women Reading Program SelectionThis enthralling story of the making of an American is also a timely meditation on being Muslim in America today.Threading My Prayer Rug is a richly textured reflection on what it is to be a Muslim in America today. It is also the luminous story of many journeys: from Pakistan to the United States in an arranged marriage that becomes a love match lasting forty years; from secular Muslim in an Islamic society to devout Muslim in a society ignorant of Islam, and from liberal to conservative to American Muslim; from student to bride and mother; and from an immigrant intending to stay two years to an American citizen, business executive, grandmother, and tireless advocate for interfaith understanding. Beginning with a sweetly funny, moving account of her arranged marriage, the author undercuts stereotypes and offers the refreshing view of an American life through Muslim eyes. In chapters leavened with humor, hope, and insight, she recounts an immigrant’s daily struggles balancing assimilation with preserving heritage, overcoming religious barriers from within and distortions of Islam from without, and confronting issues of raising her children as Muslims—while they lobby for a Christmas tree! Sabeeha Rehman was doing interfaith work for Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the driving force behind the Muslim community center at Ground Zero, when the backlash began. She discusses what that experience revealed about American society.

    With almost 200 million people, a 500,000-man army, nuclear weapons, and a large diaspora in Britain and North America, Pakistan is central to the hopes of jihadis and the fears of their enemies. Yet the greatest short-term threat to Pakistan is not Islamist insurgency as such, but the actions of the United States, and the greatest long-term threat is ecological change. Anatol Lieven's book is a magisterial investigation of this highly complex and often poorly understood country: its regions, ethnicities, competing religious traditions, varied social landscapes, deep political tensions, and historical patterns of violence; but also its surprising underlying stability, rooted in kinship, patronage, and the power of entrenched local elites. Engagingly written, combining history and profound analysis with reportage from Lieven's extensive travels as a journalist and academic, Pakistan: A Hard Country is both utterly compelling and deeply revealing.

    It includes an epilogue written, just before the author's death, in the light of recent events in Afghanistan.

    Born in Croydon in 1936, his early life was turbulent. His father left home and his mother committed suicide during the war leaving his formidable, but adored grandmother, to raise him, and it was she who gave him the title for this book. His big television break came with "Not So Much a Programme, More a Way of Life" with David Frost, John Bird and John Fortune and he also had a brief stint in the popular TV soap "Coronation Street". His radio career includes the hugely popular "The News Huddlines", which he starred in and ran for twenty-six years. "A Fart in a Colander" brings together some wonderful stories from his life, and sparkles with the fun and laughter Roy has brought to millions of people throughout his career.

    As a result she won The Young Journalist of the Year Award. This is a descriptive analysis of what she sees as the tragedy of Pakistan as it moves towards the 21st century - a woeful catalogue of vested interests, corruption, an overpowering military and an unconfident and enfeebled new democracy. She looks at treatment of women, urban life, patronage and government, troubled relationship with India, Afghanistan and power of tribes and drug lords, the great game of espionage on the new frontier, Benazir Bhutto and her failure to impose change and the imminent breakdown of democracy.

    Born to privilege as the daughter of one of Pakistan’s great feudal families, she was groomed for a diplomatic career and was thrust into the political arena when her father, Pakistan's charismatic and controversial prime minister, was executed. She then led Pakistan, one of the most turbulent and impoverished nations in the world, through two terms as prime minister in the 1980s and 1990s, but she struggled to ward off charges of corruption and retain her tenuous hold on power and was eventually forced into exile. Bhutto returned to Pakistan in 2007, only to be assassinated in Rawalpindi after a triumphant speech.Including interviews with key figures who knew Bhutto and have never before spoken on the record, Benazir Bhutto: Favored Daughter illuminates Bhutto’s tragic life as well as the role she played as the first female prime minister of Pakistan. Celebrated literary critic Brooke Allen approaches Bhutto in a way not many have done before in this taut biography of a figure who had a profound effect on the volatile politics of the Middle East, drawing on contemporary news sources and eyewitness reports, as well as accounts from her supporters and her enemies.

    And for Amala, a lovely young Indian woman, that judgment is most keenly felt. Raised from a child by the wealthy Hepworth family following the murder of her parents, Amala grew up alongside the Hepworth’s own daughter, Katarina, and was loved as both sister and daughter. The family is part of the charmed circle of the upper class, but Amala’s place in society is tenuous. As an Indian woman, her life is marked by a sense of otherness and voices of prejudice. So when she embarks upon a sweet acquaintance with Henry Breckenridge, a white Englishman, Amala is both elated and terrified. She knows first-hand the opposition that an interracial couple would face, and courtship with Henry could destroy his standing in society.Determined to spare the reputations of both Henry and her sister Katarina, Amala flees England with the hope that an extended trip will allow her time to heal her broken heart. But she never imagined the repercussions of that decision, and the heartbreak awaiting her. For when she returns to England, she finds those she holds dear facing unparalleled devastation. And now it is her love that holds the key to healing a broken family . . .

    Unfortunately, a stint at the airport lounge's tea vending machine does not seem to be getting her any closer to her dreams. To pass the time she daydreams, chats with air-hostesses and takes part in mock anti-terrorist drills. At home, she studies her English, fights with her twin and engages in a secret love affair with her cousin and neighbour, Eza. But when a scandal threatens her tenuous happiness, she must pull out all stops on her overactive imagination, and seek a terrible revenge.

    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.

    Today Manto is an acknowledged master of twentieth-century Urdu literature, and his fiction serves as a lens through which the tragedy of partition is brought sharply into focus. In The Pity of Partition, Manto's life and work serve as a prism to capture the human dimension of sectarian conflict in the final decades and immediate aftermath of the British raj.Ayesha Jalal draws on Manto's stories, sketches, and essays, as well as a trove of his private letters, to present an intimate history of partition and its devastating toll. Probing the creative tension between literature and history, she charts a new way of reconnecting the histories of individuals, families, and communities in the throes of cataclysmic change. Jalal brings to life the people, locales, and events that inspired Manto's fiction, which is characterized by an eye for detail, a measure of wit and irreverence, and elements of suspense and surprise. In turn, she mines these writings for fresh insights into everyday cosmopolitanism in Bombay and Lahore, the experience and causes of partition, the postcolonial transition, and the advent of the Cold War in South Asia.The first in-depth look in English at this influential literary figure, The Pity of Partition demonstrates the revelatory power of art in times of great historical rupture.

    

    Kurieshi is, of course, hugely successful...' EsquireAmongst a batch of papers, Hanif Kureishi discovered an abandoned manuscript - a novel, written by his father. And so begins a journey which takes him through his father's childhood by the sea in India to an adult life in the suburbs of Bromley. My Ear at His Heart offers remarkable insight into Hanif Kureishi's literary calling, coming from the ashes of his father's own attempts years before. 'This is an ambitious book. Kureshi - free-associating with what feels like unmitigated honesty - successfully conveys the impression that in this book he has actually given us himself.' Sunday Times'Deeply involving, highly intelligent and, in what it doesn't say rather than what it does, profoundly sad.' Evening Standard'I don't think he has done anything as good, in any medium, as this moving and fiercely honest book.' Guardian