Book picks similar to
Women Dreaming by Salma


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The Dry Heart


Natalia Ginzburg - 1947
    Stripped of any preciousness or sentimentality, Natalia Ginzburg’s writing here is white-hot, tempered by rage. She transforms the unhappy tale of an ordinary dull marriage into a rich psychological thriller that seems to beg the question: why don’t more wives kill their husbands?

Train to Pakistan


Khushwant Singh - 1956
    By the time the monsoon broke, almost a million of them were dead, and all of northern India was in arms, in terror, or in hiding. The only remaining oases of peace were a scatter of little villages lost in the remote reaches of the frontier. One of these villages was Mano Majra.”It is a place, Khushwant Singh goes on to tell us at the beginning of this classic novel, where Sikhs and Muslims have lived together in peace for hundreds of years. Then one day, at the end of the summer, the “ghost train” arrives, a silent, incredible funeral train loaded with the bodies of thousands of refugees, bringing the village its first taste of the horrors of the civil war. Train to Pakistan is the story of this isolated village that is plunged into the abyss of religious hate. It is also the story of a Sikh boy and a Muslim girl whose love endured and transcends the ravages of war.Introduction by Arthur Lall

Eventide


Therese Bohman - 2016
    An art history professor, she finds fulfillment in her work, and when she starts advising a new postgraduate student, she is struck by his confidence. He claims to have discovered new materials from a female artist working around 1900 that could change the history of Swedish visual arts. Karolina soon finds herself embroiled in a complex game with both emotional and professional consequences. Eventide is a perceptive novel of ideas about love, art, and solitude in our time, and the distorted standards to which women are held in their relationships and careers.

Doppelgänger


Daša Drndić - 2002
    Details of the lives of Artur, a retired Yugoslav army captain, and Isabella, a Holocaust survivor, are revealed through police dossiers. As they fight loneliness and aging, they take comfort in small things: for Artur, a collection of 274 hats; for Isabella, a family of garden gnomes who live in her apartment. Later, we meet the ill-fated Pupi, who dreamed of becoming a sculptor but instead became a chemist and then a spy. As Eileen Battersby wrote, “As he stands, in the zoo, gazing at a pair of rhinos, in a city most likely present-day Belgrade, this battered Everyman feels very alone: ‘I would like to tell someone, anyone, I’d like to tell someone: I buried Mother today.’” Pupi sets out to correct his family’s crimes by returning silverware to its original Jewish owners through the help of an unlikely friend, a pawnbroker.

Cursed Bunny


Bora Chung - 2021
    Blurring the lines between magical realism, horror, and science-fiction, Chung uses elements of the fantastic and surreal to address the very real horrors and cruelties of patriarchy and capitalism in modern society.Anton Hur’s translation skilfully captures the way Chung’s prose effortlessly glides from being terrifying to wryly humorous. Winner of a PEN/Heim Grant.

Samskara: A Rite for a Dead Man


U.R. Ananthamurthy - 1965
    As a religious novel about a decaying brahmin colony in the south Indian village ofKarnataka, Samskara serves as an allegory rich in realistic detail, a contemporary reworking of ancient Hindu themes and myths, and a serious, poetic study of a religious man living in a community of priests gone to seed. A death which stands as the central event in the plot brings in its wake aplague, many more deaths, live questions with only dead answers, moral chaos, and the rebirth of one man. The volume provides a useful glossary of Hindu myths, customs, Indian names, flora, and other terms. Notes and an afterword enhance the self-contained, faithful, and yet readabletranslation.

Arid Dreams


Duanwad Pimwana - 2014
    They bide their time, waiting for an extraordinary event to end their stasis. A politician’s wife imagines her life had her husband’s accident been fatal, a man on death row requests that a friend clear up a misunderstanding with a prostitute, and an elevator attendant feels himself wasting away while trapped, immobile, at his station all day.With curious wit, this collection offers revelatory insight and subtle critique, exploring class, gender, and disenchantment in a changing country.

Nowhere to Be Found


Bae Suah - 1998
    For her, time and identity blur, and all action is reaction. She can’t quite understand what motivates others to take life seriously enough to focus on anything—for her existence is a loosely woven tapestry of fleeting concepts. From losing her virginity to mindless jobs and a splintered, unsupportive family, the lessons learned have less to do with the reality we all share and more to do with the truth of the imagination, which is where the narrator focuses to discover herself.

The Lonesome Bodybuilder


Yukiko Motoya - 2018
    A boy waits at a bus stop, mocking businessmen struggling to keep their umbrellas open in a typhoon--until an old man shows him that they hold the secret to flying. A woman working in a clothing boutique waits endlessly on a customer who won't come out of the fitting room--and who may or may not be human. A newlywed notices that her husband's features are beginning to slide around his face--to match her own.In these eleven stories, the individuals who lift the curtains of their orderly homes and workplaces are confronted with the bizarre, the grotesque, the fantastic, the alien--and, through it, find a way to liberation. The English-language debut of one of Japan's most fearlessly inventive young writers.

People From My Neighbourhood


Hiromi Kawakami - 2020
    These are some of the inhabitants of People From My Neighborhood. In their lives, details of the local and everyday—the lunch menu at a tiny drinking place called the Love, the color and shape of the roof of the tax office—slip into accounts of duels, prophetic dreams, revolutions, and visitations from ghosts and gods. In twenty-six “palm of the hand” stories—fictions small enough to fit in the palm of one’s hand—Hiromi Kawakami creates a universe ruled by mystery and transformation.

Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard


Kiran Desai - 1998
    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.

Dopehri


Pankaj Kapur - 2019
    Every afternoon, at precisely 3 o'clock, she hears the sound of unknown footsteps. Every afternoon, she peeks out ... but no one is there. In a state of growing panic, Amma Bi considers moving to an old people's home, before finally taking in a lodger - a winsome young woman named Sabiha. Her arrival fills Amma Bi's lonely world with love and laughter, and Jumman, the household help, is transformed as well. When Sabiha finds herself in trouble, Amma Bi must draw on hidden reserves of skill and empathy in order to resolve the situation... Dopehri - legendary film and theatre personality Pankaj Kapur's first novel - is a wonderfully evocative work of great charm, wry humour and quiet power, a story that readers will fall in love with.

Moonbath


Yanick Lahens - 2014
    She published her first novel in 2000, was awarded the prestigious Prix Femina in 2014 for Moonbath, and is the 2016 winner of a French Voices Award.

Pather Panchali: Song of the Road


Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay - 1929
    It was followed in 1932 by a sequel Aparajito, which was later also adapted into a film of the same name by Satyajit Ray.

The Equestrienne


Uršuľa Kovalyk - 2013
    Unruly teenager Karolína is growing up in an unconventional all-female household including her hot-blooded, knife-wielding grandmother.Repelled by her Mum’s serial love affairs, Karolína runs away and stumbles upon a riding school on the edge of town. There, she befriends Romana, a girl with one leg shorter than the other and Matilda, a rider and trainer who helps the two girls overcome their physical limitations. Together they found a successful trick riding team and soon it seems that half flags, mills and scales are not the only tricks flashing like blades up her sequinned sleeve as Karolína explores Pink Floyd and smoking, and discovers her knack for seeing deep into others’ souls.The fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 and the subsequent arrival of capitalism threatens to destroy the riding school. The team has to turn professional. But in a sport of perfect scores is there still room for Romana and Karolína…?The Equestrienne is a poetic, caustic coming-of-age novel about the desire of one young girl to realise her dreams before and after Velvet Revolution; it is a celebration of friendship between women and also a bitter acknowledgement that greed the desire for power can destroy any relationship. I lived several lives in the brief instant before my feet touched the ground. The music stopped. I landed on the hard surface like an accomplished equestrienne. The equestrienne bowed. The audience applauded.