Book picks similar to
The Rivered Earth by Vikram Seth


poetry
music
fiction
south-asian-fiction

Love without a story


Arundhathi Subramaniam - 2019
    Circling themes of intimacy and time, they return to the urgency of conversation: that fragile bridge across the frozen attitudes that divide our world. But at the heart of the collection is a deeper preoccupation, with those blurry places where humans might walk with gods, where the body might touch the beyond, where the enchanted might intersect effortlessly with the everyday. Where one stumbles upon what the poet simply calls ‘love without a story’.

The War Nerd Iliad


John Dolan - 2017
    The War Nerd takes on Homer in a new translation; a classic gory, funny, tragic story in today's language.

Ravana: Roar of the Demon King


Abhimanyu Singh Sisodia - 2011
    No less than a god to his own people, he is the sheer embodiment of evil to his enemies. This arrogant demon brooks no hindrance to snatching his heart's desire, and his terror seems unstoppable to gods and humans alike. But he makes a mistake when he abducts the wife of Lord Rama, the exiled divine ruler of Ayodhya.Ravana is a story of a demon, who dared to challenge the gods, and almost got away with it. Ravana's tale is one that will incite awe and fear simultaneously. Whose side was this enigma on, good or evil? The obvious answer seems to be but one: his own. Or was he really? This graphic novel seeks to explore that question, and others.

The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories, Vol. 1


Joseph Gordon-Levitt - 2011
    With the help of the entire creative collective, Gordon-Levitt culled, edited and curated over 8,500 contributions into this finely tuned collection of original art from 67 contributors. Reminiscent of the 6-Word Memoir series, The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories: Volume 1 brings together art and voices from around the world to unite and tell stories that defy size.

The Black Album


Hanif Kureishi - 1995
    The second novel from one of the most celebrated voices in British fiction and film, The Black Album is an exhilarating multicultural coming-of-age tale featuring Shalid, a sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll-loving Pakistani student torn between a love affair with a gorgeous, free-spirited college professor and his desire to please his conservative Muslim community.

Krishna And Rukmini (Amar Chitra Katha)


Kamala Chandrakant - 2006
    It is a popular lovers' tale, rather unique in India. Marriages in India have traditionally been set by parents. However, princely families sometimes held bride's choice contests. In the case of Rukmini, daughter of the king of Vidarbha. Her father and brother had settled on Shishupala whom she detested. Her mind was set on Krishna of whose exploits she had heard. But there was to be no bride's choice event. So Rukmini takes the initiative by writing a letter to Krishna and sends it through a confidant. Krishna who also had heard of her, decides to act on the letter. Krishna and Balarama arrive in Rukmini's town and whisk her away on their chariot to their capital Dvaraka. Balarama fights Shishupala and defeats him.

A Handful of Rice


Kamala Markandaya - 1966
    Ravi , son of a peasant, joins in the general exodus to the city, and, floating through the indifferent streets, lands into the underworld of petty criminals. He falls in love with pretty Nalini, and marries her against all odds. She tries to change his way of life but fate conspires against him . . And the story moves to a memorable and a haunting climax. MEDIA REVIEWS:From among the handful of Indo-Anglian women novelists, Kamala Markandaya stands out as one of the3 finest and most impassionate writers of fiction. Her greatest asset is her language - virile, vibrant and vigorous - with the right choice and turn of words and expressions. A Handful of Rice certainly makes an absorbing and enjoyable reading. - Sunday StandardThe picture of a joint family with its many psychological stresses and strains is deftly drawn, and so is the picture of the shady underworld. The novel is, in a sense, a saga of the triumph of human spirit over poverty's privations and predicaments. - The Indian PENAn overwhelmingly real book. It is about those parts of us, as human beings, which are permanent and universal - love, hunger, lust, passion, ambition, sacrifice, death. She is the best writer now writing who generally uses an Indian background. - John Masters

Shire


Ali Smith - 2013
    In an opening up of norths and souths, she traces unexpected conduits between Cambridge and the north of Scotland. Like all of Ali Smith’s work, here spot-lit by Sarah Wood’s delicate art, this is a book that will blow fresh air through the mind and set readers’ pulses racing.

I Am Secretly an Important Man


Steven "Jesse" Bernstein - 1996
    "The work is deeply felt...Bernstein has been there and brought it back. Bernstein is a writer." [William S. Burroughs]

Why Homer Matters


Adam Nicolson - 2014
    Homer's poems occupy, as Adam Nicolson writes "a third space" in the way we relate to the past: not as memory, which lasts no more than three generations, nor as the objective accounts of history, but as epic, invented after memory but before history, poetry which aims "to bind the wounds that time inflicts."The Homeric poems are among the oldest stories we have, drawing on deep roots in the Eurasian steppes beyond the Black Sea, but emerging at a time around 2000 B.C. when the people who would become the Greeks came south and both clashed and fused with the more sophisticated inhabitants of the Eastern Mediterranean.The poems, which ask the eternal questions about the individual and the community, honor and service, love and war, tell us how we became who we are.

The Splendor of Silence


Indu Sundaresan - 2006
    Army captain, arrives at the princely state of Rudrakot in May of 1942, it is on a personal quest to find his missing brother. But Sam's mission is soon threatened by the unlikeliest of sources -- he falls hopelessly in love with Mila, daughter of the local political agent. And Mila, unexpectedly attracted to Sam, finds herself torn between loyalty to her family and the man she loves. A sweeping and poignant story of forbidden love, The Splendor of Silence opens twenty-one years later with Olivia, Sam's daughter, receiving a trunk of treasures from India, along with an anonymous letter that finally fills the silences of her childhood. She finally learns the heartrending story of her parents' passionate and enduring love affair -- throwing them in the path of racial prejudice, nationalist intrigue, and the explosive circumstances of a country on the brink of independence from British rule.

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.

Sex, Drugs & Opera


Roland Orzabal - 2014
    With his gorgeous, successful wife, Jenny, his country pile, and gold discs hanging in his plush bathroom, he seems to have it all. But all is not well between Jenny and Solomon; as her business continues to grow, her affection for her husband begins to diminish, and soon divorce is on the cards. To try and win Jenny back, Solomon throws his bruised heart into trying out for a reality TV show that turns lapsed pop acts into opera singers. The ace up his sleeve is an eccentric octogenarian opera coach he employs to get ahead of the competition but, to his surprise, Solomon learns far more than how to improve the quality of his vibrato; especially when his coach asks Solomon to duet with newly single Samantha... Sex, Drugs & Opera is the debut novel of Tears for Fears musician, Roland Orzabal.

The Wildings


Nilanjana Roy - 2012
    Miao, the clan elder, a wise, grave Siamese; Katar, a cat loved by his followers and feared by his enemies; Hulo, the great warrior tom; Beraal, the beautiful queen, swift and deadly when challenged; Southpaw, the kitten whose curiosity can always be counted on to get him into trouble… Unfettered and wild, these and the other members of the tribe fear no one, go where they will, and do as they please. Until, one day, a terrified orange-coloured kitten with monsoon green eyes and remarkable powers, lands in their midst—setting off a series of extraordinary events that will change their world forever.

Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver


Mary Oliver - 2017
    Throughout her celebrated career, Mary Oliver has touched countless readers with her brilliantly crafted verse, expounding on her love for the physical world and the powerful bonds between all living things. Identified as "far and away, this country's best selling poet" by Dwight Garner, she now returns with a stunning and definitive collection of her writing from the last fifty years. Carefully curated, these 200 plus poems feature Oliver's work from her very first book of poetry, No Voyage and Other Poems, published in 1963 at the age of 28, through her most recent collection, Felicity, published in 2015. This timeless volume, arranged by Oliver herself, showcases the beloved poet at her edifying best. Within these pages, she provides us with an extraordinary and invaluable collection of her passionate, perceptive, and much-treasured observations of the natural world.