Exhumed from dust, Manto’s unpublished novel surfaces in Lucknow. Is it real or is it a fake? In this dastan, Manto and Ghalib converse, entwining their lives in shared dreams. The result is an intellectual journey that takes us into the people and events that shape us as a culture. As one writer describes it, ‘I discovered Rabisankar Bal like a torch in the darkness of the history of this subcontinent. This is the real story of two centuries of our own country.’ Rabisankar Bal’s audacious novel, told by reflections in a mirror and forged in the fires of hell, is both an oral tale and a shield against oblivion. An echo of distant screams. Inscribed by the devil’s quill, Dozakhnama is an outstanding performance of subterranean memory.

    This novel tells the story of the atmosphere in the small house where they live. Chaudhuri writes precisely and carefully trying to capture in the rhythms of his prose the faded happiness of things, the strange, pure remembered moments

    Finding the right balance between traditional Indian culture and the allure of contemporary Western life becomes a high-stakes juggling act—a gamble that they can't always win. A contentious septuagenarian reunites with a childhood friend after an unlikely argument threatens to erase decades of history; a 15-year acquaintance with the town's librarian tempts a middle-aged housewife to consider the unthinkable; a young, assimilated college student condemns her best friend for consenting to an arranged marriage; a widow flees her son's comfortable American life and returns to the village of her birth; a young husband and father finds success disappointingly elusive and spends his days on Boston's wintry streets, rescuing injured birds.Proud, lonely, despairing, and hopeful, Reddi's characters and the stories that surround them not only animate the struggle between tradition and a new way of life but also bear witness to the common ground we all share. That Reddi is able to transcend the confines of immigrant literature, choosing instead to examine the universal themes of love, loss, family, and duty, marks Karma and Other Stories as a resonant and gifted debut.

    She discovers a book written by Julian Winslett, a British war hero and writer, who was a young boy she cared for while working as a 16-year-old nanny in Bengal. His book is about those old days, and features the two of them as named characters. The 1920s British Raj was an era of expansive homes and gardens, elegant rail travel, and very strict divisions between Indians, Anglo-Indians and the British. For the rulers of India, it was a glorious period; but for Menakshi, it's a time she'd rather forget. She'd pushed away all her old feelings for Julian…but now they're back. As Menakshi reads Julian's book, she returns to a vanished world where luxury and deprivation co-exist in the same grand bungalow--and romance breaks all rules in the hills of Darjeeling and on the Bengal-Nagpur Railway. Menakshi's own recollections add suspense as his family heads toward rupture, and she is torn between loyalty toward the children and her own secret dreams. THE AYAH'S TALE is a 202-page novella by Sujata Massey, author of THE SLEEPING DICTIONARY, a longer novel set in British India that was published by Simon & Schuster in 2013. She is also the author of the contemporary Rei Shimura mystery novel series set in modern Japan, which starts with THE SALARYMAN'S WIFE.

    It is a widely read piece of Gujarati literature.The supernovel was written over a period of 15 years, with the first volume being published in 1887 and the fourth one in 1902.The focus of the novel is on two Gujarati Brahmin families. The family of Lakshminandan is settled in Bombay, and is very wealthy. Saraswatichandra, the brilliant scholar-to-be, is born to Lakshminandan and Chandralakshmi. He has a dazzling career to look forward to as he is steeped in Sanskrit and English classics, is a barrister by qualification and has tried his hand successfully at his father's business. The other family is that of Vidyachatur, the highly knowledgeable prime minister of the court of King Maniraj of kingdom of Ratnanagari. To him and his wife, Gunasundari, the lady of tremendous qualities, are born two daughters, Kumudsundari (the elder) and Kusumsundari. Saraswatichandra's mother dies, and Lakshminandan remarries. The step-mother, Guman, is a scheming woman and she treats her step-son with suspicion and dislike. Meanwhile, Saraswatichandra and Kumudsundari are engaged to be married, subsequent to which they exchange letters and fall in love without having seen each other; he, charmed with Kumud's tenderness and similar likes and she, taken in by his vast knowledge and excellent qualities.Things reach a head in Saraswatichandra's home when he realizes that even his father suspects him of having an interest only in the family wealth and he decides to renounce his home. His best friend, Chandrakant, tries his best to prevent his friend from carrying out this terrible vow. But Saraswatichandra is not amenable to argument, and he leaves, thus not only renouncing home and wealth, but also leaving young Kumud in the lurch. He proceeds by sea to Suvarnapur. By the time he reaches there, Kumud has already been married off to Pramad-dhan, the wayward son of Buddhidhan, the man who is slated to become prime minister of Suvarnapur.And thus, we come to the third family. Buddhidhan is a Bania (vaaNiyaa) and has a sharp intelligence and political sense, by which he manages to overturn the reign of Suvarnapur's ruler, Jadsinh, and his administrators, Dushtrai and Shathrai. His own Rajput friend, Bhoopsinh, becomes king and Buddhidhan, his prime minister. Saraswatichandra stays at Buddhidhan's place calling himself Navinchandra, and watches all this political activity with interest. Inevitably, he comes into contact a few times with Kumud, the daughter-in-law of the house. Love for each other ignites again, and a lowly companion of the daughter of the house takes advantage of this and incites Pramad-dhan against his wife.On the day Buddhidhan gets the prime minister's post, Saraswatichandra leaves his house due to the tensions that contact with Kumud is causing them both and leaves without a destination in mind. Meanwhile, Kumud is also on her way in a palanquin and accompanied by guards, to see her mother in Manoharpuri. Saraswatichandra's is attacked by bandits and they leave him injured in a forest. An attack on Kumud is also planned by the bandits. Kumud's grandfather, Maanchatur, manage to foil the bandits' plans, capture their leader, but then, Kumud, fearing shame and infamy, jumps into the Subhadra river. Everybody assumes her dead.Saraswatichandra, meanwhile, is rescued by a group of ascetics and taken to their ashram on the nearby mountains of Sundargiri. Here, Saraswatichandra impresses the head monk, Vishnudas, by his breadth of knowledge and eventually makes him name him as his successor to the post of head monk. Kumud also survives and her unconscious body is caught by a lady ascetic, Chandraavali. This group takes Kumud to Vishnudas' ashram and both she and Saraswatichandra come to know of each other's presence there.The ashram ascetics realize the facts of the past life of these two, and try their best to reunite them. In this attempt, they take them both to an isolated cave on the peak of Chiranjeevshrung. Here, spending four days and nights together, they undergo a mystical experience and they realise their goal of life. Ratnanagari's police and detectives find out where Saraswatichandra and Kumud are, and eventually, his entire family talk to Vishnudas about getting the two 'back into the world', and convince the two about the same. However, there is no consensus on the marriage of Kumud to Saraswatichandra. Kumud on the other hand tries to convince saras to marry Kusum (kumud's sister). The story ends with Saraswatichandra marrying Kusum.This is the plot of the novel described in the briefest possible manner, without conveying even an iota of the emotions, the tension, the idealism of some characters and the pragmatism of others, the sheer vicissitudes of life in these three families after Saraswatichandra renounced home.

    The fragile peace between the two powers is threatened when Balaji Vishvanath Bhat, Peshwa of the Confederacy, foils the plans of Nizam Ul Mulk of the Mughal Empire, and asserts the power of the Marathas. However, little does the Peshwa know that he has dealt the Nizam an unintended wound—one with roots in his mysterious past and one that he would seek to avenge till his last breath.When the Peshwa surrenders his life to a terminal illness dark clouds gather over the Confederacy as it is threatened by a Mughal invasion as well as an internal rebellion.All the while a passive spectator, the Peshwa’s son, Bajirao Bhat, now needs to rise beyond the grief of his father’s passing, his scant military and administrative experience, and his intense love for his wife and newborn son to rescue everything he holds dear. Will the young man be able to protect the Confederacy from internal strife and crush the armies of the Empire all while battling inner demons? Will he live up to his title of Peshwa?

    But as the years flit by Usman feels a growing distance between them. He realises that he hasn't noticed the buds of the gulmohar tree unfurl, and that he has lost sight of his love for his wife.A beautiful account of a marriage that is in turns wry and unashamedly romantic.Another Gulmohar Tree was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize Europe and South Asia in 2010.Aamer Hussein was born in Karachi in 1955 and moved to London in the early 1970s. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and reviews regularly for The Independent and the TLS. He is the author of Turquoise, This Other Salt, and the editor of Kahani: Short Stories by Pakistani Women. He has held visiting posts at the University of Southampton and the University of London, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

    Nearly a decade has passed since Rahul Satyabhagi, heir to the mega Satyabhagi business empire, had raped Avni Rambha, bested her in court, and gone on to become a men’s rights activist, and the who’s-who of Badrid Bay had breathed a sigh of relief that the sordid mess was over. But now a sting operation proves what many, the three friends included, had suspected all along – he’d been lying. Furious that he has been exposed, Rahul plans to sue the media as well as his long-suffering victim. Now, Rhea, Hitaishi and Amruta find themselves at a crossroad - can they carry on doing nothing? DC Virendra Dixit was among those who’d believed that the Rambha rape case had been a ‘false allegation’, but now the sting tape brings him to a case that promises to be a turning point in his career. Just as he thinks he is nearing a resolution, he finds himself at a crossroad of his own. Rhea, Hitaishi and Amruta have carved out a path that has already affected DC Dixit’s, but do their paths cross? Who is the hunter, and who is the hunted? Can a story of hard questions and difficult choices have an easy resolution?

    Accustomed to tracking down missing pets and cheating lovers, he is about to have his world change completely when a new case requires him to tail actress Shailaja Kapoor. What seems like a simple request turns into a dramatic dive into her murky past, wading through which is not going to be easy. Or safe. Soon Prachand and his wife, and partner against crime, Vidya, fall under the glare of the police as Shailaja Kapoor is abducted right before their eyes. Now he must put his skills to the test before they become victims at the end of a dark and dangerous game.

    

    The lives of the Parsi men and women who grew up together in Wadi Baug are revealed in all their complicated humanity: Adi Patel's disintegration into alcoholism; Dosamai's gossiping tongue; and Soli Contractor's betrayal and heartbreak. And observing it all is Rusi Bilimoria, a disillusioned businessman who struggles to make sense of his life and hold together a fraying community.

    Does not pull punches. Phantom stuff!”Anukriti Pandey (Screenwriter): “Read Bhang Milkha Bhang for a ride through space and time and the narrow, eerie, lanes of the human mind.”BOOK DESCRIPTION:*A millennial trying to break the shackles of caste and sexual orientation**An anxiety-ridden NCB officer advocating CBD and spirituality**An ambitious woman entangled in an abusive marriage**A balding educational consultant playing assassin by the night**An eccentric narco looking for his deal of a lifetime*What brings them together?Chirasthayi Bhang – an unknown species of cannabis which has historically been protected by a lineage of monks has suddenly appeared in Mumbai’s drug underbelly. Rumor has it that it reverses biological processes – and almost everyone wants it.What follows is a high-stakes tussle between a group of highly peculiar but dangerous individuals for the mythical treasure, where each is prepared to put a lot up for gamble to obtain that which was previously considered unobtainable. Before long, things start getting messy – messier than anyone could possibly imagine.To what extent would one go to get something that was already lost forever?

    Yet the literary landscape of this dynamic part of the world has been bound together not by borders and nationalities, but by a common experience of Western imperialism. Keenly aware of the collected scars left by a legacy of colonial rule, the acclaimed writer Reza Aslan, with a team of four regional editors and seventy-seven translators, cogently demonstrates with Tablet and Pen how literature can, in fact, be used to form identity and serve as an extraordinary chronicle of the disrupted histories of the region.Acting with Words Without Borders, which fosters international exchange through translation and publication of the world’s finest literature, Aslan has purposefully situated this volume in the twentieth century, beyond the familiar confines of the Ottoman past, believing that the writers who have emerged in the last hundred years have not received their full due. This monumental collection, therefore, of nearly two hundred pieces, including short stories, novels, memoirs, essays and works of drama—many of them presented in English for the first time—features translated works from Arabic, Persian, Urdu, and Turkish. Organized chronologically, the volume spans a century of literature—from the famed Arab poet Khalil Gibran to the Nobel laureates Naguib Mahfouz and Orhan Pamuk, from the great Syrian-Lebanese poet Adonis to the grand dame of Urdu fiction, Ismat Chughtai—connected by the extraordinarily rich tradition of resplendent cultures that have been all too often ignored by the Western canon.By shifting America’s perception of the Middle Eastern world away from religion and politics, Tablet and Pen evokes the splendors of a region through the voices of its writers and poets, whose literature tells an urgent and liberating story. With a wealth of contextual information that places the writing within the historical, political, and cultural breadth of the region, Tablet Pen is transcendent, a book to be devoured as a single sustained narrative, from the first page to the last. Creating a vital bridge between two estranged cultures, "this is that rare anthology: cohesive, affecting, and informing" (Publishers Weekly).

    Virmati, a young woman born in Amritsar into an austere and high-minded household, falls in love with a neighbour, the Professor--a man who is already married. That the Professor eventually marries Virmati, installs her in his home (alongside his furious first wife) and helps her towards further studies in Lahore, is small consolation to her scandalised family. Or even to Virmati, who finds that the battle for her own independence has created irrevocable lines of partition and pain around her.

    Carefully selected from among nearly 400 such letters, this collection covers a range of themes and subjects, including citizenship, war and peace, law and order, national planning and development, governance and corruption, and India’s place in the world. The letters also cover momentous world events and the many crises and conflicts the country faced during the first sixteen years after Independence. Visionary, wise and reflective, these letters are not just a testimony to Nehru’s statesmanship and his deep engagement with every aspect of India’s democratic journey, but are also of great contemporary relevance for the guidance they provide for our current problems and predicaments.