The story reflects the social, political and religious scene in Bengal at the turn of the century. The forces that were operating in Bengal at that time were one of the intense nationalism and revival of ancient spiritual values and also that of liberal western thought. What makes Gora a great prose epic is not only its social content but also its brilliant story of self-searching, of resolution, of conflicts and of self discovery.

    The novel follows Hugo Baumgartner as he flees Nazi Germany -- and his Jewish heritage -- for India, only to be imprisoned as a hostile alien and then released to Bombay at war's end. In this tale of a man who, "like a figure in a Greek tragedy . . . seems to elude his destiny" (NEW LEADER), Desai's "capacious intelligence, her unsentimental compassion" (NEW REPUBLIC) reach their full height.

    The Rajput kingdom of Mewar is at the height of its power. It is locked in war with the Sultanates of Delhi, Gujarat and Malwa. But there is another deadly battle being waged within Mewar itself. who will inherit the throne after the death of the Maharana? The course of history, not just of Mewar but of the whole of India, is about to be changed forever. At the centre of Cuckold is the narrator, heir apparent of Mewar, who questions the codes, conventions and underlying assumptions of the feudal world of which he is a part, a world in which political and personal conduct are dictated by values of courage, valour and courtesy; and death is preferable to dishonour. A quintessentially Indian story, Cuckold has an immediacy and appeal that are truely universal.

    The narrator, Indian born and English educated, traces events back and forth in time, from the outbreak of World War II to the late twentieth century, through years of Bengali partition and violence, observing the ways in which political events invade private lives.

    In Rashid's opium room the air is thick and potent. A beautiful young woman leans to hold a long-stemmed pipe over a flame, her hair falling across her dark eyes. Around her, men sprawl and mutter in the gloom, each one drifting with his own tide. Here, people say that you introduce only your worst enemy to opium.Outside, stray dogs lope in packs. Street vendors hustle. Hookers call for custom through the bars of their cages as their pimps slouch in doorways in the half-light. There is an underworld whisper of a new terror: the Pathar Maar, the stone killer, whose victims are the nameless, invisible poor. There are too many of them to count in this broken city.Narcopolis is a rich, chaotic, hallucinatory dream of a novel that captures the Bombay of the 1970s in all its compelling squalor. With a cast of pimps, pushers, poets, gangsters and eunuchs, it is a journey into a sprawling underworld written in electric and utterly original prose.

    When Ramchand is sent to show his wares to a wealthy family preparing for their daughter's wedding, he is jolted out of the rhythm of his narrow daily life. His glimpse into a different world gives him an urgent sense of possibility. And so he attempts to recapture the hope that his childhood had promised, arming himself with two battered English grammar books, a fresh pair of socks, and a bar of Lifebuoy soap. But soon these efforts turn his life upside down, bringing him face to face with the cruelties on which his very existence depends. Reading group guide included.

    A time promising wealth for the corrupt, but terrifying with sterilization for the poor and jail for the critical, the Emergency changes forever the lives of both women.

    The East India Company is seeking to make inroads into the region and the local people—in particular the Abor and Mishmee tribes—fear their coming and are doing all they can to keep them out of their territories. The author takes a recorded historical event—the mysterious disappearance of a French priest, Father Nicolas Krick in the 1850s and the execution of Kajinsha from the Mishmee tribe for his murder—and woven a gripping, densely imagined work of fiction around it. And, even as the novel tells the story of an impossible journey and an elopement, it explores the themes of the lure of unknown worlds, the love people have for each other and their land and the forces of history. Gimur, a girl from the Abor tribe, runs away with Kajinsha from the Mishmee tribe, and they settle down on his land near the Tibetan border. Father Krick’s attempts to reach Tibet to set up a Jesuit mission are foiled repeatedly by the local people not because of any personal animus towards the priests or their work, but because they feel—rightly—that once the priests come, the British, with their guns and their garrisons will follow. The story revolves around events in Gimur’s and Kajinsha’s villages and is also seen from the point of view of Father Krick, a gentle, intelligent man, devout but no bigot, whose determination to reach Tibet no matter what the cost, impacts tragically on all those who encounter him.

    So when he agrees to return to India to visit his ailing grand­father, he is sure he’ll be able to resist his family’s pleas that he marry a “good” Indian girl. With a girlfriend and a promising career back in San Francisco, the last thing Neel needs is an arranged marriage.Leila is a thirty-year-old teacher in Neel’s family’s village who has watched too many prospective husbands come and go to think her newest suitor will be any different. She is well past prime marrying age; her family has no money for a dowry; and then there’s the matter of an old friendship with a Muslim boy named Janni.Neel and Leila struggle to reconcile their own desires with the expectations of others in this riveting story of two people, two countries, and two ways of life that may be more compatible than they seem.

    Greeted by fireworks displays, cheering crowds, and Prime Minister Nehru himself, Saleem grows up to learn the ominous consequences of this coincidence. His every act is mirrored and magnified in events that sway the course of national affairs; his health and well-being are inextricably bound to those of his nation; his life is inseparable, at times indistinguishable, from the history of his country. Perhaps most remarkable are the telepathic powers linking him with India’s 1,000 other “midnight’s children,” all born in that initial hour and endowed with magical gifts. This novel is at once a fascinating family saga and an astonishing evocation of a vast land and its people–a brilliant incarnation of the universal human comedy. Twenty-five years after its publication, Midnight’ s Children stands apart as both an epochal work of fiction and a brilliant performance by one of the great literary voices of our time.

    Rakhi, a young painter and single mother, is struggling to come to terms with her relationship with ex-husband Sonny, a hip Bay Area DJ, and with her dream-teller mother, who has rarely spoken about her past or her native India. Rakhi has her hands full, juggling a creative dry spell, raising her daughter, and trying to save the Berkeley teahouse she and her best friend Belle own. But greater challenges are to come. When a national tragedy turns her world upside down and Rakhi needs her mother’s strength and wisdom more than ever, she loses her in a freak car accident. But uncovering her mother’s dream journals allows Rakhi to discover her mother’s long-kept secrets and sacrifices–and ultimately to confront her fears, forge a new relationship with her father, and revisit Sonny’s place in her heart.

    Written by four major saints, the greatest exponents of this poetic form, between the tenth and twelfth centuries, they are passionate lyrical expressions of the search for an unpredictable and spontaneous spiritual vision of 'now'. Here, yogic and tantric symbols, riddles and enigmas subvert the language of ordinary experience, as references to night and day, sex and family relationships take on new mystical meanings. These intense poems of personal devotion to a single deity also question traditional belief systems, customs, superstitions, image worship and even moral strictures, in verse that speaks to all men and women regardless of class and caste.

    Its ceilings need plastering and some of the toilets leak appallingly, but its residents are far from desperate, though sometimes contentious and unforgiving. In these witty, poignant stories, Mistry charts the intersecting lives of Firozsha Baag, yielding a delightful collective portrait of a middle-class Indian community poised between the old ways and the new.

    Bitter Fruit presents the best collection of Manto's writings, from his short stories, plays and sketches, to portraits of cinema artists, a few pieces on himself, and his letters to Uncle Sam which have references to communism, Russia, politics after the Partition and his own financial condition. The concluding section of the book has acknowledgements and reminiscences from Saadat's friends and relatives. Bitter Fruit includes stories like A Wet Afternoon, The Return, A Believer's Version, Toba Tek Singh, Colder Than Ice, The Assignment, Odour, By The Roadside, Bribing the Almighty, The Kingdom's End, The Woman in the Red Raincoat, The Room with the Bright Light, The Great Divide, The Angel, Siraj, An Old Fashioned Man, The Price of Freedom, It Happened in 1919, The Girl from Delhi, A Man of God, Free for All, and A Tale of 1947. There is a collection of sketches too. Manto used to write radio plays and this book has one of the dramas he penned, called In This Vortex. His short stories bring out the most delicate nuances of human nature.

    Centuries ago, it was proclaimed of the Mahabharata: "What is not in it, is nowhere." But even now, we can use the same words about it. He who knows it not, knows not the heights and depths of the soul; he misses the trials and tragedy and the beauty and grandeur of life. The Mahabharata is not a mere epic; it is a romance telling the tale of heroic men and women, and of some who were divine. It is a whole literature in itself, containing a code of life, a philosophy of social and ethical relations, and speculative thought on human problems that is hard to rival.