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The Forest of Enchantments
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni - 2019
In this brilliant retelling, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni places Sita at the centre of the novel: this is Sita’s version. The Forest of Enchantments is also a very human story of some of the other women in the epic, often misunderstood and relegated to the margins: Kaikeyi, Surpanakha, Mandodari. A powerful comment on duty, betrayal, infidelity and honour, it is also about women’s struggle to retain autonomy in a world that privileges men, as Chitra transforms an ancient story into a gripping, contemporary battle of wills. While the Ramayana resonates even today, she makes it more relevant than ever, in the underlying questions in the novel: How should women be treated by their loved ones? What are their rights in a relationship? When does a woman need to stand up and say, ‘Enough!’
Thanda Gosht / ٹھنڈا گوشت
سعادت حسن منٹو - 1950
Ishwar Singh, a Sikh fails to make love to his mistress. She suspects him of infidelity and In a fit of jealousy she stabs her husband with his own dagger. While dying, Ishwar Singh admits his crime of attempted rape with an unconscious Muslim girl, who was actually dead.Hence the title "Cold Flesh".
Pakistan: A Personal History
Imran Khan - 2011
Undermined by a ruling elite hungry for money and power, Pakistan now stands alone as the only Islamic country with a nuclear bomb, yet it is unable to protect its people from the carnage of regular bombings from terrorists and its own ally, America. Now with the revelation that Pakistan has been the hiding place of Osama bin Laden for several years, that relationship can only grow more strained. How did it reach this flashpoint of instability and injustice with such potentially catastrophic results for Pakistan?Recounting his country's history through the prism of his own memories, Imran Khan starts from its foundation, ripped out of the dying British Raj. He guides us through and comments on subsequent historical developments which shook the Muslim world - the wars with India in 1965 and 1971, the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the 9/11 terrorist attacks and America's retribution 10 years later with the assassination of bin Laden - to the current controversial and intractable war in Afghanistan.We see these events viewed not only through the eyes of Westerners, but through those of ordinary Pakistanis.Drawing on the experiences of his own family and his wide travels within his homeland, Pakistan: A Personal History provides a unique insider's view of a country unfamiliar to a western audience. Woven into this history we see how Imran Khan's personal life - his happy childhood in Lahore, his Oxford education, his extraordinary cricketing career, his marriage to Jemima Goldsmith, his mother's influence and that of his Islamic faith - inform both the historical narrative and his current philanthropic and political activities. It is at once absorbing and insightful, casting fresh light upon a country whose culture he believes is largely misunderstood by the West.
The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India
Urvashi Butalia - 1998
Within the space of two months in 1947 more than twelve million people were displaced. A million died. More than seventy-five thousand women were abducted and raped. Countless children disappeared. Homes, villages, communities, families, and relationships were destroyed. Yet, more than half a century later, little is known of the human dimensions of this event. In The Other Side of Silence , Urvashi Butalia fills this gap by placing people—their individual experiences, their private pain—at the center of this epochal event.Through interviews conducted over a ten-year period and an examination of diaries, letters, memoirs, and parliamentary documents, Butalia asks how people on the margins of history—children, women, ordinary people, the lower castes, the untouchables—have been affected by this upheaval. To understand how and why certain events become shrouded in silence, she traces facets of her own poignant and partition-scarred family history before investigating the stories of other people and their experiences of the effects of this violent disruption. Those whom she interviews reveal that, at least in private, the voices of partition have not been stilled and the bitterness remains. Throughout, Butalia reflects on difficult questions: what did community, caste, and gender have to do with the violence that accompanied partition? What was partition meant to achieve and what did it actually achieve? How, through unspeakable horrors, did the survivors go on? Believing that only by remembering and telling their stories can those affected begin the process of healing and forgetting, Butalia presents a sensitive and moving account of her quest to hear the painful truth behind the silence.
The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories, China from the Bottom Up
Liao Yiwu - 2003
By asking challenging questions with respect and empathy, Liao Yiwu managed to get his subjects to talk openly and sometimes hilariously about their lives, desires, and vulnerabilities, creating a book that is an instance par excellence of what was once upon a time called “The New Journalism.” The Corpse Walker reveals a fascinating aspect of modern China, describing the lives of normal Chinese citizens in ways that constantly provoke and surprise.From the Trade Paperback edition.
The Collaborator
Mirza Waheed - 2011
Indian soldiers appear, as if from nowhere, to hunt for militants on the run. Four teenage boys, who used to spend their afternoons playing cricket, or singing Bollywood ballads down by the river, have disappeared one by one, to cross into Pakistan, and join the movement against the Indian army. Only one of their friends, the son of the headman, is left behind. The families in the village begin to think it's time to flee, to search for a place of greater safety. But the headman will not allow his family to leave. And, whilst the headman watches his dreams give way beneath the growing violence, his son, under the brutal, drunken gaze of the Indian army captain, is seemingly forced to collaborate, and go into the valley to count the corpses, fearing, each day, that he will discover one of his friends, lying amongst the dead. 'The Collaborator' is a stunningly humane work of storytelling, with a poignant and unpredictable hero at its heart. In one of the most shocking and brilliantly compelling novels of recent times.Mirza Waheed lights our way into the heart of a war that is all too real.
The Rig Veda
Wendy Doniger
A work of intricate beauty, it provides a unique insight into early Indian mythology, religion and culture. This selection of 18 of the hymns, chosen for their eloquence and wisdom, focuses on the enduring themes of creation, sacrifice, death, women, the sacred plant soma and the gods. Inspirational and profound, it provides a fascinating introduction to one of the founding texts of Hindu scripture, an awesome and venerable ancient work of Vedic ritual, prayer, philosophy, legend and faith.
The Patient Assassin: A True Tale of Massacre, Revenge, and India's Quest for Independence
Anita Anand - 2019
Sir Michael had become increasingly alarmed at the effect Gandhi was having on his province, as well as recent demonstrations, strikes, and shows of Hindu-Muslim unity. All these things, to Sir Michael, were a precursor to a second Indian revolt. What happened next shocked the world. An unauthorized gathering in the Jallianwallah Bagh in Amritsar in April 1919 became the focal point for Sir Michael’s law enforcers. Dyer marched his soldiers into the walled garden, blocking the only exit. Then, without issuing any order to disperse, he instructed his men to open fire, turning their guns on the thickest parts of the crowd, filled with over a thousand unarmed men, women, and children. For ten minutes, the soldiers continued firing, stopping only when they ran out of ammunition. According to legend, eighteen-year-old Sikh orphan Udham Singh was injured in the attack, and remained surrounded by the dead and dying until he was able to move the next morning. Then, he supposedly picked up a handful of blood-soaked earth, smeared it across his forehead, and vowed to kill the men responsible. The truth, as the author has discovered, is more complex—but no less dramatic. Award-winning journalist Anita Anand traced Singh’s journey through Africa, the United States, and across Europe until, in March 1940, he finally arrived in front of O’Dwyer himself in a London hall ready to shoot him down. The Patient Assassin shines a devastating light on one of history’s most horrific events, but it reads like a taut thriller and reveals the incredible but true story behind a legend that still endures today.
Narcopolis
Jeet Thayil - 2012
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.
We That Are Young
Preti Taneja - 2017
This is not just Shakespeare repurposed for our times – it’s a novel that urgently matters in 2017, and which will resonate for years to come. Jivan Singh, the bastard scion of the Devraj family, returns to his childhood home after a long absence – only to witness the unexpected resignation of the ageing patriarch from the vast corporation he founded, the Devraj Company. On the same day, Sita, Devraj’s youngest daughter, absconds – refusing to submit to the marriage her father wants for her. Meanwhile, Radha and Gargi, Sita’s older sisters, must deal with the fallout… And so begins a brutal, deathly struggle for power, ranging over the luxury hotels and spas of New Delhi and Amritsar, the Palaces and slums of Napurthala, to Srinagar, Kashmir. Told in astonishing prose – a great torrent of words and imagery – We that are young is a modern-day King Lear that bursts with energy and fierce, beautifully measured rage. Set against the backdrop of the anti-corruption protests in 2011–2012, it provides startling insights into modern India, the clash of youth and age, the hectic pace of life in one of the world’s fastest growing economies – and the ever-present spectre of death. More than that, this is a novel about the human heart. And its breaking point.
The Seventh Day
Yu Hua - 2013
Yang Fei was born on a moving train. Lost by his mother, adopted by a young switchman, raised with simplicity and love, he is utterly unprepared for the tempestuous changes that await him and his country. As a young man, he searches for a place to belong in a nation that is ceaselessly reinventing itself, but he remains on the edges of society. At age forty-one, he meets an accidental and unceremonious death. Lacking the money for a burial plot, he must roam the afterworld aimlessly, without rest. Over the course of seven days, he encounters the souls of the people he’s lost. As Yang Fei retraces the path of his life, we meet an extraordinary cast of characters: his adoptive father, his beautiful ex-wife, his neighbors who perished in the demolition of their homes. Traveling on, he sees that the afterworld encompasses all the casualties of today’s China—the organ sellers, the young suicides, the innocent convicts—as well as the hope for a better life to come. Yang Fei’s passage maps the contours of this vast nation—its absurdities, its sorrows, and its soul. Vivid, urgent, and panoramic, The Seventh Day affirms Yu Hua’s place as the standard-bearer of modern Chinese fiction.
Six Acres and a Third: The Classic Nineteenth-Century Novel about Colonial India
Fakir Mohan Senapati - 1897
A text that makes use—and deliberate misuse—of both British and Indian literary conventions, Six Acres and a Third provides a unique "view from below" of Indian village life under colonial rule. Set in Orissa in the 1830s, the novel focuses on a small plot of land, tracing the lives and fortunes of people who are affected by the way this property is sold and resold, as new legal arrangements emerge and new types of people come to populate and transform the social landscape. This graceful translation faithfully conveys the rare and compelling account of how the more unsavory aspects of colonialism affected life in rural India.
A Good Indian Wife
Anne Cherian - 2008
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.
The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag
Kang Chol-Hwan - 2001
Amid escalating nuclear tensions, Kim Jong-un and North Korea's other leaders have kept a tight grasp on their one-party state, quashing any nascent opposition movements and sending all suspected dissidents to its brutal concentration camps for "re-education." Kang Chol-Hwan is the first survivor of one of these camps to escape and tell his story to the world, documenting the extreme conditions in these gulags and providing a personal insight into life in North Korea. Sent to the notorious labor camp Yodok when he was nine years old, Kang observed frequent public executions and endured forced labor and near-starvation rations for ten years. In 1992, he escaped to South Korea, where he found God and now advocates for human rights in North Korea. Part horror story, part historical document, part memoir, part political tract, this book brings together unassailable firsthand experience, setting one young man's personal suffering in the wider context of modern history, giving eyewitness proof to the abuses perpetrated by the North Korean regime.