Shivaji Sawant's Mrityunjaya is an outstanding instance of such a literary masterpiece in which a contemporary Marathi novelist investigates the meaning of the bewildering skein that is life through the personae of the Mahabharata protagonists. For over two decades since its first publication the vast non- Marathi and non-Hindi readership remained deprived of this remarkable exploration of the human psyche till the publication of this English translation by the Writers workshop – a contribution for which there is much to be grateful for. Mrityunjaya is the autobiography of Karna, and yet it is not just that. With deceptive case, Sawant brings into play an exceptional stylistic innovation by combining six "dramatic soliloquies" to form the nine books of this novel of epic dimensions. Four books are spoken by Karna. These are interspersed with a book each from the lips of his unwed mother Kunti, Duryodhana (who considers Karna his mainstay), Shon (Shatruntapa, his foster-brother, who here-worships him), his wife Vrishali to whom he is like a god and, last of all, Krishna. Sawant depicts an uncanny similarity between Krishna and Karna and hints at a mystic link between them, investing his protagonist with a more-than-human aura to offset the un-heroic and even unmanly acts which mar this tremendously complex and utterly fascinating creating of Vyasa.

    Shivaji has been a legendary figure in the Indian history.Shivaji was one of the major influences on the revival of nationalism and Hindu culture during a period when centuries of rule by Muslim invaders had induced a condition of apathy and indifference in the people.Over the years, many legends have been added to Shivaji’s life, and it is hard to filter out these embellishments and just focus on the facts.The author has done his best to build this book just on facts. And the facts alone are interesting enough to highlight the achievements of this legendary king.Shivaji was a man who built a dynasty starting from nothing. His motivations were always immense pride in his culture and love for his motherland. However, he was not a bigot and treated all his subjects equally well, irrespective of their religion and other divisions. His battles were mostly with Muslim rulers, but he never showed any animosity towards the Muslim inhabitants of his kingdom.The author has presented Shivaji as he really was, with no embellishments. Shivaji was a dynamic leader, a warrior, and a nobleman. He was religious without being fanatic, he was a believer, but not superstitious, he was courageous but not foolish. He was a visionary who dreamt of building a Hindu kingdom in a region that was surrounded by Muslim dynasties. Yet, he was extremely practical.Shivaji was a courageous warrior and a great tactician. At the same time, he was also a very good administrator and the kingdom he was building up became stronger under his rule. He suffered many defeats too, but he never gave up his vision, and ultimately, he did succeed in making his dream a reality.The author, in this book, has captured all the different facets of Shivaji’s personality that contributed towards this legacy, and thus gives the reader a sense of involvement in the events taking place in the story.

    The curtain has been brought down on it. Two life-sentences have been run. And I have brought together my recollections of them within the cover of this book. They are narrated in brief and put together within the narrowest.When I came into this world, God sent me here possibly on a sort of life-sentence. It was the span of life allotted to me by time to stay in this ‘prison-house of life’. This story is but a chapter of that book of life, which is a longer story not yet ended. You can finish reading the book in a day, while I had to live it for 14 long years of transportation. And if the story is so tiresome, unendurable and disgusting to you, how much must have been the living of it for me! Every moment of those 14 years in that jail has been an agony of the soul and the body to me, and to my fellow convicts in that jail. It was not only fatiguing, unbearable and futile to us all, it was equally or more excruciating to them as to me. And it is only that you may know it and feel the fatigue, the disgust and the pain of it as we have felt it, that I have chosen to write it for you. —Excerpts from this bookThis is the story of Swatantrayaveer Vinayak Damodar Savarkar—a great revolutionary, politician, poet and seer who tried to free India from the British yoke!British policy was to torture and persecute the political prisoners/revolutionaries so that they would reveal the names of all their colleagues or go mad or commit suicide. My Transportation for Life is a firsthand story of the sufferings and humiliation of an inmate of the infamous Cellular Jail of Andamans, the legendary Kala Paani. The physical tortures inside the high walls were made all the more insufferable by the sickening attitude of the men who mattered—the native leaders back home. This is a running commentary on the prevalent political conditions in India and a treatise for students of revolution. It is a burning story of all Tapasvis who were transported to Andaman.

    This is an account of a youth from interior Maharashtra. He fights his way through just to complete his secondary education. His landless father tilling lands for others, thinks his son's education not only unaffordable but unwise also, He helplessly watches his mothr permanently fated to thankless labour, contineously working for an evergrowing family deep in the cluthes of customs and superstitions. He had to wrestle with hardships and hunger to complete his school education. This autobiographical novel is an authentic tale as much of the author and his family as of any of the hundreds of landless families from rural interiors.

    His courage and conviction, to get an education in spite of growing up in a society ridden with prejudice and reeking with the aftermath of the apartheid, is astutely covered by the author.Short, simple and neatly written, Gavankar has touched every aspect of the life and struggles of Carver, his achievements and his many talents. Known as the Peanut Man in America and all around the world today, Carver is said to be the man behind the development of the quintessential American spread, the peanut butter. His message - about persevering in the face of adversity and making something out of whatever one has in life - is simply but clearly depicted, and this biography has served as an inspiration to hundreds of Indians all over the country.Ek Hota Carver, which began as a result of a mother’s search for bedtime stories for her children, has been on the best-selling Marathi literature for over 30 years, from the time it was first published. Soon to be available as an audiobook, Ek Hota Carver has also had the distinction of being run into 34 editions.

    The book is an excellent narration of the historic details before birth of Shivaji Maharaj, his swarajya fight, till his death.The book is compiled with the reference of numerous historic documents and is in simple language for all. Author who has penned down many books, lectures, plays, movies, held exhibitions, slide shows on Shivaji Maharaj. With the aim about letting people know the greatness of Shivaji Maharaj, author has written this characters sketch of Shivaji Maharaj. Each person has been briefed in short about his background which doesnt prove anywhere out of the way story. All the details are given with the base of study of historic documents and which can know after reading.Each fort instances of battles, various attacks by Shivaji Maharaj etc. along with their dates are been given which form a live picture of each page in front while reading. All about Shivaji Maharaj can be known through this book and is worth adding to your library.The book is in the 17th edition currently is around 1000 pages.

    Set against the backdrop of the Mahabharata, Desai attempts to make readers aware that although winning is usually the goal in every war, one should also be ready to face defeat.Through Radheya, readers will learn about Karna and the circumstances which earned him a memorable place in the Mahabharata. From early on, Karna was deprived of familial love. Throughout the course of his life, he suffered at the hands of others. He also felt discarded by his own mother Kunti and was also ridiculed by many because he was born in a lower class. Since Karna’s foundation years were so tumultuous, his immense strength was reduced and he often felt lonely.Nevertheless, through Radheya readers can visualize the development of Karna’s individuality and how he came to earn the title of fearless warrior. This novel is essentially a written tribute to the hero Karna who fought against his own family members while remaining loyal to his friend. Through Karna’s decisions and actions, Desai brings to life the impending dualities of life such as victory and defeat, and doing what is expected versus doing what is right. Through Karna, Desai has tried to universalize the “karma katha”.

    Yayati was a great scholar and one of the noblest rulers of olden times. He followed the shastras and was devoted to the welfare of his subjects. Even the King of Gods, Indra, held him in high esteem. Married to seductively beautiful Devyani, in love with her maid Sharmishtha, and father of five sons from two women, yet Yayati unabashedly declares, My lust for pleasure is unsatisfied. His quest for the carnal continued, sparing not even his youngest son, and exchanging his old age for his son s youth.

    It is the story of notorious gangsters like Haji Mastan, Karim Lala, Varadarajan Mudaliar, Chhota Rajan, Abu Salem, but above all, it is the story of a young man who went astray despite having a father in the police force. Dawood Ibrahim was initiated into crime as a pawn in the hands of the Mumbai police and went on to wipe out the competition and eventually became the Mumbai police’s own nemesis.The narrative encompasses several milestones in the history of crime in India, from the rise of the Pathans, formation of the Dawood gang, the first ever supari, mafia’s nefarious role in Bollywood, Dawood’s move to Karachi, and Pakistan’s subsequent alleged role in sheltering one of the most wanted persons in the world. This story is primarily about how a boy from Dongri became a don in Dubai, and captures his bravado, focus, ambition, and lust for power in a gripping narrative. The meticulously researched book provides an in-depth and comprehensive account of the mafia’s games of supremacy and internecine warfare.

    This book written by Gopal Godse brings out the facts behind & about that incident & its consequences upon him & his family

    Singh and Baru had been close and Baru, a great admirer of the technocrat who had ushered in the 1991 reforms, saw this as an opportunity to help a man he admired lead India down a new path. As Singh’s ‘eyes and ears’ and self-appointed ‘conscience-keeper’, Baru saw the transformation of Manmohan Singh from technocrat to politician. In his account, he tells his story of what it was like to ‘manage’ public opinion for Singh and how their relationship unraveled, while giving us a riveting look at Indian politics as it happened behind the scenes. Capturing the heady early days of UPA-1 to the high noon of the nuclear deal, The Accidental Prime Minister is one of the most important and intimate accounts of the prime minister and UPA-1.

    He was brought up in India in the apparently vigorous but dying Raj and was sent by his family in the 1930s to Berlin -- though he could not speak a word of German -- to study medicine and dentistry. It was here, before he migrated to Britain, that Shanti's path first crossed that of his future wife. Helga Gerda Caro, known to everyone as "Henny" was also born in 1908, in Berlin, to a Jewish family -- cultured, patriotic, and intensely German. When the family decided to take Shanti as a lodger, Henny's first reaction was, "Don't take the black man!" But a friendship flowered, and when Henny fled Hitler's Germany for England just one month before war broke out, she was met at Victoria Station by the only person in the country she knew: Shanti. Vikram Seth has woven together their astonishing story, which recounts the arrival into this childless couple's lives of their great-nephew from India -- the teenage student Vikram Seth. The result is an extraordinary tapestry of India, the Third Reich and the Second World War, Auschwitz and the Holocaust, Israel and Palestine, postwar Germany and 1970s Britain. Two Lives is both a history of a violent century seen through the eyes of two survivors and an intimate portrait of their friendship, marriage, and abiding yet complex love. Part biography, part memoir, part meditation on our times, this is the true tale of two remarkable lives -- a masterful telling from one of our greatest living writers.

    I knew that agreeing to write my story would need me to be completely honest, as that’s the way I have always played the game. It would require talking about a number of aspects I have not shared in public before. So here I am, at the end of my final innings, having taken that last walk back to the pavilion, ready to recount as many incidents as I can remember since first picking up a cricket bat as a child in Mumbai thirty-five years ago." - Sachin Tendulkar

    Although he would in his old age famously dismiss it as an ‘awkward mixture of fact and fiction’, generations of readers have not agreed, finding the novel to be a charming and insightful portrait of inner growth against the background of a world limned with extraordinary clarity, grace and color. Evident too in its brilliant account of a young person’s emerging awareness of the world and of his place within it are many of the stances, techniques and themes that would come to full flower in the immortal War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and in the other great works of Tolstoy’s maturity.

    In the Dam Square in Amsterdam, long-haired young people wearing vibrant clothes and burning incense could be found meditating, playing music and discussing sexual liberation, the expansion of consciousness and the search for an inner truth. They were a generation refusing to live the robotic and unquestioning life that their parents had known.At this time, Paulo is a young, skinny Brazilian with a goatee and long, flowing hair who wants to become a writer. He sets off on a journey in search of freedom and a deeper meaning for his life: first, with a girlfriend, on the famous “Death Train to Bolivia,” then on to Peru and later hitchhiking through Chile and Argentina.His travels take him further, to the famous square in Amsterdam, where Paulo meets Karla, a Dutch woman also in her 20s. She convinces Paulo to join her on a trip to Nepal, aboard the Magic Bus that travels across Europe and Central Asia to Kathmandu. They embark on a journey in the company of fascinating fellow travelers, each of whom has a story to tell, and each of whom will undergo a transformation, changing their priorities and values, along the way. As they travel together, Paulo and Karla explore their own relationship, an awakening on every level that brings each of them to a choice and a decision that sets the course for their lives thereafter.