രണ്ടാമൂഴം | Randamoozham


M.T. Vasudevan Nair - 1984
    T. Vasudevan Nair. It was translated into English as Second Turn in 1997. M. T. Vasudevan Nair won Vayalar Award, given for the best literary work in Malayalam, for the novel in 1985. Later, in the year 1995, Mr. Nair was awarded the highest literary award in India, Jnanpith Award, for his overall contribution to Malayalam literature.The novel is set as a retelling of the Indian epic Mahabharata, from the view of Bhima, the second Pandava.

Wings of Fire: An Autobiography


A.P.J. Abdul Kalam - 1999
    As chief of the country's defence research and development programme, Kalam demonstrated the great potential for dynamism and innovation that existed in seemingly moribund research establishments. This is the story of Kalam's rise from obscurity and his personal and professional struggles, as well as the story of Agni, Prithvi, Akash, Trishul and Nag-missiles that have become household names in India and that have raised the nation to the level of a missile power of international reckoning. This is also the saga of independent India's struggle for technological self-sufficiency and defensive autonomy-a story as much about politics, domestic and international, as it is about science.

Dongri To Dubai : Six Decades of The Mumbai Mafia


S. Hussain Zaidi - 2012
    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.

പാത്തുമ്മായുടെ ആട് | Pathummayude Aadu


Vaikom Muhammad Basheer - 1959
    It has a long foreword by the novelist himself and a longer afterword by P K Balakrishnan. This special edition also has illustrations by Sherif and photographs of the real characters including Pathumma and goats.

ഒരു സങ്കീര്‍ത്തനം പോലെ [Oru Sangeerthanam Pole]


Perumbadavam Sreedharan - 1993
    It is a story based on the life of famous Russian writer, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and his wife Anna.

Childhood


Tove Ditlevsen - 1967
    In her working-class neighbourhood in Copenhagen, she is enthralled by her wild, red-headed friend Ruth, who initiates her into adult secrets. But Tove cannot reveal her true self to her or to anyone else. For 'long, mysterious words begin to crawl across my soul', and she comes to realize that she has a vocation, something unknowable within her - and that she must one day, painfully but inevitably, leave the narrow street of her childhood behind.Childhood, the first volume in The Copenhagen Trilogy, is a visceral portrait of girlhood and female friendship, told with lyricism and vivid intensity.

Desert Flower


Waris Dirie - 1998
    She traveled alone across the dangerous Somali desert to Mogadishu — the first leg of a remarkable journey that would take her to London, where she worked as a house servant; then to nearly every corner of the globe as an internationally renowned fashion model; and ultimately to New York City, where she became a human rights ambassador for the U.N. Desert Flower is her extraordinary story.

ആരാച്ചാര്‍


K.R. Meera - 2012
    Set in Bengal, it tells the story of a family of executioners with a long lineage, beginning in the fourth century BC. The protagonist of the novel, Chetna, is a strong and tenacious woman who struggles to inherit this profession.According to noted literary critic M. Leelavathy, Aarachaar is one of the best literary works produced in Malayalam and follows the legacy of O. V. Vijayan's classic work Khasakkinte Itihasam. The novel received the 2013 Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award. It was also awarded the prestigious Odakkuzhal Award in 2013 and Vayalar Award in 2014.

Chokher Bali


Rabindranath Tagore - 1903
    First published as a serial, a novel on love, family and sexuality in Bengal society.

Lajja: Shame


Taslima Nasrin - 1993
    Despite being part of the country's small Hindu community, that is terrorized at every opportunity by Muslim fundamentalists, they refuse to leave their country, as most of their friends and relatives have done. Sudhamoy, an atheist, believes with a naive mix of optimism and idealism that his motherland will not let him down... And then, on 6 December 1992, the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya in India is demolished by a mob of Hindu fundamentalists. The world condemns the incident but its fallout is felt most acutely in Bangladesh, where Muslim mobs begin to seek out and attack the Hindus... The nightmare inevitably arrives at the Duttas' doorstep - and their world begins to fall apart.

Malgudi Days


R.K. Narayan - 1943
    K. Narayan’s centennialIntroducing this collection of stories, R. K. Narayan describes how in India “the writer has only to look out of the window to pick up a character and thereby a story.” Composed of powerful, magical portraits of all kinds of people, and comprising stories written over almost forty years, Malgudi Days presents Narayan’s imaginary city in full color, revealing the essence of India and of human experience. This edition includes an introduction by Pulitzer Prize- winning author Jhumpa Lahiri. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary


Anita Anand - 2015
    Her father, Maharajah Duleep Singh, was heir to the Kingdom of the Sikhs, one of the greatest empires of the Indian subcontinent, a realm that stretched from the lush Kashmir Valley to the craggy foothills of the Khyber Pass and included the mighty cities of Lahore and Peshawar. It was a territory irresistible to the British, who plundered everything, including the fabled Koh-I-Noor diamond. Exiled to England, the dispossessed Maharajah transformed his estate at Elveden in Suffolk into a Moghul palace, its grounds stocked with leopards, monkeys and exotic birds. Sophia, god-daughter of Queen Victoria, was raised a genteel aristocratic Englishwoman: presented at court, afforded grace and favor lodgings at Hampton Court Palace and photographed wearing the latest fashions for the society pages. But when, in secret defiance of the British government, she travelled to India, she returned a revolutionary. Sophia transcended her heritage to devote herself to battling injustice and inequality, a far cry from the life to which she was born. Her causes were the struggle for Indian Independence, the fate of the lascars, the welfare of Indian soldiers in the First World War – and, above all, the fight for female suffrage. She was bold and fearless, attacking politicians, putting herself in the front line and swapping her silks for a nurse's uniform to tend wounded soldiers evacuated from the battlefields. Meticulously researched and passionately written, this enthralling story of the rise of women and the fall of empire introduces an extraordinary individual and her part in the defining moments of recent British and Indian history.

When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife


Meena Kandasamy - 2017
    As he sets about reducing her to his idealised version of a kept woman, bullying her out of her life as an academic and writer in the process, she attempts to push back - a resistance he resolves to break with violence and rape. Smart, fierce and courageous When I Hit You is a dissection of what love meant, means and will come to mean when trust is undermined by violence; a brilliant, throat-tightening feminist discourse on battered faces and bruised male egos; and a scathing portrait of traditional wedlock in modern India.

How I Braved Anu Aunty & Co-Founded A Million Dollar Company


Varun Agarwal - 2012
    Varun whiles away his time, hopping from pub to pub, spending time with friends and keeping a track of his love interest on Facebook.These traits worry his mother to the bone, compelling her to put the very meddlesome Anu Aunty on the job, to help get her son moving in the right direction in life. Anu Aunty does a rather good job of this, much to Varun's dismay. He then does all that he can to get her off his track, while pursuing his dreams to become an entrepreneur.How I Braved Anu Aunty and Co-Founded A Million Dollar Company is the author’s debut novel and is on its fourth reprint already. Having sold twenty thousand copies in only a month, the book has become a bestseller by national standards. It has also occupied a firm foothold on the bestseller charts for eighty days at a stretch. The author attained initial popularity with his Facebook blog posts, a few of which were sent to his publishers. The book was conceived once they demanded a full manuscript.

Train to Pakistan


Khushwant Singh - 1956
    By the time the monsoon broke, almost a million of them were dead, and all of northern India was in arms, in terror, or in hiding. The only remaining oases of peace were a scatter of little villages lost in the remote reaches of the frontier. One of these villages was Mano Majra.”It is a place, Khushwant Singh goes on to tell us at the beginning of this classic novel, where Sikhs and Muslims have lived together in peace for hundreds of years. Then one day, at the end of the summer, the “ghost train” arrives, a silent, incredible funeral train loaded with the bodies of thousands of refugees, bringing the village its first taste of the horrors of the civil war. Train to Pakistan is the story of this isolated village that is plunged into the abyss of religious hate. It is also the story of a Sikh boy and a Muslim girl whose love endured and transcends the ravages of war.Introduction by Arthur Lall