The Naxalbari Movement is gathering strength in Bengal. Young men and women have left their homes, picked up arms to free land from the clutches of feudal landlords and the state, and return them to oppressed landless farmers. They are being arrested en masse and thrown into high-security jails. In one such jail, five Naxals are meticulously planning a jailbreak. They must free themselves if the revolution is to continue. But petty thief Bhagoban, much too happy to serve frequent terms for free food and shelter, has been planted by Jailor Bireshwar Mukherjee among them as a mole. Only, Bhagoban seems to be warming up to them. There’s Gunpowder in the Air is a searing investigation into what deprivation and isolation can do to human idealism. And Manoranjan Byapari is perhaps the most refreshing voice to emerge from Bengal in recent times.

    In the town live three generations of two families, one Hindu and the other Muslim, whose lives will be changed forever by the coming violence. At risk are Dada, the ageing grandfather who lovingly tends and talks to the plants on his estate; his strong-willed grandchildren, Abu and Fareeda; the newly married Devaki, who cannot fathom the forces that are turning her husband and her father into fanatics; Mariam, of the gifted hands, who kneads and pounds the fatigued muscles of tourists into submission; and Garuda, the high-school teacher who, in his own desperate way, is trying to impart the truth about the country’s history to a classroom of uninterested students. Quietly but surely, the spectre of religious intolerance is beginning to haunt the community in the guise of the Self-Respect Forum whose mission is to divide the town and destroy the delicate balance of respect and cooperation that has existed for hundreds of years. Told with brilliance, restraint and extraordinary power, Annie Zaidi’s book is destined to become a classic.

    TWO DIFFERENT ENDINGS.At the end of Perumal Murugan's trailblazing novel One Part Woman, readers are left on a cliffhanger as Kali and Ponna's intense love for each other is torn to shreds. What is going to happen next to this beloved couple?In Trial by Silence-one of two inventive sequels that picks up the story right where One Part Woman ends-Kali is determined to punish Ponna for what he believes is an absolute betrayal. But Ponna is equally upset at being forced to atone for something that was not her fault. In the wake of the temple festival, both must now confront harsh new uncertainties in their once idyllic life together.In Murugan's magical hands, this story reaches a surprising and dramatic conclusion.

    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!’

    Then, Neil comes into her life, offering a heady romance and a new identity. Will Deeya give their fledgling relationship a chance?Perhaps the seeds of her answer have already been sown by her family - by her grandmother and mother, both of whom have been compelled to make complex negotiations with love.As Deeya confronts their stories, she must decide: Will she upend her family's history and build a narrative of her own? Or is she - as are all of us - destined to carry forward the concessions and mutinies of our ancestors?Refreshing in its vision and assured in its craft, These, Our Bodies, Possessed by Light is a remarkable debut about (un)sanctioned memory, uncommon love, and the claims of familial history.

    It is on this night that I dedicate myself - to my self, to who I truly am, to what is invincible and without bondage of time, that predates me, that will outlive me.Ninth century. In Puduvai, a small town in what we now know as Tamil Nadu, young Kodhai is taught to read and to write by her adoptive father, a garland-weaving poet. As she discovers the power of words, she also realizes that the undying longing for a great love that she has been nursing within her - one that does not suppress her desire for freedom - is likely to remain unfulfilled. Then, she hears of a vow that she can undertake that might summon it to her.In deepest winter, the sixteen-year-old begins praying for a divinely sensual love - not knowing that her words will themselves become prayers, and echo through the centuries to come.Rich with the echoes of classical poetry, in The Queen of Jasmine Country, Sharanya Manivannan imagines the life of the devotional poet Andal, whose sublime and erotic verses remain beloved and controversial to this day.

    She thrives in her job as a radio jockey and at home she is the darling of the family. But her happy world starts to fall apart when revolution blooms in the country. As the people's agitation gathers strength, Sameera finds herself and her family embroiled in the politics of their adopted land. She is forced to choose between family and friends, loyalty and love, life and death.Jasmine Days is the heart-rending story of a young woman in a city where the promise of revolution turns into destruction and division.

    As he becomes more and more involved with the lives and troubles of the common people in his district, he finds himself sucked deeper and deeper into the dark heart of the desert. And there, with the help of the mysterious musician, the Sarangiya, he has an encounter with beauty in its purest, most absolute form. An encounter that precipitates a dangerous descent. The pages from the journal he keeps are combined with the narratives of those around him—a Tehsildar, a Circuit House guard, a camel-herder, a pair of tribal girls, a Medical Officer, a Police Superintendent and the Collector's orderly—to create a compelling account of his slide away from reality. Half-real and half-fable, and redolent with the songs and myths of Rajasthan, Anukrti Upadhyay's Daura announces the arrival of a powerful new literary talent.

    The tragedy spurs him to write a novel set in the household of Lala Motichand. It follows the lives of the wealthy lala and his three sons: Self-confident Dinanath, the true heir to Motichand’s mercantile temperament, lonely Diwanchand, uninterested in business and steeped in poetry; and illegitimate Makhan Lal, a Marx-loving schoolteacher kept to the periphery of his father’s life. In an illuminating act of self-reflection, Vishwanath, the son of a cook for a rich sethji, also tells the story of the lala’s personal servant, Mange Ram and his son, Parsadi. Fatherhood, brotherhood and childhood, love, loyalty and poetry all come to the fore as sons and servants await the lala’s death. By writing about mortality and family, Vishwanath confronts the wreckage of his own life while seeking to make sense of the new India that came into being after independence. Spellbinding and penetrating, Half the Night Is Gone raises questions of religion, literature and society that speak to our fractured times.

    Each set of family members occupies a floor of the home, in accordance to their standing within the family. Poisonous rivalries between sisters-in-law, destructive secrets, and the implosion of the family business threaten to unravel bonds of kinship as social unrest brews in greater Indian society. This is a moment of turbulence, of inevitable and unstoppable change: the chasm between the generations, and between those who have and those who have not, has never been wider. The eldest grandchild, Supratik, compelled by his idealism, becomes dangerously involved in extremist political activism—an action that further catalyzes the decay of the Ghosh home.Ambitious, rich, and compassionate, The Lives of Others anatomizes the soul of a nation as it unfolds a family history, at the same time as it questions the nature of political action and the limits of empathy. It is a novel of unflinching power and emotional force.

    In an uncharacteristic move, she sets off on an unexpected journey, away from her mother, Rukmini, and her home in Bengaluru, to distant, misty Assam. She comes looking for her beloved Asian elephant, Elephas maximus, but also seeks someone else-her grandfather, Torun Ram Goswami, someone she has never met before. She arrives at the Yellow House on the banks of the Brahmaputra, where Torun lives, not knowing that her life is about to change. Twenty-five years ago, Rukmini had been cast out of the family home by her mother, the formidable and charismatic Usha, while Torun watched silently. Loya now seeks answers, both from him and from the place that her mother once called home. In her quest, she finds an understanding not only of herself and her life but also of the precarious bonds that tie people together.A delicate, poignant portrait of family and all that it contains, Undertow becomes, in the hands of this gifted writer, an exploration of much more: home and the outside world, the insider and the outsider, and the ever-evolving nature of love itself.

    In Volga’s retelling, it is Sita who, after being abandoned by Purushottam Rama, embarks on an arduous journey to self-realization. Along the way, she meets extraordinary women who have broken free from all that held them back: Husbands, sons and their notions of desire, beauty and chastity. The minor women characters of the epic as we know it – Surpanakha, Renuka, Urmila and Ahalya – steer Sita towards an unexpected resolution. Meanwhile, Rama too must reconsider and weigh out his roles as the king of Ayodhya and as a man deeply in love with his wife. A powerful subversion of India’s most popular tale of morality, choice and sacrifice, The Liberation of Sita opens up new spaces within the old discourse, enabling women to review their lives and experiences afresh. This is Volga at her feminist best.

    In the swooningly hypnotic prose for which his Man Booker Prize-shortlisted novel was acclaimed, Jeet Thayil paints a hallucinatory portrait of an ambiguous soul: a self-destructive figure, a charismatic contrarian, and a tortured damned artist battling with his conflicting instincts. Vividly set in both Delhi and Manhattan, The Book of Chocolate Saints explores our deepest urges in a novel that is sexy, dangerous, and entirely uncompromising. This is intoxicating, blazingly intelligent literary fiction that will consolidate Jeet Thayil's reputation as one of the most promising writers of his generation.

    Jasoda is one of the last to leave this 'arse-end of the world' with her children and mother-in-law. Since her husband claims he has important work to do for the local prince, Jasoda must make the journey to the city by the sea on her own. Meanwhile, after years of anonymity, Paar seems poised to take off. Will Jasoda return home with her children? Or stay in the city that's become home for her children? It's taken for granted that epic journeys and epics were possible only during the time of the Mahabharata, the Odyssey, or the Iliad. Even more to the point, the heroes of the epics had to, perforce, be men. The eponymous Jasoda of the novel is about to prove how wrong the assumptions are. Kiran Nagarkar's trenchant narrative traces the journey of a woman of steely resolve and gumption, making her way through an India that is patriarchal, feudal, seldom in the news, and weighed down by dehumanizing poverty."Jasoda is as compelling and powerful as Nagarkar's other novels but uniquely itself in the gut-wrenching story it tells of the sordid uses of power, the suffering it causes, and the human spirit that rises above it." —Nayantara Sahgal "Nagarkar's storytelling genius takes us into the abyss of poverty and patriarchy—source of both inspiration and shame. Jasoda's brutal but transformative journey is the foil to counterfeit historical grandeur. With empathy turned to prose of pure steel, Nagarkar paints a modern Indian heroine." —Mitali Saran "A novel that stops your breath and doesn't let go until you get to the end. Jasoda: mother, murderer or saint? You'll want to put her down. But she won't let you." —Manjula Padmanabhan "No one can spin a yarn with such rollicking exuberance as Kiran Nagarkar, and no one exposes contemporary India's dark underbelly, in all its casual brutality, like him. Jasoda is a tour-de-force of razor-sharp observation and profound compassion, brilliantly realized." —Ritu Menon

    But even after her death, Savitri remains in the house, invisible yet constantly audible. Gradually, the inmates begin to rely on Savitri’s voice to have their lives managed.One day, Savitri falls silent. Soon afterwards, Moom, a young girl of 11 or 12 mysteriously appears in Agarwal House. And her arrival reveals several secrets.