This is the hilarious story of Ravan, a Maratha Hindu, and Eddie, a Roman Catholic, growing up to adolescence on the different floors of the CWD chawl No 17 in Bombay in the decade immediately after independence. First published in 1994, this cult classic is now being reissued for a new generation of readers. About the Author: Kiran Nagarkar was born in Mumbai. He wrote his first book in a language in which he had never written before—Marathi. The book was called Saat Sakkam Trechalis, recently translated as Seven Sixes Are Forty-Three, and is considered a landmark in post-independence Indian literature. He is the author of the bestselling and critically acclaimed novels Cuckold (which won the Sahitya Akademi Award), God's Little Soldier and The Extras, the sequel to Ravan and Eddie.

    Certain that the loss of her mother is somehow connected to the decade-old disappearance of Bashir Ahmed, a charming Kashmiri salesman who frequented her childhood home, she is determined to confront him. But upon her arrival, Shalini is brought face to face with Kashmir's politics, as well as the tangled history of the local family that takes her in. And when life in the village turns volatile and old hatreds threaten to erupt into violence, Shalini finds herself forced to make a series of choices that could hold dangerous repercussions for the very people she has come to love.With rare acumen and evocative prose, in The Far Field Madhuri Vijay masterfully examines Indian politics, class prejudice, and sexuality through the lens of an outsider, offering a profound meditation on grief, guilt, and the limits of compassion.

    An aging feudal landlord's household staff, the villagers who depend on his favor, and a network of relations near and far who have sought their fortune in the cities confront the advantages and constraints of station, the dissolution of old ways, and the shock of change. Mueenuddin bares—at times humorously, at times tragically—the complexities of Pakistani class and culture and presents a vivid picture of a time and a place, of the old powers and the new, as the Pakistani feudal order is undermined and transformed.

    These are some of the inhabitants of People From My Neighborhood. In their lives, details of the local and everyday—the lunch menu at a tiny drinking place called the Love, the color and shape of the roof of the tax office—slip into accounts of duels, prophetic dreams, revolutions, and visitations from ghosts and gods. In twenty-six “palm of the hand” stories—fictions small enough to fit in the palm of one’s hand—Hiromi Kawakami creates a universe ruled by mystery and transformation.

    Like libertines. To their hormonal despair, when Professor Ram stages his remake of A Midsummer Night's Dream at their college fest, he casts these four as fairies. The farce that follows gradually takes over the lives of the rest of the characters in this achingly funny novel about the pratfalls that accompany caste pride. On and off the campus of Chennai University, you will encounter onion-and-garlic-free TamBrahms who rewrite Shakespeare to uphold the Hindu order, smug NRIs who call the shots in matrimonials, visiting Canadians who are aghast at the plight of Dalits (pronounced 'daylights') and, at the apex of the whole tumbling structure, a bibulous builder who invokes the gods even as he defrauds his clients. Tailing the characters around this plot is an unseen but all-seeing spectator. You may never guess who that is, but will laugh all the way to the answer.

    One of India’s most original and audacious writers, Uday Prakash, weaves three tales of living and surviving in today’s globalized India. In his stories, Prakash portrays realities about caste and class with an authenticity absent in most English-language fiction about South Asia. Sharply political but free of heavy handedness.

    Set in the American Midwest, England, and India (Mumbai, Ahmedabad, rural Gujarat) the stories in Each of Us Killers are about people trying to realize their dreams and aspirations through their professions. Whether they are chasing money, power, recognition, love, or simply trying to make a decent living, their hunger is as intense as any grand love affair. Straddling the fault lines of race, class, caste, gender, nationality, globalization, and more, they go against sociocultural norms despite challenges and indignities until singular moments of quiet devastation turn the worlds of these characters—auto-wallah, housemaid, street vendor, journalist, architect, baker, engineer, saree shop employee, professor, yoga instructor, bartender, and more—upside down."Challenging assumptions, confronting power, manipulating barriers whenever possible-even at grave personal cost-Bhatt's cast surprises, inspires, frightens, beguiles, but never disappoints." ~Shelf Awareness (starred review)Most anticipated debuts of 2020 at Electric Literature, Literary Hub, The Millions, Kirkus Reviews, Entropy Magazine, Debutiful, Ms. Magazine, Bustle. Best story collections of 2020 at Bustle and Largehearted Boy. Best collections of 2020 by Asian authors at Book Riot.". . . rich debut . . . a powerful expression of the hunger for success on one's own terms." ~Publishers Weekly". . . nuanced, clear-eyed tales of unvarnished humanity. [...] A formally diverse collection with exquisitely crafted stories about longing, striving, and learning what we can control." ~Kirkus Reviews"With this powerful, complex work, Bhatt should be launched into a wider readership that is fully deserved, and the literary world should rejoice in discovering a bright new star." ~Dallas Morning News. . . you will feel that you have encountered this level of skill, craft, and complexity before in reading the masters of the short story genre--even while the author subverts what we so often encounter in the genre about notions of loss and lonely voices and who gets to tell their own stories." ~Texas Public Radio". . . Bhatt peels back shells of self-awareness, revealing understandings of the often subtle distinctions of gender, race, and family expectations that define and confine them." ~The National Book Review". . . Bhatt gets under the skin of her characters with an ease that is difficult to achieve when creating characters beyond the pale of capital and caste. [. . .] using lively, sculpted language that avoids the stilted, literary English often afflicting Indian English writing." ~The Hindu". . . variety of literary techniques of plot, style, and voice--including the refreshing second-person singular and first-person plural--Bhatt's stories effortlessly straddle class, caste, gender, and race divides spanning the US, England, and India." ~Open The Magazine"Taken together, [the stories] show Bhatt's wide range, both in theme and style, and her ability to inhabit characters who couldn't be more different from each other." ~New York Journal of Books"Interspersing loss and longing, survival and success, in an array of memories, shades, moods, dreams [. . .] Bhatt packs in a powerful compilation, rich in prose and poetry . . ." ~NRI Pulse". . . brings a range of lived experience, experimentation, and stylistic variety, which announces a seasoned practitioner rather than a newcomer to fiction." ~India Currents". . . a collection that is as important in the telling as in remembering the times we live in and the times to come." ~The Hindu Business Line"Bhatt's deliberate expansion of established tropes about Indians and the Indian diaspora deserves special accolades." ~Leonard Prize 2020 Nominations, National Book Critics Circle" . . . exploration of South Asian identity in the workplace through a wide lens instead of the traditional representations. . ." ~Puerto del Sol". . . characters who are bound to their work, either by choice or circumstance, as they attempt to thwart societal expectations and break down barriers . . ." ~Phoebe Journal". . . as compulsively readable as it is sharp and as enjoyable as it is thought-provoking [. . .] an accomplished and impressive debut." ~Vagabond City"[. . .] interact with multiple voices, listening to the struggles of various characters, and enjoying cultural details through the incredible use of language and literary techniques [. . .] the entire collection is an enlightening voyage." ~Platform Magazine"Jenny Bhatt's gorgeous stories in Each of Us Killers remind me why I love to read a good book. It is such a pleasure to be immersed in the worlds of her characters, in their hunger for love or money, and in their local and global struggles to live. With mouth-watering detail, Bhatt serves up a rich and varied feast." ~Devi S. Laskar, Author of The Atlas of Reds and Blues"The potent stories in this collection evoke the complexities of a shifting, multilingual world with great precision. Bhatt moves between countries and realities with tremendous skill and insight." ~Idra Novey, author of Those Who Knew"In a series of thrilling, beautiful stories, Jenny Bhatt moves through the moods, thoughts, subversions involved in the experience of interracial relationships, East-West communications, theft, justice, migration. The collection works brilliantly both as an evocative amalgam of insightful observations about race, class, gender, aspirations, as well as on the sentence level. Bhatt writes, "polish it carefully, till it glitters with the hope of a false diamond and refracts your stark life into a spectrum of luminous rays, lighting up the darkness briefly"-referring to a character's particular memory, but could just as well be referring to the collection as a whole." ~Chaya Bhuvaneswar, Author of White Dancing Elephants"In Each of Us Killers, Jenny Bhatt excavates her characters with incisiveness, nuance, and complexity. The cast of vibrant characters in this wonderful collection is absolutely unique and memorable." ~Karen E. Bender, author of The New Order"This is a gorgeous collection. Bhatt weaves together, with the lightest touch, profound themes--work, ambition, displacement, class, and gender, and so much more. Her plots are beautifully rendered and her scope vast; her characters and her settings come to life on the page. These stories are full of bitter heartbreak with a measure of joy--a wonderful collection from a hugely talented writer." ~Lydia Kiesling, author of The Golden State"Sex, death, redemption, betrayal--this collection has it all, from the sordid to the divine. Bhatt's vivid imagination and well-voiced characters will take you on a ride you won't soon forget." ~Mathangi Subramanian, author of A People's History of Heaven"These stories are filled with wisdom and compassion, bristling with dark occurrences and gleaming with quiet moments of joy: an enriching collection." ~Mahesh Rao, author of Polite Society"Moving, haunting stories that explore a wide range of complex social inequities and yet share an undercurrent of a deep and very human kind of longing." ~Aatif Rashid, author of Portrait of Sebastian Khan"Each of Us Killers offers up a complex portrait of our times. From caste-based violence to domestic power play, from yoga to the under-seam of real-estate development, Bhatt uses a dozen devices to examine the lives of people around us, the choices that define them and, ultimately, our selves." ~Annie Zaidi, author of Unbound, 2000 Years of Indian Women's Writing"Ambitious, sensitive, this collection locates some essential Indian truths, especially its hidden violence." ~Prayaag Akbar, author of Leila

    This selection features twenty-one of the very best stories from the region.Here, the reader will find one of Rabindranath Tagore’s most revered stories ‘The Kabuliwallah’ in a glinting new translation, memorable studies of ordinary people from Tarashankar and Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, the iconic Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s wrenching study of Bengali society, ‘Mahesh’, as well as over a dozen other astounding stories by some of the greatest practitioners of the form—Buddhadeva Bose, Ashapurna Debi, Premendra Mitra, Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Mahasweta Devi, Sunil Gangopadhyay and Nabarun Bhattacharya, among others. These are stories of anger, loss, grief, disillusionment, magic, politics, trickery, humour and the darkness of mind and heart. They reimagine life in ways that make them unforgettable.

    Its twelve, stand-alone fragments follow the first year of her separation from her husband. The novel is full of light, sometimes comforting and sometimes dangerous: sunlight streaming through windows, dappled light in the park, distant fireworks, dazzling floodwater, desaturated streetlamps and earth-shaking explosions. The seemingly artless prose is beautifully patterned: the cumulative effect is disarmingly powerful and images remain seared into your retina for a long time afterwards.

    But when their firstborn son dies in a terrible accident, tragedy transforms their marriage into a bleak landscape. As the pair starts fresh in a heartbroken old villa by the sea, they are joined by Nandini, a dazzling and devious artist with a trace of leopard blood in her veins. While Nandini flamboyantly takes on Bombay’s art scene, the couple attempts to mend their marriage, eventually discovering that real love, mercurial and many-hued, is given and received in silence. Sensuous and electric, achingly moving and wickedly funny, The Last Song of Dusk is a tale of fate that will haunt your heart like an old and beloved song.“A cornucopia of life at full tilt and high color . . . Shanghvi–who’s been compared to Arundhati Roy, Zadie Smith, and Vikram Seth–combines ribald humor with prose poetry.”–Sunday Oregonian“Few first novelists achieve such perfection, such control, in their performance.”–India Today“A gorgeous novel . . . written with a youthful twinkling eye.”–Los Angeles Times Book Review“Lush, witty . . . sassy prose . . . moves like a carnival ride.”–San Francisco Chronicle

    The pages of this book contain stories of every bachelor who fell in love, did stupid things and discussed India's foreign policy at the neighbourhood tea stall.'Bakar Puran' is the past, present and the future of those bachelors which will always be the same. The language and style has the realism of a bachelor pad. Here, there is no garb of elitism in expression. Whatever it is, it just is.

    The cosmopolitan fabric of a vibrant trading society - with its Jewish and Arab merchants, Chinese pirate heroes and masterful Hindu Zamorins - was ripped apart, heralding an age of violence and bloodshed. One prince, however, emerged triumphant from this descent into chaos. Shrewdly marrying Western arms to Eastern strategy, Martanda Varma consecrated the dominion of Travancore, destined to become one of the most dutiful pillars of the British Raj. What followed was two centuries of internecine conflict in one of India's premier princely states, culminating in a dynastic feud between two sisters battling to steer the fortunes of their house on the eve of Independence. Manu S. Pillai's retelling of this sprawling saga focuses on the remarkable life and work of Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, the last - and forgotten - queen of the House of Travancore. The supporting cast includes the flamboyant painter Raja Ravi Varma and his wrathful wife, scheming matriarchs of 'violent, profligate and sordid' character, wife-swapping court favourites, vigilant English agents, quarrelling consorts and lustful kings. Extensively researched and vividly rendered, The Ivory Throne conjures up a dramatic world of political intrigues and factions, black magic and conspiracies, crafty ceremonies and splendorous temple treasures, all harnessed in a tragic contest for power and authority in the age of empire.

    Set in modern-day India, it is the story of two compelling and achingly real women: Sera Dubash, an upper-middle-class Parsi housewife whose opulent surroundings hide the shame and disappointment of her abusive marriage, and Bhima, a stoic illiterate hardened by a life of despair and loss, who has worked in the Dubash household for more than twenty years.

    Longing for passion and independence, Olivia is drawn into the spell of the Nawab, a minor Indian prince deeply involved in gang raids and criminal plots. She is intrigued by the Nawab's charm and aggressive courtship, and soon begins to spend most of her days in his company. But then she becomes pregnant, and unsure of the child's paternity, she is faced with a wrenching dilemma. Her reaction to the crisis humiliates her husband and outrages the British community, breeding a scandal that lives in collective memory long after her death.

    But during his long lifetime Tolstoy also wrote enough shorter works to fill many volumes. Here reprinted in one volume are his eight finest short novels, together with "Alyosha the Pot", the little tale that Prince Mirsky described as "a masterpiece of rare perfection."The Death of Ivan IlychThe CossacksFamily HappinessThe DevilThe Kreutzer SonataMaster and ManFather SergiusHaji MuradAlyosha the Pot