Kumarasambhava of Kalidasa


Kālidāsa
    The subject is unquestionably a daring one: the events which bring about the marriage of Lord Siva to Uma and the birth of Skanda. The prose order of each sloka has been given in the commentary by using bold type, the words not actually repeated by Mallinatha being enclosed within rectangular brackets. The notes explain allusions, grammatical peculiarities not noticed by Mallinatha, copious extracts from other commentaries being given for this purpose. The book includes text, the commentary of Mallinatha, a literal English translation, notes and introduction.

100 Poems by Faiz Ahmed Faiz: 1911-1984


Faiz Ahmad Faiz - 2002
    Includes biographical notes, a key to Roman transcription, a list of titles or first lines, and a glossary of Urdu words in Roman script.

Panchatantra


Pandit Vishnusharma
    It is written around 200BC by the great Hindu Scholar Pandit Vishnu Sharma. Panchatantra means "the five books". It is a "Nitishastra" which means book of wise conduct in life. The book is written in the form of simple stories and each story has a moral and philosophical theme which has stood the test of time in modern age of atomic fear and madness. It guides us to attain success in life by understanding human nature. Panchatantra is commonly available in an abridged form written for children. Here is the complete translation of the book as written by Vishnu Sharma.

Kadambari


Banabhatta
    It is clear, from his writings, that his mind was amazingly modern, humane and sensitive, especially for the seventh-century India in which he lived. Bana had a healthy irreverence towards many of the established orthodoxies of his time and his strength lies in his skill as a storyteller and as a creator of characters vibrant with life and individuality.Kadambari is a lyrical prose romance that narrates the love story of Kadambari, a Gandharva princess, and Chandrapida, a prince who is eventually revealed to be the moon god. Acclaimed as a great literary work, it is replete with eloquent descriptions of palaces, forests, mountains, gardens, sunrises and sunsets and love in separation and fulfillment. Featuring an intriguing parrot-narrator, the story progresses as a delightful romantic thriller played out in the magical realms between this world and the other, in which the earthly and the divine blend in idyllic splendour.

Life of the Buddha


Aśvaghoṣa
    This is the earliest surviving text of the Sanskrit literary genre called kavya and probably provided models for Kali.dasa's more famous works. The most poignant scenes on the path to his Awakening are when the young prince Siddhartha, the future Buddha, is confronted by the reality of sickness, old age, and death, while seduced by the charms of the women employed to keep him at home. A poet of the highest order, Ashva.ghosha's aim is not entertainment but instruction, presenting the Buddha's teaching as the culmination of the Brahmanical tradition. His wonderful descriptions of the bodies of courtesans are ultimately meant to show the transience of beauty.Co-published by New York University Press and the JJC FoundationFor more on this title and other titles in the Clay Sanskrit series, please visit http: //www.claysanskritlibrary.org"

Kalki: Selected Stories


Kalki - 1999
    His collection brings together the best of Kalki’s short stories, which contain some of his most colourful and enduring characters and themes of Tamil popular fiction of the nineteen thirties and forties. There is in these stories the heady urgency of the freedom struggle, the piquant humour of the parodied Tamil gothic and devastating social satire. In her sensitive translations, Gowri Ramnarayan has succeeded in capturing the nuances of the gently mordant wit that made Kalki’s stories the highlight of the magazines they were originally published in, creating for themselves a dedicated following that flourishes undiminished to this day.Coinciding with the centenary of Kalki’s birth, this volume is a well-deserved tribute to a writer whose breadth of vision and genius imagined and served a new India.

रावीपार


गुलज़ार - 1999
    The stories in this book have their roots in the Indian culture but express universal emotions that are experienced across the boundaries of regions, caste, and creed. Varied emotions of love, heartbreak, aloofness, anxiety, fear, and longing are expressed in this book.There is one story in which movie star Dilip Kumar breaks the heart of a young girl. There is another where a man pushes off another from a moving train. Raavi Paar also tells the story of a Muslim man whose wish is to be cremated after death and not be buried. There is also a story about a married woman who realises that the only reason for her husband to marry her was to use her as cheap labour.The title of this book is an incident from the author’s own life. During the India-Pakistan partition, the author was mistakenly claimed as their own child by another family. Raavi Paar consists of stories which will touch the reader’s hearts due to the simplicity and intricacy of emotions portrayed by the author.

The Life of an Amorous Woman and Other Writings


Saikaku Ihara - 1967
    The title story in this collection of 12 works, told by an aging beauty whose highly erotic nature is her constant undoing, ranges over all of 17th-century Japanese life. The narrator is successively wife, court lady, courtesan, priest's concubine, mistress of a feudal lord and a streetwalker. Ivan Morris, chairman of the Department of East Asian Studies and Cultures of Columbia University has done a brilliant translation, an introduction, extensive notes, bibliography and two essays on social customs of the period. Illustrated."The fine style of the writing and the clear outlines of illustrations which are not even remotely 'suggestive' give Saikaku's pornography grace adn wit and charity."       — James Kirkup

Collected Fiction


Ruskin Bond
    

Ramayana


Vālmīki - 1929
    The popularity of the book is so great that it has run into forty two impressions ever since it was originally published in the year 1951

Shilappadikaram


Ilango Adigal
    The Shilappadikaram has been called an epic and even a novel, but it is also a book of general education. Adigal packed his story with information: history merging into myth, religious rites, caste customs, military lore, descriptions of city and country life. And four Cantos are little anthologies of the poetry of the period (seashore and mountain songs, hunters’ and milkmaid’s song). Thus the story gives us a vivid picture of early Indian life in all its aspects.

The Interior Landscape: Love Poems from a Classical Tamil Anthology


A.K. Ramanujan - 1994
    Ramanujan (who died in 1993) has rendered two services: he has introduced Indian and Western readers to an unfamiliar and fascinating literary tradition, and he has provided access to some examples of a mature classical poetry. In them, as the translator notes, passion is balanced by courtesy, transparency by ironies and nuances of design, impersonality by vivid detail, spareness by richness of implication. The poems come from one of the earliest surviving texts of Tamil poetry, the Kuruntokai, an anthology of love lyrics probably recorded during the first three centuries A.D. Seventy-six of these classical poems have here been given a modern language and form. In an effort at fidelity to the effect of the images and their placement in the original, Ramanujan has given a visual shape to the poems by typographic devices. This classic anthology of translations has long been out of print. It should interest all those who read poetry, as well as those who value Ramanujan's gift as a translator.

Chokher Bali


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

Bitter Fruit: The Very Best of Saadat Hasan Manto


Saadat Hasan Manto - 2009
    Bitter Fruit presents the best collection of Manto's writings, from his short stories, plays and sketches, to portraits of cinema artists, a few pieces on himself, and his letters to Uncle Sam which have references to communism, Russia, politics after the Partition and his own financial condition. The concluding section of the book has acknowledgements and reminiscences from Saadat's friends and relatives. Bitter Fruit includes stories like A Wet Afternoon, The Return, A Believer's Version, Toba Tek Singh, Colder Than Ice, The Assignment, Odour, By The Roadside, Bribing the Almighty, The Kingdom's End, The Woman in the Red Raincoat, The Room with the Bright Light, The Great Divide, The Angel, Siraj, An Old Fashioned Man, The Price of Freedom, It Happened in 1919, The Girl from Delhi, A Man of God, Free for All, and A Tale of 1947. There is a collection of sketches too. Manto used to write radio plays and this book has one of the dramas he penned, called In This Vortex. His short stories bring out the most delicate nuances of human nature.

No Trespassing


Brinda S. Narayan - 2019
    Eager to shrug off her middle-class upbringing, Vedika actively befriends her elite neighbours. Over time, though, she begins to sense that something is affecting her five-year-old son, Sajan. He seems foggy at times, unable to follow simple orders. A few other Fantasia children show similar behavioural oddities. Before his scheduled appointment with a doctor, Sajan dies in a freak accident. Vedika is jolted out of her numbing grief by a shocking revelation: her boy was murdered. Anxious to find out what exactly happened to her son, Vedika starts investigating his death. As she unravels her memories and neighbours’ pasts, she finds sinister links between Fantasia and her own past. Gripping, tense and disquieting No Trespassing is a stunning work of fiction.