Х. М. Накви0.0 They are renaissance men. They are bons vivants. They are three young Pakistani men in New York City at the turn of the millennium: AC, a gangsta-rap-spouting academic; Jimbo, a hulking Pushtun DJ from the streets of Jersey City; and Chuck, a wideeyed kid, fresh off the boat from the homeland, just trying to get by. Things start coming together for Chuck when he unexpectedly secures a Wall Street gig and begins rolling with socialites and scenesters flanked by his pals, who routinely bring down the house at hush-hush downtown haunts. In a city where origins matter less than the talent for self-invention, the three Metrostanis have the guts to claim the place as their own.
But when they embark on a road trip to the hinterland weeks after 9/11 in search of the Shaman, a Gatsbyesque compatriot who seemingly disappears into thin air, things go horribly wrong. Suddenly, they find themselves in a changed, charged America.
Rollicking, bittersweet, and sharply observed, Home Boy is at once an immigrant’s tale, a mystery, and a story of love and loss, as well as a unique meditation on Americana and notions of collective identity. It announces the debut of an original, electrifying voice in contemporary fiction.
Амит Чаудхури0.0 The award-winning author of A New World now gives us an incantatory novel at once plaintive and comical about the powerful undercurrent of cultural and familial tradition in a society enthralled with the future.
Bombay in the 1980s: Shyam Lal is a highly regarded voice teacher, trained by his father in the classical idiom but happily engaged in teaching the more popular songs to well-to-do women, whose modern way of life he covets. Sixteen-year-old Nirmalya Sengupta is the romantically rebellious scion of an affluent family who wants only to study Indian classical music. With a little push from Nirmalyaâs mother (Shyamâs prize pupil), Shyam agrees to accept Nirmalya as his student, entering into a relationship that will have unexpected and lasting consequences in both their lives. As the novel unfolds, we see how their two families come to challenge and change each other, and how student and teacher slowly mesh their differing visions of the world, and what place music holds in it.
With exquisite sensuous detail, with quiet humor, generosity, and unsentimental poignancy, The Immortals gives us a luminous portrait of the spiritual and emotional force of a revered Indian tradition, of two fundamentally different but intricately intertwined families, and of a society choosing between the old and the new.
Мушарраф Али Фаруки0.0 “One day when she looked at the portrait, she considered how blessed she had been in life. She contemplated her good fortune in finding an upright man like Akbar Ahmad as her life partner and felt grateful for his bounteous legacy, which released her from all financial cares. Akbar Ahmad looked back at her, his face cast in an expression of long suffering. Mona’s eyes welled up with tears.”–from The Story of a Widow
After the death of her husband Akbar Ahmad, Mona finds herself settling ambivalently into a new life. But the calm rhythm of her days–gardening, cooking, time with her neighbours and family in Karachi–is upset by the appearance of Salamat Ali, the new tenant in her friend Mrs. Baig’s house. Vivacious, friendly, and at times almost impertinent, Salamat Ali is both a breath of fresh air and a disconcerting new presence in Mona’s life, and their awkward meetings always seem to end in embarrassment or misunderstanding. When Salamat Ali, encouraged by Mrs. Baig, presents Mona with a marriage proposal, she is forced to consider what kind of future she wishes to make for herself–and what her past with Akbar Ahmad really means.
The possibility of Mona marrying Salamat Ali shocks her grown daughters Tanya and Amber, and scandalizes her extended family, according to whom Mona’s happiness comes second to what people say about widows who remarry. As Mona negotiates the complex web of tradition-bound in-laws and gossiping, interfering relatives, she finds Salamat Ali waking her to the pleasures of life that thirty years with her dour first husband all but smothered. But if Salamat Ali helps her discover something essential, he also exposes her to new risks, and new dangers.
The Story of a Widow is a beautifully observant novel, one that pays careful attention to the delicate movements of the heart in romantic and family life. But it is equally concerned with the mores of a society in which traditional roles both support and constrain men and–particularly–women. Gently humorous and profoundly perceptive, The Story of a Widow is the moving tale of a woman’s discovery of her voice, and herself.
Таня Джеймс0.0 Deckle Edge Hardcover with Dustjacket. 319 pages. A Humorous Novel about Sisterhood, the Dream of America, and the Secret Histories and Hilarious Eccentricities of Families. Stated First Edition, First Printing 2009.
Манджу Капур0.0 Nina, at thirty, sees herself as increasingly off the shelf. But then unexpectedly, a proposal arrives. Ananda is a dentist in Halifax, Canada. The two marry and she leaves her home and her country to build a new life with him. But there is always more to marriage than courtship. And as Nina discovers truths about her husband both sexual and emotional her fragile new life in Canada begins to unravel. The Immigrant is another mesmerizing saga about the complexities of arranged marriage and NRI life from this most beloved of novelists.
Нил Мукерджи0.0 A Life Apart tells two stories. The first is of Ritwik’s; a story of a young man’s escape from a blighted childhood of squalor and abuse in Calcutta to the edge of what he considers to be a new world, full of possibilities, in England, where he has a chance to start all over again. But his past, especially the scarred, all-consuming relationship with his mother, is a minefield: will Ritwik find the salvation he is looking for?
Could it arrive in the form of the second story that comprises the novel, the one he is writing himself, the story of an Englishwoman in the old world of Bengal on the eve of India’s first partition? Or could it be in the figure of the eighty-six-year-old Anne Cameron, fragile and damaged, who gives shelter to Ritwik in London in exchange of the care that she needs? And then one night, in the badlands of King’s Cross, Ritwik meets the suave, unfathomable Zafar bin Hashm. As present and past of several lives collide, Ritwik’s own goes into free fall.
Set in India during the 1970s and ’80s, in England in the ’90s and in Raj Bengal in the 1900s, this award-winning first novel from one of India’s most acclaimed new writers is about dislocation and alienation, outsiders and losers, the tenuous and unconscious intersections of lives and histories, and the consolations of storytelling. Unsentimental yet full of compassion, and written with unrelenting honesty, this scalding debut marks a new turning point in writing from and of the Subcontinent.
Аатиш Тасир0.0 SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA AWARD FOR FIRST NOVEL 2010
A controversial No.1 bestseller in India, The Temple-goers introduces us to a sensational new story-telling talent - and a shocking new side of Indian society. It tells the story of two young men from very different sides of the tracks: one cast adrift in a world of fashion parties, media moguls and designer labels, the other who reveals to him the city?s hidden and squalid underbelly. But when a body is found floating in the canal and one of them is accused of the murder, some deeply unsettling truths begin to emerge, exposing their friendship and the dark and troubled heart of the city in which they live?
Ру Фриман0.0 Since her days in the orphanage, Latha has been a companion and servant to Thara, a more fortunate girl her own age. But since her trip to the hill country when she caught her first glimpse of a rose, Latha has known she was destined for a better life. For now, she must watch silently as Thara receives all the luxuries Latha is denied, consoled only by the rose-scented soap stolen from the bathroom of her master's house.
Years and miles away, Biso, a desperate young mother, flees from her murderous husband, taking her children with her to the remote hills. As Biso and Latha journey towards their separate fates, struggling to hold on to their independence, each will betray the people they love, changing the course of their lives for ever.
Daniyal Mueenuddin3.0 In Other Rooms, Other Wonders illuminates a place and people as it describes the overlapping worlds of an extended Pakistani landowning family. Servants, masters, peasants and socialites, all inextricably bound to each other, confront the advantages and constraints of their station, the dissolution of old ways, and the shock of change. These richly textured stories reveal the complexities of Pakistani class and culture, as they describe the loves, triumphs, misunderstandings and tragedies of everyday life.
