Шехан Карунатилака0.0 Retired sportswriter, W.G. Karunasena is dying. He will spend his final months drinking arrack, upsetting his wife, ignoring his son, and tracking down Pradeep S. Mathew, an elusive spin bowler he considers 'the greatest cricketer to walk the earth'. On his quest to find this unsung genius, W.G. uncovers a coach with six fingers, a secret bunker below a famous stadium, an LTTE warlord, and startling truths about Sri Lanka, cricket, and himself. Ambitious, playful, and strikingly original, Chinaman is a novel about cricket and Sri Lanka and of Sri Lanka through its cricket. Hailed by the Gratiaen Prize judges as 'one of the most imaginative works of contemporary Sri Lankan fiction', it is an astounding book.
У. Р. Анантамурти0.0 First published in 1973, 'Bharathipura' reveals U.R. Ananthamurthy's (b.1932) lifelong preoccupation with moving beyond caste and class interests in a modern society.
Set in contemporary India, 'Bharathipura' revolves around the life of an 'enlightened' modern Indian, Jagannatha, who in order to get rid of his personal burdens commits a 'scandalous' act. His attempt to take 'untouchables' into the local Manjunatha temple exposes the complexities of the caste system and the myth of social justice in modern India. Further, the novel brings to light how the contemporary world recreates and reconstructs the past to protect hierarchical structures prevalent across societies, and also portrays the altering destinies of individuals and communities.
In Susheela Punitha's hands, the translation retains the cultural and linguistic ambience of the Kannada society. The detailed Introduction by N. Manu Chakravarthy sets the work in the context of twentieth-century India. The in-depth interview of the author by Chakravarthy, a special feature of this volume, opens a window to Ananthamurthy's art and worldview.
Чандраканта 0.0 Srinagar, capital city of the famed ‘paradise on earth’, Kashmir. Ailan Gali, a deep, dark narrow lane that lies at its heart, where houses stand on a finger’s width of space and lean crookedly against each other, so deep, so narrow, so closely connected that even thieves do not dare enter.
Yet people live and love here, they cling on to their old ways, they share stories and food, joys and sorrows, sufficient unto themselves. But the outside world beckons, youngsters begin to leave, and slowly change makes its way into Ailan Gali only to find its hitherto hidden mirror-image – the change that has insidiously been working its way into the lives of those who are the gali’s permanent residents.
This funny, poignant, evocative story of a Kashmir as yet untouched by violence – but with its shadows looming at the edges – is a classic of Hindi literature, available in English translation for the first time.
Уша К. Р. 0.0 After her stunning last book, A Girl And A River that won Usha K R the Vodafone Crossword Award, 2007, the author has just come out with her second book. Much like A Girl..., her new book, Monkey man is a pleasure to read ---rich as it in characterisation and situational drama. Usha demonstrates her love for her favourite author, Jane Austen in the manner in which she slowly goes about unraveling her numerous characters, presenting them with unmistakable irony and subtle humour. But where Usha perhaps resembles Austen less and George Eliot more is in her grim understanding of the human condition. A Girl... was both historically and socio-culturally rooted. In Monkey-man, the author attempts to portray the changing Indian urban scape at the turn of the century through the lives of different characters.
Usha bases her story in her own city, Bangalore - one whose complexion has drastically altered in the last two decades. From being a breezy city of gardens, a Pensioner's Paradise, Bangalore has gone on to become one of the country's leading IT hubs. Today, it's a highly commercialised city, one of the prime metros of the country with soaring real estate prices and crazy traffic, among other things.
Usha's choice of location for both A Girl.. and Monkey Man - Southern India - is welcome. For a change, it's not Delhi, Mumbai or Kolkata. Quite instantly, the world Usha creates feels fresh. Besides, Usha is acutely conscious of the socio-political landscape that her characters inhabit.
The novel is about four characters residing in Bangalore - they could of course be from anywhere in India. There is Shrinivas Moorthy, a senior professor, forever falling back on the virtues of Gandhian passivity, even as the world around him has changed in ways he cannot recogonise anymore. He stubbornly sticks to the tried and tested ways, looking with suspicion and unease at any new plan that his dynamic friend-turned-superior Jairam suggests.
Табиш Хаир0.0 A subversive, macabre novel of a young Indian man’s misadventures in Victorian London as the city is racked by a series of murders
In a small Bihari village, Captain William T. Meadows finds just the man to further his phrenological research back home: Amir Ali, confessed member of the infamous Thugee cult. With tales of a murderous youth redeemed, Ali gains passage to England, his villainously shaped skull there to be studied. Only Ali knows just how embroidered his story is, so when a killer begins depriving London’s underclass of their heads, suspicion naturally falls on the “thug.” With help from fellow immigrants led by a shrewd Punjabi woman, Ali journeys deep into a hostile city in an attempt to save himself and end the gruesome murders.
Ranging from skull-lined mansions to underground tunnels a ghostly people call home, The Thing about Thugs is a feat of imagination to rival Wilkie Collins or Michael Chabon. Short-listed for the 2010 Man Asian Literary Prize, this sly Victorian role reversal marks the arrival of a compelling new Indian novelist to North America.
Кавери Намбисан0.0 A poignant, unsettling and incisively thought-provoking new novel by critically acclaimed author—Kavery Nambisan
"The poor will not go away. There are too many of them. Looking for work, for food, for a place to live, a place to shit. And what do people like you, the Vaibhav people, say? “Stop dirtying our neighbourhood.” You will soon be asking the government to throw us out of here. Why? A Right to Shit card. That’s what we need. The Right to Live…You want the people here to accept kindness on your terms. You do it as a favour, an apology for being rich. Is it any wonder that the beggar who accepts your coin and touches it to his forehead has nothing but hatred for you?"
Simon Jesukumar, an ageing widower, aspires to do something worthwhile with what remains of his circumscribed, frustratingly blameless, cocooned middle-class life. His aspirations are stirred by his nagging guilt about the slum next door—incongruously and deludedly named ‘Sitara’. The welloff residents of his colony use the inhabitants of Sitara for menial jobs but ignore their real needs.
Simon’s friendship with his errand boy Velu, and the strangely gifted Thatkan, propels him towards others from the slum—Swamy, the schoolteacher who is also the butcher; ‘Doctor’ Prince who has no medical degree; the belt-buckle factory owner who employs children to melt brass
for buckles; Tailorboy, who has thirteen fingertips to please women; the bizarre and inscrutable Baqua; and Nayagan the Leader, optimistically called ‘Merciful Diamond’, whose party bosses consider Sitara to be nothing more than a captive vote bank.
As the story plunges into the heart of the slum—bringing the most unlikely individuals to the brink of collision—Simon begins to understand that good intentions and small acts of kindness achieve little when faced with the problems of a stratum of humanity he knows next to nothing about.
Simon’s dilemma is ours: how can, and how should, the rich (and the not-so-rich) help the poor?
Омаир Ахмад0.0 In Moazzamabad, UP, too large to be a town and too backward to be a city, a young man stabs a police inspector and is beaten to death. The last words he speaks are, ‘My name is Jimmy the Terrorist.’ Journalists descend on the town, ‘like shrill birds’, and a long-time resident decides to tell a story that none of them will know.
Jimmy was once Jamaal, son of Rafiq Ansari of Rasoolpur Mohalla, a Muslim neighbourhood in a Hindu town. And his story goes back a long way: to the time when Moazzamabad was named, after Aurangzeb’s son; when Rafiq was seduced by the wealth and refinements of Shabbir Manzil and married Shaista; when the Hanuman temple grew ten storeys high and the head priest was elected mayor; when Shaista died, a mosque was brought down in Ayodhya and Rafiq became a mullah. As Jamaal grows up, watching both his father and his neighbourhood change and curfew reach Moazzamabad, he is changed himself. He becomes Jimmy, one among the countless marginalized trying to find a place in the world, dimly aware that the choices that shape their lives are being made in distant places, where they have no influence.
Shortlisted for the Man Asian Prize 2009, this spare, compelling novel, as intimate as it is political, confirms Omair Ahmad’s reputation as one of the most distinctive and exciting new voices in Indian fiction.
Атик Рахими3.7 Афганец Атик Рахими живет во Франции и пишет книги, чтобы рассказать правду о своей истерзанной войнами стране. Выпустив несколько романов на родном языке, Рахими решился написать книгу на языке своей новой родины, и эта первая попытка оказалась столь удачной, что роман "Сингэ сабур (Камень терпения)" в 2008 г. был удостоен высшей литературной награды Франции - Гонкуровской премии. В этом коротком романе через монолог афганской женщины предстает широкая панорама всей жизни сегодняшнего Афганистана, с тупой феодальной жестокостью внутрисемейных отношений, скукой быта и в то же время поэтичностью верований древнего народа.
Джилл Макгиверинг0.0 Two strong women. Two cultures. One unifying cause: survival.Ellen Thomas, experienced war correspondent, returns to Afghanistan 's dangerous Helmand Province on assignment, keen to find the murderer of her friend and translator, Jalil. In her search for justice in a land ravaged by death and destruction, she uncovers disturbing truths.Hasina, forced by tradition into the role of wife and mother, lives in a village which is taken by British Forces. Her only son, Aref, is part of a network of underground fighters and she is determined to protect him, whatever the cost.Ellen and Hasina are thrown together – one fighting for survival, the other searching for truth – with devastating consequences for them both.The Last Kestrel is a deeply moving and lyrical story of disparate lives – innocent and not-so-innocent – caught up in the horrors of war. It is a book which will resonate with fans of The Kite Runner and The Bookseller of Kabul.
Кишвар Десаи0.0 In a small town in the heart of India, a young girl is found tied to a bed inside a townhouse where 13 people lie dead. The girl is alive, but she has been beaten and abused. She is held in the local prison, awaiting interrogation for the murders she is believed by the local people to have committed.
Сиддхарт Чоудхури0.0 Zorawar Singh Shokeen of Chandrawal is one of those Delhi musclemen who run its politics from the shadows. He owns a house in the environs of the University North Campus, which he lets out as a hostel for boys. Occasionally, he uses the hostel to host his mistress, Madam Midha. Otherwise, he recruits from among his young tenants the footsoldiers for his campus campaigns; their leader, a scrawny MA (Previous) student from Bihar -- the legendary Jishnu da. It is 1992, and at this aggressively male world, ordered along the simple principles of caste, class and region, arrive two kids from Patna. The fresh-faced Pranjal Sinha and his up-for-it best friend, and the narrator of Day Scholar, Hriday Thakur.
In the twilight years between adolescence and adulthood, the Shokeen Niwas boys are concerned with elections, girls and examinations. And Hriday, who hopes to be a writer some day, is drawn, like moth to flame, irresistibly to the material they provide. Forsaking his first love, he becomes trapped instead by a series of misjudgements that lead him finally to the doorstep of Madam's house and, in it, her fourteen-year-old apple-cheeked daughter Sonya. If Hriday can be saved, it is only by the act of reading and writing.
This is a novel about love, ambition, and the fragility of both. As tender as fumbling youth and as hard as a calloused fist, Day Scholar is a clear-eyed, gritty and, ultimately, beautiful exposition of innocence under fire. It marks Siddharth Chowdhury as one of the most extraordinarily gifted writers of his generation
