Categories: Fiction

SMALL TOWNS, BIG STORIES

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Small Towns, Big Stories showcases twenty-one stories of small-town life by the country’s greatest living chronicler of the Indian heartland. Ruskin Bond has been writing evocative stories about the dusty towns and settlements in the hinterland for decades but this is the first time his finest stories on the theme have been brought together in a single volume. Timeless classics like ‘Time Stops at Shamli’, ‘Bus Stop, Pipalnagar’, and ‘The Night Train at Deoli’ rub shoulders with brilliant new stories that have never been published before like ‘Strychnine in the Cognac’, ‘The Horseshoe’ and ‘When the Clock Strikes Thirteen’. Vibrant, poignant, beautiful and tragic, these stories show a master storyteller at the height of his powers.

SONG OF DRAUPADI (HB)

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The Mahabharat is renowned for its great battles, heroic men, and gods walking the pathways of mortals. However, the beating heart of the epic is often forgotten—the stories of its women. Many of these exceptional women appear in Song of Draupadi—the indomitable Satyavati, the otherworldly Ganga, the indestructible Kunti, and the tenacious Gandhari—but the passionate and fiery Draupadi rises above them all to grip the imagination of the reader. Born of a dangerous sacrifice, Draupadi and her brother Drishtadumna are called forth to avenge Drona’s insult to their father. While Drishtadumna is expected to kill Drona on the battlefield, Draupadi’s role is not set out, but she dreams of fire and blood. From beloved daughter and princess of Panchala to wife of the brave Pandavas and queen of Indraprastha, Draupadi finds herself exiled to the forest, humiliated and determined on vengeance. The novel is a symphony, in several keys, of her voice and those of the other women around her—arguing, pleading, reasoning, and often raised in righteous anger.

SONG OF THE FOREST - HB

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Ruskin Bond is a master of the short story. This pitch-perfect collection brings together the very best tales he has written in the twenty-first century. The book starts with the title story, ‘Song of the Forest’, which has never been published before, and includes extraordinary pieces of fiction like ‘A Man Called Brain’, ‘Rhododendrons in the Mist’, and ‘Miracle at Happy Bazaar’. Dazzling, comic, and gripping, Song of the Forest is the latest masterpiece from India’s most beloved writer.

SWIMMER AMONG THE STARS

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An interview with the last speaker of a language. A chronicle of the final seven days of a town that is about to be razed to the ground by an invading army. The lonely voyage of an elephant from Kerala to a princess’s palace in Morocco. A fabled cook who flavours his food with precious stones. A coterie of international diplomats trapped in near-earth orbit. These, and the other stories in this collection, reveal an extraordinary storyteller, whose tales emerge from a tradition that includes the creators of the Arabian Nights and the Kathasaritsagara, Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges, Angela Carter and other ancient and modern masters of fabulist, surrealist and magical short stories. Furiously inventive, beautifully crafted and remarkably assured, Swimmer Among the Stars announces the arrival of a blazing new talent.

TAJ : A STORY OF MUGHAL INDIA

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Timeri N. Murari has recreated this evergreen love story of seventeenth-century India with the lucidity of a poet. The book reverberates with the message that love is all powerful.’ —The Tribune. ‘A historical novel written with amazing simplicity, the book also gives a fascinating description of how the immortal monument of love was built.’ —The Statesman. When his queen, Arjumand Banu—Mumtaz-i-Mahal, the Chosen One of the Palace—died, Shah Jahan wanted to build a monument that was the image of his perfect love for her. For twenty-two years, twenty thousand men laboured day and night to fulfil the emperor’s obsession. The result was the Taj Mahal, a marble mausoleum lined with gold, silver and precious jewels. This powerful novel narrates the story of the Taj on two parallel levels. The first one tells the passionate love story of Shah Jahan and Arjumand till her death through the voices of three main characters—Arjumand, Shah Jahan and Isa, Arjumand’s favourite eunuch. The second recounts the later years of Shah Jahan’s reign, the building of the Taj Mahal and the bloody pursuit of the fabulous Peacock Throne by his sons. Intertwined with the narrative about the building of the Taj is the story of Murthi, the Hindu craftsman sent as a gift to the emperor to carve the famous marble jali around Arjumand’s sarcophagus. In this complex and fascinating book, Murari has written much more than a historical romance. He has skillfully recreated the period against which the story is set: the opulence of the palace and the grinding poverty of seventeenth-century India, the vicissitudes of Shah Jahan’s reign and the often bitter conflict between men of different faiths. Taj: A Story of Mughal India

TALES OF FOSTERGANJ (PB)

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‘I forget what took me to Fosterganj in the first place. Destiny, perhaps; although I’m not sure why destiny would have bothered to guide an itinerant writer to an obscure little hamlet in the hills. Chance would be a better word. For chance plays a great part in all our lives. And it was just by chance that I found myself in the Fosterganj bazaar one fine morning early in May…’

TEACHING A HORSE TO SING (HB)

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Akbar and Birbal, Krishnadeva Raya and Tenali Raman, Vikram and Vetal, Mullah Nasruddin…. The exploits of these legendary wits, rulers, wise men, riddlers, and tricksters are familiar to every Indian who loves a good story and a good laugh. In Teaching a Horse to Sing: Tales of Uncommon Sense from India and Elsewhere, Delshad Karanjia retells the best-known stories featuring these characters and a few others from around the world.

TELL ME A LONG, LONG STORY

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The long short story is a compelling literary form. Neither as brief as the classic short story nor as long as the novella, it is a piece of writerly art that can be read in a single sitting, yet allows the writer to properly explore setting, character, atmosphere and plot. In the hands of a master, ‘the long short’ is just the right length to provide an extraordinary reading experience— a story that you can sink into. The authors represented in this volume, the first of its kind in India, are Bolwar Mahamad Kunhi, Chetan Raj Shrestha, Gopikrishnan, Habib Kamran, Ismat Chughtai, Kamalakanta Mohapatra, K. R. Meera, Kolakaluri Enoch, Mahasweta Devi, Shripad Narayan Pendse, Nirmal Verma and Waryam Singh Sandhu. They tell stories of strong women and ruthless men, humour and pathos, town, village and countryside, death and oppression, crime and terror, love and witchcraft. Taken together, the stories in this book allow you to see India in ways that you have never done before.

THE ANGEL'S BEAUTY SPOTS (HB)

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In these three stunningly original, lush and provocative novellas, award-winning writer K.R. Meera explores the tragedy, betrayal and violence that rise out of the dark heart of love. ‘The Angel’s Beauty Spots’ is a disquieting story about Angela’s repeated infidelities and the trauma of failed love; in ‘And Forgetting the Tree, I…’ Radhika tries to come to terms with a former love that refuses to leave her; and ‘The Deepest Blue’ uses magic and metaphor to tell the story of a wife who yearns for a love that transcends lifetimes. Esteemed as one of the country’s finest storytellers, K. R. Meera’s The Angel’s Beauty Spots: Three Novellas will serve to embellish her already considerable reputation as a writer of strikingly original fiction. These novellas have been translated from the Malayalam by J. Devika.

THE BAPTISM OF TONY CALANGUTE - PB

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The Baptism of Tony Calangute tells the story of Tony Calangute, the owner of Happy Bar, and his fiery cousin Dino Dantas, self-appointed guardian of Aparanta, the mythic, idyllic Goa of old. Their tale begins in the sleepy seaside village of Socorro Do Mundo, where time holds little meaning. For some time now, the world and several of Aparanta’s own have been engaged in a feeding frenzy on the natural treasures of this land of plenty. Chief among the poison-mongers is Winston Almeida, supreme thug, land shark and political aspirant, who will stop at nothing to appropriate and plunder all that this creaky, corrupt paradise has to offer. For this he has allied with Sergei Yurlov, a Russian drug lord; the Princess, a tantalizing Brazilian transsexual go-between; and PI Fernandes, her Goan policeman lover—and their alliance is blessed by Number One, the political overlord of Aparanta. Standing up to them are Tony and Dino, who are determined as ever to preserve what they can of their homeland. In prose that is partly lyrical, part brutal satire, yet always passionate Sudeep Chakravarti evokes the essence of a paradise on the verge of losing its soul.