Categories: Fiction

THE WILDING PB

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In the labyrinthine alleys and ruins of Nizamuddin, an old neighbourhood in Delhi, lives a small band of cats. Unfettered and wild, they fear no one, go where they will, and do as they please. Until, one day, a terrified orange-coloured kitten with monsoon green eyes and remarkable powers, lands in their midst—the first in a series of extraordinary events that threatens to annihilate them and everything they hold dear.

THOSE WOMEN OF THE COROMANDEL

₹655.18 M.R.P.:₹ 799.00 You Save: ₹143.82  (18.00% OFF)
Those Women of the Coromandel brings to life the eclectic, intertwined lives of three women living in Coromandel in nineteenth-century India. We meet Miss Beston who is known as the Boat Woman, a Briton who has gone native. Living in her boat (that grows into a chain of houseboats, each housing a different area of her living and working quarters) she is an entrepreneur, hunter, and host and guide to every British official who passes through the Coromandel. Deeply interested in local culture, she befriends people around her, both Indian and British. Appachchi, known as Granny, is a lover of nature, mangoes, and the monsoon. An early encounter with a spiritual man, the Guru of the Stream, guides her to a divine understanding that underpins her life. Worker Aunt, Appachchi’s sister-in-law, who endures successive personal tragedies with the utmost dignity, is her close confidante and lifelong buttress. Also deeply influenced by the teachings of the Guru of the Stream, she undertakes a trip to Kasi later in life that establishes her as a spiritual fulcrum for the villagers. Peopled with characters who are eccentric, interesting, and pragmatic, such as the scholarly BA Garu, Appachchi’s husband and Worker Aunt’s brother; Mr Blotton, the Brahma of the Godavari anicut; Nephew, the first to welcome the Guru of the Stream, and others, Those Women of the Coromandel is a story of people trying to find their place in the world as it turns and changes around them.

TILLED EARTH : STORIES

₹205.00 M.R.P.:₹ 250.00 You Save: ₹45.00  (18.00% OFF)
Comprising perfectly crafted micro stories, and stories of conventional length, Tilled Earth offers glimpses into the private dramas of people caught midlife: an elderly woodworker loses his way in a modern Kathmandu neighbourhood; a homesick expatriate nurses a hangover; a clerk at the Ministry of Home Affairs learns to play Solitaire on the computer; a young woman goes to Seattle as a student, and finds herself becoming an illegal alien; a retired secretary visits the Buddha’s birthplace, Lumbini, only to find his deepest insecurities exposed.

UNHURRIED TALES

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Unhurried Tales: My Favourite Novellas brings together, for the very first time, Ruskin Bond’s favourite (and finest) novellas. The stories in this book include Time Stops at Shamli (written in 1956 and published for the first time in 1987); The Blue Umbrella, which has been a bestseller for the last forty years; Angry River, which was a longer work when it was first written; Bus Stop, Pipalnagar; Night of the Leopard; The Last Tiger and Tales of Fosterganj, his latest novella, which was published in 2013. These stories speak of a world that has long vanished, but it is a world that has lost none of its power to enchant. Whether we are accompanying Sita on her perilous journey down the angry river or Bisnu as he gets the better of a dangerous leopard, whether we delight in Binya’s joy at owning her blue umbrella or are saddened by the fate of the last tiger, whether we laugh uproariously at the antics of the eccentric guests at the ‘hotel’ in Shamli, get involved in the adventures of the boys in Pipalnagar or plunge into the various goings-on in the ‘backwater’ of Fosterganj, we are always entertained, always charmed. All the stories unwind in an unhurried way, even those that are filled with death-defying thrills and spills, and it is this quality that enables us to sink into them and experience to its fullest the magic of the fiction that Ruskin Bond has spun out of the hills and small towns of India for over sixty years.

UNLADYLIKE - A MEMOIR

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Unladylike is a memoir that spans four decades of the author’s life. From stories about a childhood spent wishing she could change everything about her life (including her parents), to her chronically delayed puberty, and the self-esteem issues that accompany a flat chest, Vaz doesn’t pull any punches. She takes us through her college years, where under the vigilance of Catholic nuns she grappled with a major decision—to have or not have pre-marital sex as well as the discovery that the female body is capable of some very strange sounds at very inappropriate times. Out of respect for various ex-boyfriends, she will dwell on just one man—her wheat-eating, milk-drinking Jat husband. From their extra-long courtship (that he didn’t tell his mother about), to their wedding day and beyond, there are lessons for every girl who has ever thought ‘one day I’d like to be married’. The lesson is: ‘Don’t say you weren’t warned’

UPON AN OLD WALL DREAMING

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Ruskin Bond’s writing brings the world to us in profound and remarkable ways. His signature style is simplicity itself, but the themes he tackles are big, deep and universal—love, loss, happiness, grief, and all the shades of emotion in between. These are stories of city and small town, mountain and lowland, and of life lived slowly and lightly. For over fifty years, these tales have charmed and beguiled several generations of readers. Last year, Ruskin Bond made a selection of his favourite stories (from the several hundred that he has written) that were published in a book entitled A Gathering of Friends. It proved to be enormously popular, selling out in a matter of weeks. Encouraged by its success, the author has made a further selection of his favourite stories and non-fiction sketches, leavening the mix with several pieces that have never been published before. It is a collection that will burnish his reputation as one of the world’s great storytellers.

WAYS OF DYING (HB)

₹327.18 M.R.P.:₹ 399.00 You Save: ₹71.82  (18.00% OFF)
One of the meanings of the word ‘olio’ is ‘a miscellany’. The books in the Aleph Olio series contain a mélange of the best writing to be had on a variety of themes, and present aspects of India and Indian life in ways that have seldom been seen before. Ways of Dying comprises stories and essays of deep insight into an inevitable part of life—death. The pieces in the book include Amitav Ghosh on the assassination of Indira Gandhi and its aftermath, Ruskin Bond on memories of his father’s funeral, Amitava Kumar on how it is necessary to find comfort and solace in the midst of profound grief, Mahasweta Devi on murder and revenge in rural India, and Atul Gawande on assisted suicide and what doctors fear the most when faced with the mortality of their patients. Elsewhere in the anthology, the reader will find one of Munshi Premchand’s greatest stories, ‘The Shroud’, a peerless meditation on the hypocrisies and feigned grief of dysfunctional families on the death of a family member, balanced by Khushwant Singh’s poignant essay on the death of his beloved grandmother. Rounding out the selection are George Orwell on the complex reasons that often lead to innocent blood being shed, David Davidar on the sadness and turmoil that whirls through a family upon the death of a patriarch, and Kolakaluri Enoch on the tragic death of a young girl. The Ghosts of Mrs Gandhi by Amitav Ghosh, The Funeral by Ruskin Bond, Pyre by Amitava Kumar, Seed by Mahasweta Devi, Being Mortal by Atul Gawande, The Shroud by Munshi Premchand, The Portrait of a Lady by Khushwant Singh, Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell, Death of a Patriarch by David Davidar, Hunger by Kolakaluri Enoch

ZELALDINUS

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On a camel’s back hill beyond Agra stands a redstone citadel altogether different from the white marble Taj Mahal. Fatehpur Sikri is the capital Akbar built to honour the saint who foretold the birth of his first son. In the inner court of the king’s palace is a broad stone terrace with a chequered pattern that resembles a game board. Here, accounts say, Akbar played a kind of chess using human pieces from his harem of three hundred. Costumed in various guises, his women would have presented lively masques upon this stage. Zelaldinus mounts such a pageant, glittering and fantastical, where past and present, nobles and commoners, history and fiction rub shoulders. Its variety of verse and prose forms evoke the carnival spirit of a masque. Underlying the depiction of a rich and varied court life at Sikri are reflections on kingship, a meditation on fathers and sons, and a plot within a plot that tells a crackling story of love across the Pakistan border—while through it all strides the nimble ghost of Akbar himself. Jalaluddin (Zelaldinus) Akbar.

I SEE THE FACE

₹439.12 M.R.P.:₹ 499.00 You Save: ₹59.88  (12.00% OFF)
<p>Born in 1953 in Old Dhaka, Shahidul Zahir published only six works in his short life – but these are some of the most unique and powerful works of fiction to have come out of the subcontinent, blending surrealism, folklore, oral storytelling traditions, magic realism, a searing understanding of social and political reality, and rare clarity of vision. I See the Face is an alternative telling of the story, or history, of Bangladesh, beginning with the War of Liberation in 1971. Moving effortlessly from the past to the present, and back again, Zahir paints a picture of the crisis of post-independence Bangladesh and describes how society or the State drives a poor but brilliant boy to destruction. There is biting wit and humour, and above all, a kind of ethereal understatement which make the reading experience an incomparable one. With I See the Face, Shahidul Zahir surpasses himself.</p><div><br></div>

WHY THERE ARE NO NOYONTARA FLOWERS IN AGARGAON COLONY

₹299.25 M.R.P.:₹ 399.00 You Save: ₹99.75  (25.00% OFF)
<p>Born in 1953 in Old Dhaka, Shahidul Zahir published only six works in his short life – but these are some of the most unique and powerful works of fiction to have come out of the subcontinent. With his own particular blend of surrealism, folklore, oral storytelling traditions, magic realism, a searing understanding of social and political reality, and rare clarity of vision, he created a truly extraordinary oeuvre.</p><p><span style="font-size: 1rem;">A moholla caught in a time warp…</span><br></p><p><span style="font-size: 1rem;">A down-on-their-luck husband and wife who are stalked by ravens…</span><br></p><p><span style="font-size: 1rem;">A magician who sells addictive figs…</span><br></p><p><span style="font-size: 1rem;">A pair of thieving monkeys…</span><br></p><p><span style="font-size: 1rem;">In these pages is the world of the moholla, where rumours and gossip abound and where everyone knows everyone, where seemingly bizarre yet intriguing creations deliver profound commentary on post-independence Bangladesh. Superbly translated by V. Ramaswamy, each of these ten stories takes you beyond the rules of language and storytelling, into a place that is at once achingly familiar and terrifying.</span></p>