"From lockdowns to lockups, viruses to vaccination, the movement of people to the movement of bowels, from rats to cats, and more, The Age of Pandemics chronicles the many facets of the cholera, plague and influenza pandemics, which claimed over 70 million lives between 1817 and 1920, with India being the epicentre in all these episodes.
The book argues that the period between the early nineteenth century to the early twentieth century – an age otherwise known for the worldwide spread of the industrial revolution, imperialism and globalization – was also the ‘age of pandemics’. It documents the scale of devastation, the likely causes and consequences, and the resilience with which people faced those pandemics.
The book also provides the first comprehensive coverage of the world’s greatest demographic disaster ever to descend upon a country in a short period of time – the influenza pandemic in India in 1918, which claimed more lives than all the battle casualties of World War I. And it shows the continuing relevance of learning from those times to tackle contemporary challenges, such as COVID-19."
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"Filled with memorable characters, The East Indian grapples with the brutal colonialism and indentured labour of the 1600s with warmth and wit.' SHASHI THAROOR
Meet Tony: insatiably curious, deeply compassionate, with a unique perspective on every scene he encounters. Kidnapped and transported to the New World after travelling from the British East India Company's outpost on the Coromandel Coast to the teeming streets of London, young Tony finds himself in Jamestown, Virginia, where he and his fellow indentured servants must work the tobacco plantations. Orphaned and afraid, Tony initially longs for home. But as he adjusts to his new environment, finding companionship and even love, he envisions a life for himself after servitude. His dream: to become a medicine man.
Set during the early days of English colonization in Jamestown, The East Indian gives authentic voice to an otherwise unknown historic figure and brings the world he would have encountered to vivid life."
"Oral historian Aanchal Malhotra's first book, Remnants of a Separation, was published in 2017 to mark the seventieth anniversary of India's Partition. It told a human history of the monumental event by exhuming the stories lying latent in ordinary objects that survivors had carried with them across the newly made border. It was acclaimed for the freshness of its approach to a decades-old, much-written-about subject. But more significantly, it inspired conversations within families: between the generation that had witnessed Partition and those who had only inherited its memories.
In the Language of Remembering, as a natural progression, explores that very notion as it reveals how Partition is not yet an event of the past and its legacy is threaded into the daily lives of subsequent generations. Bringing together conversations recorded over many years with generations of Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and their respective diaspora, it looks at how Partition memory is preserved and bequeathed, its consequences disseminated and manifested within family, community and nation. With the oldest interviewees in their nineties and the youngest just teenagers, the voices in this living archive intimately and sincerely answer questions such as: Is Partition relevant? Should we still talk about it? Does it define our relationships? Does it build our characteristics or augment our fears, without us even realizing?
As the subcontinent marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of Partition, In the Language of Remembering will most importantly serve as a reminder of the price this land once paid for not guarding against communal strife - and what could happen once again should we ever choose division over inclusion."
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