Pax Indica
Sub title: India and the World of the Twenty-first Century (PB)
In this lively, informative and insightful book, Shashi Tharoor brilliantly demonstrates how Indian diplomacy has come of age and forecasts where it will need to focus in the new millennium. He surveys India’s major international relationships in detail, evokes the country’s soft power and offers his thoughts on a new ‘grand strategy’ for the nation, arguing that India must move beyond non-alignment to multi-alignment. Stimulating, reflective, elegantly written and passionately engaged, Pax Indica is another substantial achievement from one of the finest Indian authors of our times.
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Manoj and Babli
Sub title: A Hate Story
This is the true story of the honour killing of Manoj and Babli and its aftermath. In this painstakingly researched book, Chander Suta Dogra recreates how the couple eloped, breaking the taboo of same-caste marriage, and was seized and brutalized by the girl’s people, with their bodies being eventually dumped into a canal. Tacitly approving the deed, the village people did not attend the funeral; the tardiness of the local police and other agencies bordered on acquiescence.
It was left to Manoj’s mother, Chandrapati, and sister Seema to fight for justice. The book powerfully describes how, with the support of the media and women activists, they stood up to intimidation, social ostracism and the fury of the khaps or Jat councils across North India, not just Haryana, when the five accused were sentenced to death in a landmark judgement. The family still has police protection. Chilling and unputdownable, Manoj and Babli is a brilliant exposé of the face-off between those who abide by the law and the upholders of archaic traditions that clash with it.
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Classic Sunil Gangopadhyay
This special omnibus edition brings together the three great historical novels Sunil Gangopadhyay wrote. The Bengal Renaissance forms the backdrop to the Sahitya Akademi Award-winning Those Days, in which a feudal aristocracy awakens to its social obligations. In its sequel First Light, a turn-of-the-century Bengal, led by Rabindranath Tagore and Swami Vivekananda, awakens to a new, modern sensibility. And in The Lonely Emperor, the story of India’s greatest professional stage actor Sisir Bhaduri, the past gives way to the present as the country gains independence.
Those Days (Sei Somoy), First Light (Prothom Alo), The Lonely Emperor (Nisshongo Samrat)
Translated by Aruna Chakravarti and Sreejata Guha
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The Country Without a Post Office
Amidst rain and fire and ruin, in a land of ‘doomed addresses’, a poet evokes the tragedy of his birthplace.
The Country Without a Post Office is a haunted and haunting volume that established Agha Shahid Ali as a seminal voice writing in English. In it are stunning poems of extraordinary formal precision and virtuosity, intensely musical, steeped in history, myth and politics, all merging into Agha Shahid Ali’s finest mode, that of longing.
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The Captured Gazelle
Sub title: The Poems of Ghani Kashmiri
Every moment it seeks to slip from the mind’s nook
Fresh poetic meaning is a gazelle to be captured
The Captured Gazelle is an elegant and lucent translation of the poems of the seventeenth-century Persian poet Mulla Tahir Ghani, better known as Ghani Kashmiri. Eulogized by poets such as Mir and Iqbal, Ghani is an outstanding representative of sabk-e-Hindi or the ‘Indian style’ in Persian poetry, which became a hallmark of the Mughal–Safavid literary culture.
The introduction situates Ghani against his unique background in which Iranian and Indian poetic cultures came together to create a glorious literary age in Kashmir, while the translations capture Ghani in his wide spectrum of moods—satirical, playful, self-pitying, pessimistic, mystically resigned—bringing alive his wit and ingenuity in a modern idiom without losing hold on the tone
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Intrigues of the Lion
The heroic Sinhala king, Duttha Gamini, is aging. His son Saliya, who he hopes will succeed him, has fallen in love with an outcast chandala woman, a union that will cause much outrage in the kingdom. The Maha Thupa, the colossal structure that took eighteen years in the making, is ready to be enshrined in accordance with the divine prophecy—with an urn containing the relics of the Buddha’s bodily remains. However, the urn is in possession of Kala Naga, the serpent king of the resplendent kingdom of the Nagas, where he lives guarding it.
Intrigues of the Lion, the fourth part of the historic Children of the Lion series, traces the decline of the Sinhala empire through a fascinating series of events in Sri Lankan history.
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A Suitable Boy
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Classic Feluda 2
For readers who enjoyed the adventures of Feluda in Classic Feluda 1, this second omnibus volume holds more delights. Accompanied by his cousin Topshe and the bumbling crime writer Lalmohan Ganguly (Jatayu), Feluda travels from Puri to Kedarnath, from Kathmandu to London in his pursuit of culprits; he tracks down Napoleon’s last letter, a forgotten painting by Tintoretto and a stolen manuscript.
The House of Death, The Criminals of Kathmandu, Tintoretto’s Jesus, The Mystery of the Pink Pearl and fifteen other stories
Translated from the Bengali by Gopa Majumdar
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Classic Feluda 1
This omnibus edition features the ever-popular adventures of Satyajit Ray’s enduring creation, the professional sleuth Pradosh C. Mitter (Feluda). In his escapades, Feluda is accompanied by his cousin Topshe and the bumbling crime writer Lalmohan Ganguly (Jatayu). From Jaisalmer to Simla, from the Ellora Caves to Varanasi, the trio traverse fascinating locales to unravel one devious crime after another.
The Emperor’s Ring, The Golden Fortress, A Killer in Kailash, The Royal Bengal Mystery, The Mystery of the Elephant God, The Bandits of Bombay and ten other stories
Translated from the Bengali by Gopa Majumdar
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It’s a City-showman’s Show!
Sub title: Transcendental Songs of Anandghan
The seventeenth-century ascetic Ānandghan (Cloud of Bliss) is one of the outstanding poets of Jain vernacular literature. His transcendental songs have been popular for over three centuries and remain part of the Jain devotional canon even today.
Ānandghan's songs—which even inspired Mahatma Gandhi—are not restricted to Jain themes alone, but illuminate how religious differences are superficial in comparison to the inner experience of the Self. The poet’s use of striking and fresh imagery vividly conjures the world of seventeenth-century India even as he persuades listeners to grasp the transcendental dimensions of their lives within the everyday struggles of material existence. This rigorous new translation mirrors the raw immediacy of Ānandghan’s songs and highlights their universal appeal.
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