Escapades of self-serving do-gooders, national leaders, babus, and other frauds, Indian and International.

In a typical village somewhere in the Deccan, justice arrives in a different form…A middle-aged Dalit mid-wife, Ramulamma goes about her day performing her services as a dai, looking for odd jobs in surrounding villages and occasionally in the city, and countering constant ill-treatmeant from the local Inspector Sahib.But there’s more to Ramulamma than her torn sari and the gold stud twinkling on her nose reveal. Through her wisdom and canny intuition, she ...

When Sunil is sent to stay with his Uncle Vish, he doesn’t know quite what to expect. All he knows is that it’s a long way from the city to the jungles of Madhya Pradesh, and that his Uncle’s job is to protect the tigers that live there. Befriended by a little Adivasi girl called Jungu, Sunil soon has to face some tough questions. If the tigers are to survive, then the people must be moved out of the forest. But what will happen to Jungu and all the other Baiga villagers? Don’t they have a ri...

The future is here. India has just sent its first spacecraft to the moon, and the placid city of Mysore is gearing up for its own global recognition with the construction of HeritageLand - Asia's largest theme park. From behind the formidable gates of Mahalakshmi Gardens to the shanty houses on the edge of town, the people of Mysore are abuzz as they watch their city prepare for a complete transformation. Susheela, an elderly widow, is forced into a secretive new life. Uma, trying to escap...

A muscular, deeply incisive and deathly funny comment on twenty-first century India, The Story of My Assassins is a multi-layered novel that skilfully slashes through the subcontinent's dubious spiritual serenity to lay bare every crippling divide of language, wealth and class. Trawling life and death in the dark underside, it inquires into the inexorable codes of power and wealth that propel societies. A triumph of disparate voices, unbearable realities, and impossible conundrums, this is...

When Bindra contracts leprosy, she is driven from her home in the Himalayan foothills with her two small sons and embarks upon a seemingly impossible course in search of salvation. David's first journey to India is driven by devastating loss, and yet he finds unexepected solace in the discovery of an exceptional family legacy, and insights offered by an unorthodox mountain tradition. As these individual journeys progress their stories are woven together, cultural differences are dissolved,...

Recently, South Asian writers such as Salman Rushdie, Michael Ondaatje, Rohinton Mistry, Bharati Mukherjee, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Monica Ali have been dominating the world’s literary scene, winning prestigious prizes, and appearing on numerous bestseller lists, and being hailed by critics and readers worldwide. Yet never before has their work appeared together in an anthology. Now, for the first time, the internationally heralded writer Shyam Selvadurai has collected the very best of South As...

This is a delightful collection of twenty-five crisp and intriguing short stories that will enliven and charm your leisure hours. The writer employs the 'Today-technology' of story telling: An economy of words; a simplicity of style; and a tempo and cadence that match the brisk life-style of today.All the stories have an Indian aroma and diaspora

Kuttiedathi and Other Stories is a careful collection of ten short stories. This collection brings together some of the most well known stories of M T Vasudevan Nair, fairly representative of his literary works. Written over a broad span of time from 1962 to 2000, the stories collected here reflect the built-in variety of his fictional concerns and the changing tones of his narration. M T Vasudevan Nair is a renowned Malayalam author and winner of the Jnanpith award for literature (1995). He...

River of Flesh and Other Stories brings together twenty-one stories about trafficked and prostituted women by some of India’s most celebrated writers—Amrita Pritam, Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, Indira Goswami, Ismat Chughtai, J. P. Das, Kamala Das, Kamleshwar, Krishan Chander, Munshi Premchand, Nabendu Ghosh, Qurratulain Hyder, Saadat Hasan Manto and Siddique Alam, among others.Jugnu, in Kamleshwar’s ‘River of Flesh’ (‘Maas ka Darya’)—stares at a lifetime of servitude as ...

This carefully selected collection of Vaikom Muhammad Basheers short stories are characterised by a variety in theme and tone. He has enshrined in them every kind of experience from the pangs of hunger and sex to the rapture of mystic vision. Its range includes stark realistic pictures of the material world as well as the realm of fantasy haunted by ghosts and spirits. Basheer has written on love and hate, on politicians and pickpockets, on the fancies of childhood and on the disillusionments...

A collection of Ruskin Bond's six novels evoking nostalgia for time gone by This collection of six novels sparkles with the quiet charm and humanity that are the hallmarks of Ruskin Bond's writing. Evoking nostalgia for a time gone by, these poignant chronicles of life in India's hills and small towns describe the hopes and passions that capture young minds and hearts, highlighting the uneasy reconciliation of dreams and destiny. The six novels included in the collection are: The Room on t...