EIGHT STORIES THAT CHAMPION THE SPIRIT OF A SPORT LIKE NO OTHERA young footballer struggles to make his mark even as he fights, the ruthless exploitation of local football clubs, his family’s strained financial circumstances and the humiliation of being the son of a man accused of deliberately throwing a winning goal in a long-ago match.A veteran player with an eclectic record prepares to play the final game of his career.A former star footballer ba...

The dazzling new book from the winner of the 2008 Man Booker Prize: one of the summer's most eagerly anticipated works of fiction.In his compelling new work of fiction, Aravind Adiga has imagined the small Indian city of Kittur, an everytown nestling on the coast south of Goa and north of Calicut. Through the myriad and distinctive voices of its inhabitants, an entire Indian world comes vividly and unforgettably to life.From a middle-aged Communist to an Is...

Mrs Ali's much loved home is suddenly under threat - a road widening scheme threatens to destroy both it and the family business, the Marriage Bureau for Rich People. Meanwhile, Mrs Ali's niece, Pari, a young Muslim widow, adopts a destitute Hindu boy, and this unorthodox arrangement offends both Muslim and Hindu in the sleepy eastern Indian town of Vizag. The Ali family are plunged into crisis, threated by police action, social boycott and excommunication.There is one plan that mi...

Mr Ali's flourishing marriage bureau seems to have chalked up another success when his ward, Pari, receives a surprise proposal from a rich, handsome aristocrat. But why is the boy's family so keen to get him married to Pari - an orphan, a widow, and now a single mother?Meanwhile Communist insurgents on the warpath in India's rural hinterland, and gays on the march for their rights in the big cities of Bombay and Delhi seem from another world. But soon these threatening forces inva...

Can true love triumph in the face of fierce family opposition? Mr Ali's marriage bureau is flourishing but trouble isn't far away once son Rehman begins secretly to woo TV journalist Usha in the small cafes and on the beautiful beaches of South Indian Vizag in an ill-advised romance.Meanwhile the lovely Aruna has a problem or two all her own. She enjoys being Mr Ali's right-hand woman at the marriage bureau, having a wonderful husband Ram, and living in a mansion a far cry from her...

A New York Times Notable Book: A policeman chases a falsely accused man on a wild journey around the world in this "utterly involving" novel ( The Sunday Times).When eight-year-old Nachiketa Bose first arrives in the East Bengali village of Lalpukur, he receives the name Alu— potato—for the size and shape of his extraordinary head. His uncle Balaram, the local schoolmaster and phrenology enthusiast, sends Alu to apprentice as a weaver, and the boy ...

In 1971, a teenage girl briefly disappears from her house in the middle of the night, only to return a different person, causing fissures that threaten to fracture her Punjabi Sikh family.As Singapore’s political and social landscapes evolve, the family must cope with shifting attitudes toward castes, youth culture, sex and gender roles, identity and belonging. Inheritance examines each family member’s struggles to either preserve or buck tradition in the face of an ever-changing n...

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 ...

From the floodlit TV studios of Mumbai to the glittering Rajput courts, Vikram, Amanjit, Deepika and Ras must battle the sorcerer-king Ravindra: his power is growing, and so is his evil reach . . .The second in award-winning author David Hair's series The Return of Ravana.Mumbai, 2010: Everyone's talking about Swayamvara Live!, the TV reality show recreating the ages-old custom where young men compete for the hand of a nobl...

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...

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...

The Indian short story is extraordinary in its ability to stick to the traditional rules of the craft and still demonstrate remarkable originality. It revolves around a limited number of characters, confines itself in time and space, and has a well-plotted narrative that drives its central theme. Within the traditional framework, however, creativity flowers and a fresh and imaginative story emerges. This volume is chock-full with such stories, written by authors well known in their regiona...