A translation of twelve short stories titled Adhure: Muslim Kadhalu, Vegetarians Only introduces readers to the life-world of Telugu Muslims, their dreams, sorrows and predicaments. Negotiations around the burqa and dowry are interwoven with communal sharing of marriage expenses and work. Unfulfilled love, the desperation and helplessness of penury are eased by promises of migration to the Gulf. The stories present moving portraits of individuals battling prejudice and isolation, within and o...

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...

In this seminal collection of Rumi poetry—the medieval Sufi mystic who is the most popular poet in America—and his “soul friend,” Shams Tabriz, foremost Rumi translator and author of The Essential Rumi Coleman Barks focuses on friendship and love. Rumi: Soul Fury is a must-own book for every Rumi fan.In this stunning translation, Coleman Barks brings to light Rumi’s theme of “love as religion”—that to reach its most profound depths requires mindful practice—as well as love in its m...

All the best armchair travellers are sceptics. Those of the fourteenth century were no exception: for them, there were lies, damned lies, and Ibn Battutah's India.Born in 1304, Ibn Battutah left his native Tangier as a young scholar of law; over the course of the thirty years that followed he visited most of the known world between Morocco and China. Here Tim Mackintosh-Smith retraces one leg of the Moroccan's journey - the dizzy ladders and terrifying snakes of his Indian career a...

Rahul Pandita was fourteen years old when he was forced to leave his home in Srinagar along with his family. They were Kashmiri Pandits-the Hindu minority within a Muslim-majority Kashmir that was by 1990 becoming increasingly agitated with the cries of 'Azaadi' from India. Our Moon Has Blood Clots is the story of Kashmir, in which hundreds of thousands of Pandits were tortured, killed and forced to leave their homes by Islamist militants, and forced to spend the rest of their lives in exi...

In this sparkling collection from one of our greatest essayists, Pankaj Mishra looks at the surprising ways modernity has come to South Asia. With lurid and astonishing characters, including, among others, heroin addicted jihadis, Indian mafia dons, Bollywood stars and Tibetan Buddhist activists, Mishra paints a picture of societies that are still struggling to define themselves.

Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri was born in the Iraqi holy city of Karbala, sacred to the whole Muslim world. Educated in Europe, living in the USA, working for many years in the oil industry, he has developed a unique perspective on the social and political history of the region. Interwoven with episodes from his own life, and meetings with prominent politicians, theologians and Sufi masters, he traces the collapse of the old way of life as dictators, often propped up by western c...

A bohemian and an iconoclast, the figure of Saadat Hasan Manto looms large over the literature of the Indian subcontinent. We know of his stories on the horrors of Partition and the struggles of prostitutes. But neither Partition nor prostitution gave birth to the genius of Manto. They only furnished him with an occasion to reveal the truth of the human condition. My Name Is Radha is a path-breaking edition of stories which delves deep into Manto’s creative world, and refreshingly brings into...

THE CITY OF THE DEAD is a mysterious area of Cairo that many Egyptians are aware of but not intimately connected too. This book provides a historical evolution of a residential cemetery more than four centuries old. Beneath a modern multilane highway lies a vast intricately connected ancient necropolis that stretches over three kilometres.The primary focus of the book is to analyze, understand, and to share the unique history and culture of this hidden, yet dynamic city with the ou...

The A Suitable Boy lesson plan contains a variety of teaching materials that cater to all learning styles. Inside you'll find 30 Daily Lessons, 20 Fun Activities, 180 Multiple Choice Questions, 60 Short Essay Questions, 20 Essay Questions, Quizzes/Homework Assignments, Tests, and more. The lessons and activities will help students gain an intimate understanding of the text; while the tests and quizzes will help you evaluate how well the students have grasped the material.

An upright and modest Muslim family in Mississauga, Ontario, discovers by accident the plans to bomb public places in Toronto on their son Rafiq’s computer. Belief tells the story of the family’s escape from Bombay to Canada following the communal violence of 1993; their small success, epitomized by their proud ownership of a house; and Rafiq’s attraction to fundamentalist Islamic ideas. Rafiq, it appears, has rejected the planned act of terrorism, organized by an evil charismatic genius, ...