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...

Pakistan's finest women writers – Jamila Hasmi, Mumtaz Shirin and Fahmida Riaz among others – introduce us to the compelling cadences of rich literary culture. A naive peasant is left with a white man's baby; a frustrated housewife slashes her husband's silk pyjamas; a middle-class housewife sees visions of salvation in the tricks of circus animals… Equally at ease with polemic and lyricism, these writers mirror the events of their convoluted history – nationalism and independence, wars wi...

Sultana’s Dream, first published in 1905 in a Madras English newspaper, is a witty feminist utopia-a tale of reverse purdah that posits a world in which men are confined indoors and women have taken over the public sphere, ending a war nonviolently and restoring health and beauty to the world."The Secluded Ones" is a selection of short sketches, first published in Bengali newspapers, illuminating the cruel and comic realities of life in purdah.

Thinkers of the East is a collection of anecdotes and 'parables in action' illustrating the eminently practical and lucid approach of Eastern Dervish teachers.Distilled from the teachings of more than one hundred sages in three continents, this material stresses the experimental rather than the theoretical - and it is that characteristic of Sufi study which provides its impact and vitality.The emphasis of Thinkers of the East contrasts sharply with the Western concept of th...

At long last, an accessible little book that focuses on the teachings of Rumi's teacher and inspiration, Shams of Tabriz. Included in this slim, charming volume is a biographical sketch of the great Sufi teacher and mystic and a new translation of 500 of his core teachings that bring into fresh focus the meaning and mysteries of life and love.There are many books on Rumi and many translations of his works and yet most readers are unaware of how Rumi became a mystic. Shams, an Arabic word t...

A New York Review Books OriginalTranscending divisions of creed, challenging social distinctions of all sorts, and celebrating individual unity with the divine, the poetry of Kabir is one of passion and paradox, of mind-bending riddles and exultant riffs. These new translations by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, one of India’s finest contemporary poets, bring out the richness, wit, and power of a literary and spiritual master.

This classic collection of Indian fables and spiritual stories offers an intimate and joyful glimpse at the deep, mythical tradition of India.India is the Home of Fables, which are usually associated western mind with the Greek slave mentioned by Herodotus, by the name of Aesop. Few people realize that these stories, their special form and technique can be traced to very remote sources in India. The same can be said of Gypsy stories all over the world. The Gypsies ...

A biography of the Sufi poet that's "a dazzling feat of scholarship . . . the book restores Rumi to the glories and hardships of his momentous age" ( The Washington Post).Ecstatic love poems of Rumi, a Persian poet and Sufi mystic born over eight centuries ago, are beloved by millions of readers in America as well as around the world. He has been compared to Shakespeare for his outpouring of creativity and to Saint Francis of Assisi for his spiritual wisdom...