Samskara is one of the acknowledged masterpieces of modern world literature, a book to set beside Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North. Taking its name from a Sanskrit word that means “rite of passage” but also “moment of recognition,” it begins when Naranappa, an inhabitant of a small south Indian town and a renegade Brahmin who has scandalously flouted the rules of caste and purity for years, eating meat,...

Born out of a meditation on the ideas of the nation state and nationalism, and what the new power structures and centres mean for the very idea of India, Hindutva or Hind Swaraj is a manifesto -- written in the form of aphorisms, using shifting tones and styles to make a deep, elegant and heartfelt point about the human cost of radicalization. This last work of Jnanpith award winner and pre-eminent writer U.R. Ananthamurthy is a creative response to the rise of Hindutva nationalism in Indi...

A fascinating portrait of the life and ideas of the great Indian writer and public intellectual, U.R. Ananthamurthy. Between 2012 and 2013, Ananthamurthy shared his personal experiences in a series of lively conversations with academic and writer Chandan Gowda, and reflected on issues that would preoccupy him until the end. Besides the vivid accounts of his childhood, friendships, the evolution of his intellectual life, and public involvements, his passionate ideas on tradition, on India's...

Ajji, can I have some water? … Just a few drops will do, Ajji. With the searing sky above and the blistering earth below, like cactus the people of this parched terrain are determined to stay alive. Emaciated children scurry along, dejected farmers pawn their ploughs, weary women sleep on empty stomachs…. Would those perishing now have died anyway? Or is hunger calling them away prematurely? Filled with social concern, Satisha, the district commissioner, wants to help the afflicted. But he...

A trenchant critique of the rise of Hindutva nationalism in India by one of India's best known writers and thinkers.The very last work of Jnanpith award winner and preeminent writer U.R. Ananthamurthy is a timely reading, and trenchant critique, of the rise of Hindutva nationalism in India. Juxtaposing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh founder V.D. Savarkar's idea of Hindutva with M.K. Gandhi's concept of Hind Swaraj, the book examines two directions that were open to India at the time o...

Authored by Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha is one of the most influential spiritual works of the twentieth century. It is the story of a young man who decides to leave his wife and kids and embark on a journey of suffering and rejection to finally find peace within and attain salvation.The story revolves around a young man who leaves his home and family on a quest for the Truth. Embarking on a journey that takes him from the austerities of renunciation to the profligacy of wealth. That leads hi...

A Wall Street Journal Top 10 Nonfiction Book of 2017A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2017A Shelf Awareness Best Book of 2017" Ants Among Elephants is an arresting, affecting and ultimately enlightening memoir. It is quite possibly the most striking work of non-fiction set in India since Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo, and heralds the arrival of a formidable new write...

**The greatest Indian epic, one of the world's supreme masterpieces of storytellingA Penguin Classic**A sweeping tale of abduction, battle, and courtship played out in a universe of deities and demons, The Ramayana is familiar to virtually every Indian. Although the Sanskrit original was composed by Valmiki around the fourth century BC, poets have produced countless versions in different languages. Here, drawing on the work of an eleventh-century poet called Kamban...

**From the Nobel Prize-winning author comes a masterpiece of astonishing insight and candor about a society traumatized by centuries of foreign conquest and immured in a mythic vision of its past.“Extraordinarily forceful.... Naipaul is an elegantly precise and exacting writer.” –Newsweek**In 1975, at the height of Indira Gandhi’s “Emergency,” V. S. Naipaul returned to India, the country his ancestors had left one hundred years earlier. Out of that journey he produ...

An eight-year-old is sent to live in a community of widows in India, and finds a new purpose there, in a novel by "a writer of enormous talent" ( Newsday).Set in 1938, against the backdrop of Gandhi's rise to power, Water follows the life of eight-year-old Chuyia, abandoned at a widow's ashram after the death of her elderly husband. There, she must live in penitence until her death. Unwilling to accept her fate, she becomes a catalyst for change in...

Everybody loves Novice to Master! As you'll see in the glowing endorsements and reviews included below, this modern spiritual classic has been embraced by readers of all types.In his singularly humorous and biitingly direct way, Zen abbot Soko Morinaga tells the story of his rigorous training at a Japanese Zen temple, his spiritual growth and his interactions with his students and others. Morinaga's voice is uniquely tuned to the truth of the condition of the human mind an...

Hinduism is one of the world's oldest living faiths. There are thousands of different Hindu gods and goddesses. Children are often very curious to know about them. The present book comprises information and stories related to ten popular gods and goddessesBrahma, Vishnu, Shiva, Sarasvati, Lakshmi, Parvati, Ganesha, Hanuman, Indra and Surya. The stories in this collection will satiate their curiosity and also provide pleasure to the young readers. The tales are a varied lot as they have been s...