**A Scotsman Non-Fiction Book of the Year** Vanessa Able wanted a truly independent Indian adventure, but nothing prepared her for the noise, chaos and terror of driving 10,000 km around the subcontinent or for finding the love of her life. Behind the wheel of a yellow Tata Nano (the world s cheapest car), Vanessa steers the reader through a hilarious, high-octane adventure. Taking any help she can get from loopy spiritual gurus to professional driving instructors, and even a divine insura...

What does it take to drive across a nation full of rash drivers and maddening traffic?As Vanessa Able discovered, all it takes is a little bit of gumption, infinite reserves of patience, and the world’s cheapest car – the Tata Nano. Travelling across the length and breadth of India, clocking up an impressive 10,000 km on her odometer, Vanessa goes to places where modern GPS systems fail to give directions, where the size of your vehicle determines your standing on ...

'Crackles and sparks with life like an exploding box of Diwali fireworks' -William Dalrymple**'**One can only envy Monisha Rajesh as she embarks on this epic journey' -Tim ParksWhen she was a child, Monisha Rajesh's family uprooted to Madras in the hope of making India their home, but soon returned to England with a bitter taste in their mouths. Two decades on, Monisha turns to a map of the Indian Railways and takes a page out of Jules Vern...

It's not easy landing unprepared in a country like Japan. The eccentricities of the calendar, the indecipherable postal system, not to mention the alien alphabet, language and culture, have all to be confronted before the disorientated traveller can feel at ease. Trying to ride a bicycle through the streets of one of the most congested cities in the world would seem to compound your problems. For Josie Dew, however, with over 200,000 miles already clocked up in the saddle few things could ...

Where innocence, deceit and love collideAnand is a Bangalore success story: successful, well-married, rich. At least, that's how he appears. But if his little factory is to grow, he needs land and money and, in the New India, neither of these is easy to find.Kamala, Anand's family's maid, lives perilously close to the edge of disaster. She and her clever teenage son have almost nothing, and their small hopes for self-betterment depend on the contentment of Anand's wife: a w...

A powerful and touching novel from the Booker-shortlisted author of Pigeon English'A writer of considerable talent' Financial TimesLONGLISTED FOR THE DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD 2017I was beating the life out of Bibhuti with a baseball bat when my first monsoon broke…John Lock has come to India to meet his destiny.He has fled the quiet desperation of his life in England to offer h...

"This book is a chance to get a fix on some of India's best crime writers" ( The Globe and Mail, Toronto).These fourteen original stories, from some of India's most outstanding literary talents, take you into a world of sex in parks, male prostitution, and vigilante rickshaw drivers. Set in a city plagued by religious riots, soulless corporate dons, and murderous servants, this collection offers bone-chilling, mesmerizing take on the country's chaotic capi...

While attempting to teach at an inner London comprehensive Will Randall is taken up by an elderly German woman who asks him to accompany her to India. Nothing ventured, he agrees and so begins a wonderful life-changing adventure. Set down in Puna (3 hours from Bombay) he begins work teaching English at a slum school. Most of the children are orphans or parentless (one lost his parents four years previously when his mother had let go of his hand at a railway station and he 'd boarded the wr...

(Soon to be a major motion picture: Hamaari Adhuri Kahaani) Raising a young child on her own, writing him letters pretending to be his absentee father, Vasudha Prasad has taught herself not to dream. A wealthy hotelier with no fixed address, Aarav Ruparel travels light, using ambition to shield himself from emotion. Neither is seeking love. And when it comes calling, it tests them both: Vasudha must accept that her marriage was a mistake, and Aarav must learn that sometimes loss is gain. '...

‘It is hard for me to say the word “stench” when I speak of her, my love . . .’ The stories in Dirty Love are set in the restless swirl of a Bombay where dream-shuttles speed through the rain and men fall prey to dirty love. Reeking of sewers, fish markets, slaughtered meat, and peopled with loners, misfits and drifters, these tales prise open the surface of everyday existence.

A memoir of formative years spent on a series of communes: A "wonderful account of a frankly ghastly childhood . . . Hilarious and heartbreaking" ( Daily Mail).At the age of six, Tim Guest was taken by his mother to a commune modeled on the teachings of the notorious Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. The Bhagwan preached an eclectic doctrine of Eastern mysticism, chaotic therapy, and sexual freedom, and enjoyed inhaling laughing gas, preaching from a den...

Packing away her tutu and pointe shoes and donning cycling shorts and yellow Lycra, professional dancer Polly Benge took the decision to follow her heart. She soon found herself ferociously pedaling up mountains in India, staring at the increasingly distant backside of her beloved Tim. But mere mountains were to be the least of her worries. Prior information about the unsmiling Border Officials, the surroundings of extreme poverty, the inadequacy of maps, the continual bouts of constipatio...