The Open-Winged Scorpion


Book Description

The Open-Winged Scorpion and Other Stories is a collection of ten powerful Bengali short stories, all translated into English for the first time. Hailing from Murshidabad district in West Bengal, Abul Bashar pens stories about precarious lives of marginal Muslim communities in that district. His tales are shot through with the fears, dreams, hopes, and anxieties of the communities he portrays: their poverty and piety, the sensuality of the ancient mythologies they reimagine and remember, the rituals that permeate their lives, and the ever-present influence of the River Padma, which brings the silt that makes the land flourish--and the floods that destroy the crops and the people who plant them. The complex dynamics of the trivial and the transcendental emerge in Bashar's stories, as the tales become no less than an archive and richly imagined historical testimony of an abject community relegated to the margins of the society too focused on the future to remember people who are struggling in the here and now.







Chotti Munda and His Arrow


Book Description

Written in 1980, this novel by prize-winning Indian writer Mahasweta Devi, translated and introduced by Gayatri Chakravorty Sprivak, is remarkable for the way in which it touches on vital issues that have in subsequent decades grown into matters of urgent social conern. Written by one of India’s foremost novelists, and translated by an eminent cultural and critical theorist. Ranges over decades in the life of Chotti – the central character – in which India moves from colonial rule to independence, and then to the unrest of the 1970s. Traces the changes, some forced, some welcome, in the daily lives of a marginalized rural community. Raises questions about the place of the tribal on the map of national identity, land rights and human rights, the ‘museumization’ of ‘ethnic’ cultures, and the justifications of violent resistance as the last resort of a desperate people. Represents enlightening reading for students and scholars of postcolonial literature and postcolonial studies.




The Open Court


Book Description




Hordes Of The Things Version 2.1


Book Description

Hoards Of The Things is the ultimate fast-play fantasy wargame rule set for miniature figures. Using the successful DR rule system, but based on classical fantasy fiction rather than strict history, the rules have been proven in extensive competition use since 1991 and enjoy an international player base.










House of Open Wounds


Book Description

Behind the front lines of a crusade to scour the world of magic, the crew of a field hospital confront the horrors of war. A companion novel to Adrian Tchaikovsky's award-winning fantasy novel City of Last Chances City-by-city, kingdom-by-kingdom, the Palleseen have sworn to bring Perfection and Correctness to an imperfect world. As their legions scour the world of superstition with the bright flame of reason, so they deliver a mountain of ragged, holed and scorched flesh to the field hospital tents just behind the front line. Which is where Yasnic, one-time priest, healer and rebel, finds himself. Reprieved from the gallows and sent to war clutching a box of orphan Gods, he has been sequestered to a particularity unorthodox medical unit. Led by 'the Butcher', an ogre of a man who's a dab hand with a bone-saw and an alchemical tincture, the unit's motley crew of conscripts, healers and orderlies are no strangers to the horrors of war. Theirs is an unspeakable trade: elbow-deep in gore they have a first-hand view of the suffering caused by flesh-rending monsters, arcane magical weaponry and embittered enemy soldiers. Entrusted – for now – with saving lives deemed otherwise un-saveable, the field hospital's crew face a precarious existence. Their work with unapproved magic, necromancy, demonology and Yasnic's thoroughly illicit Gods could lead to the unit being disbanded, arrested or worse. Beset by enemies within and without, the last thing anyone needs is a miracle... Reviews for City of Last Chances: 'Paints a vivid detailed backdrop' SFX 'Brilliant chaos ensues' Daily Mail 'Some of Tchaikovsky's best prose' SF Crowsnest 'An intriguing tangle... ingenious' Locus 'Endlessly creative' Patrick Ness 'Rich, inventive worldbuilding' Publishers Weekly 'Ilmar is vividly alive' David Towsey 'A master at the height of his powers' Ian Green 'An ambitious epic fantasy read' Grimdark Magazine




Wings


Book Description