The Harpercollins Book of Urdu Short Stories


Book Description

A Collection Of Urdu Stories By Some Of The Finest And Most Renowned Writers Of The Language Today - Including Naiyer Masud, Balraj Manra, Jeelani Bano And Intizar Husain - Brought To The English Reader In Accurate, Modern Translations. With Originality And Poetic Grace, These Stories Lead Us Into A World Shaped By Islamic And Indian Sub Continental Traditions, Revealing An Imagination Hovering Upon The Mystical And The Romantic, The Traditional And The Modern, The Social And The Political. Ultimately, They Testify To The Depth Of The Human Spirit Ad They Reflect Upon Its Mysteries. An Informative Preface By Muhammad Umar Memon Sets The Scene For A Power Anthology Of A Vibrant And Tenacious Literary Tradition.




Index Islamicus


Book Description




The Oxford India Anthology of Modern Urdu Literature


Book Description

The `Fiction` volume includes both short stories and extracts from novels and novellas. Beginning with Muhammad Hadi Ruswa (1857-1931), it moves on to Premchand, Ghulam Abbas, Krishan Chander, Rajender singh Bedi, Intizar Husain, Qurratulain Hyder, Abdullah Hussein, and Naiyer Masud among others, and finally, Syed Muhammad Ashraf.




The Death of Sheherzad


Book Description

'Intizar Husain's stories often tread that twilight zone between fable and parable. His narratives are spun on an oriental loom' - Keki N. Daruwalla A man scours the town he left fifty years ago for some little evidence of past joys. Javed, who's returned to Lahore from East Pakistan, won't speak of what he witnessed 'there'. An old woman boards a train full of dead ancestors in her dreams. A sage who cannot control his anger must seek out a butcher for redemption. Mahaban, home of the monkeys once, is now a city full of human beings. Sheherzad, who once told Emperor Shaharyar a thousand-and-one stories, is now an old woman who has forgotten her yarns of fantasy. The stories in The Death of Sheherzad ably represent Intizar Husain's oeuvre, defying narrative tradition and exploring the past, specifically Partition, as a means of unravelling the present. He imaginatively revisits a syncretic, tolerant pluralistic past to analyse why the tide turned so irreversibly. Questioning everything - faith, violence, society - Husain probes the horrors of Partition in a manner as oblique as it is trenchant. Imbued with dark wit and literary brilliance, these stories at once shock, agitate and entertain.




The Dark River and Other Stories


Book Description

Krishan Chander is a stalwart of the Progressive Writers' Movement and a venerable name in Urdu and Hindi short story writing. His timeless stories astound both in terms of quality and sheer volume, yet he remains under-read outside his own languages. With simplicity and stylistic flair, this much-awaited volume brings together a novella and three stories that represent the best of his oeuvre. In 'The Dark River', a gothic tale of love and murder unfurls amidst great beauty. It will take all of Lata's strength to navigate the underbelly of Mumbai with nothing but a vermillion dream in 'Same Old Desire'. In 'Plums', the narrator realizes that there are things that time cannot touch: the citrus mischief of love, memories and plums. Even the most hardened criminal cowersbefore the silence of those who havenothing more to lose in 'Breaking the Strike'. Varied and evocative stories that carry the delicate essence of Urdu and Hindi into another language.




Land of Smoke


Book Description

"Land of Smoke is one of my favourite books by one of my favourite Argentinian authors." – Samanta Schweblin, author of Seven Empty Houses Dazzling, hallucinatory short stories by a rediscovered Argentinian contemporary of García Márquez, whose groundbreaking novel January is being published in English for the first time Resplendent with otherworldly imagery and beguiling prose, Land of Smoke presents a uniquely compelling voice in Latin American literature. An old man wakes up one morning to find that his beloved garden, the envy of all his neighbours, is floating away with him on board. A young woman moves to Buenos Aires, bringing with her a replacement head. A meek German missionary leaves Paraguay for the Pampas, completely unprepared for what he will encounter there. Dazzling and hallucinatory, the stories collected here recall the masters of magical realism ­– but with Gallardo’s distinctive, idiosyncratic slant.







The Gaze


Book Description

A beautiful and compelling novel, Elif Shafak's The Gaze considers the damage which can be inflicted by our simple desire to look at others "I didn't say anything. I didn't return his smiles. I looked at him in the wide mirror in front of where I was sitting. He grew uncomfortable and avoided my eyes. I hate those who think fat people are stupid.' An obese woman and her lover, a dwarf, are sick of being stared at wherever they go, and so decide to reverse roles. The man goes out wearing make up and the woman draws a moustache on her face. But while the woman wants to hide away from the world, the man meets the stares from passers-by head on, compiling his 'Dictionary of Gazes' to explore the boundaries between appearance and reality. Intertwined with the story of a bizarre freak-show organised in Istanbul in the 1880s, The Gaze considers the damage which can be inflicted by our simple desire to look at others. "Beautifully evoked" - The Times "Original and Compelling" - TLS "Plays with ideas of beauty and ugliness like they're Rubik's cubes" - Helen Oyeyemi "Entertaining and affecting" - Publishers' Weekly Elif Shafak is the acclaimed author of The Bastard of Istanbul and The Forty Rules of Love and is the most widely read female novelist in Turkey. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages. She is a contributor for The Telegraph, Guardian and the New York Times and her TED talk on the politics of fiction has received 500 000 viewers since July 2010. She is married with two children and divides her time between Istanbul and London.




Harpercollins Book Of New Indian Fiction


Book Description

In this unparalleled collection of short stories, The HarperCollins Book of New Indian Fiction presents an absorbing view of one of the most fertile literary landscapes in the world. Traversing continents and orbits, styles and themes, in rich, original and frequently surprising ways, the stories testify to the range and depth of Indian writing in English. Variously lyric, satiric, tragic and fantastic, they are unified in their vigour and humanity. T The anthology features a rich assortment of voices from both new authors and established names including Abraham Verghese, Manju Kapur, Githa Hariharan and Amitava Kumar. With an insightful introduction by Khushwant Singh, one of India's foremost literary personalities, this is the definitive survey of a lively modern scene.




The Hachette Book of Indian Detective Fiction Volumes I and II


Book Description

The professionals meet the amateurs in this first–ever anthology of Indian detective fiction. Volume 1 An elite squad detective from the future travels back in time to hunt down a time escapee. Across the city of Tokyo, liquids are turning blue, and elsewhere a Tamil actress is kidnapped. The gruesome murder of an adult industry star spirals into a web of deceit and leads to a bizarre revelation. A journalist races against time to find the missing link between the deaths of a daily soap actress, a classical vocalist and a famous painter. And more... Volume 2 A detective delves into a cold case; a ship that disappeared in the Bay of Bengal in the year 1913. A man is bludgeoned to death in an apartment and a piece of paper with the word 'STOP!' is nailed to his forehead. Six deaths under mysterious circumstances and the only common link is a box of arsenic–laced sweets. A soldier's homecoming dredges up memories of a murder that took place a decade ago in the family. And more... The first–ever anthology of its kind, The Hachette Book of Indian Detective Fiction compiles more than 30 compelling whodunits, supernatural mysteries, serial murders and absurd crimes spread across two volumes. Through hybrid, self–reflexive and experimental forms of writing (including translations from Bengali and Tamil), this collection invites readers to unravel mysteries with every turn of the page, masterfully showcasing distinctive instances of the genre. Red herrings simmered in blood gravy, served up with family feuds, ancient curses, long–haired lady sleuths and many other typical subcontinental chutneys provide a rare feast for the avid reader of crime fiction! Featuring the works of: Volume 1 Satyajit Ray * Gopa Majumdar * Saradindu Bandopadhyay * Gopa Majumdar * Ambai * Gita Subramanian * Ankush Saikia * Meeti Shroff Shah * Suchitra Bhattacharya * Radha Chakravarty * Sujan DasGupta * Chandana Dutta * Anirudh Kala * Tamilvanan * Rabindranath Tagore * Shampa Roy * Anil Menon * Tanuj Solanki * Timeri Murari * Navin Weeraratne * Kehkashan Khalid * Sumit Bardhan * Kiran Manral * Shweta Taneja * Saad Z. Hossain Volume 2 Rajarshi Das Bhowmik * Arunava Sinha * Vikram Chandra * Giti Chandra * Swati Kaushal * Ajay Chowdhury * Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay * Debaditya Mukhopadhyay * Vish Dhamija * Salil Desai * Mahendra Jakhar * Sharatchandra Sarkar * Shampa Roy * Vaseem Khan * Nev March * Anuradha Kumar * Madhulika Liddle * Arjun Raj Gaind * Shashi Warrier * Avtar Singh For detailed content, please look inside the book. * Illustration continuity across covers and spine * 2–volume collectible (Royal 8vo hardback set) * A magnetic clasp box–wrap * Detective–element themed sprayed edges * Endpaper artwork by Manjula Padmanabhan