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THE TALE OF THE OLD FISHERMAN AND OTHER
$ 3.99These twelve stories, each by a different hand, are the stuff of dreams, pain, longing, fear and hope. People from anywhere are here, but they speak and cry in Urdu, the language of Pakistan and India. Urdu has a rich literary tradition, and its evocations and idioms have been sensitively recreated in English.
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THE HAMLET
$ 5.48This darkly comic masterpiece is the first novel of the trilogy about the Snopes family, the grasping clan that comes to dominate the mythical county of Yoknapatawpha, Mississippi after the fall of the Confederacy.
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FRIEND OF MY YOUTH
$ 4.98The ten miraculously accomplished stories in Alice Munro’s Friend of My Youth not only astonish and delight but also convey the unspoken mysteries at the heart of all human experience.
Friend of My Youth is] a wonderful collection of stories, beautifully written and deeply felt.–Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
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THE BEGGAR MAID
$ 4.48WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE(R) IN LITERATURE 2013 In this series of interweaving stories, Munro recreates the evolving bond between two women in the course of almost forty years. One is Flo, practical, suspicious of other people’s airs, at times dismayingly vulgar. the other is Rose, Flo’s stepdaughter, a clumsy, shy girl who somehow leaves the small town she grew up in to achieve her own equivocal success in the larger world.
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THE LIFE AND TIMES OF NAZIR AKBARABADI
$ 3.99Nazir Akbarabadi (1735-1830) was a remarkable Urdu poet of the sub-continent, who stands out as being distinct from the romantic or mystic mainstream of medieval Urdu poetry. He was a private tutor by profession but despite tempting offers never made poetry a trade. Nazir’s poetry is at once objective and large-hearted. Absorbed in the zest for life, its joys and sorrows are for him only passing shadows on the stage. It is this down-to-earth realism that makes him so relevant to society today. He adopted a new idiom which was firmly rooted in the soil and had direct links with the masses. This is the first time any Pakistani has attempted to shed light for the English reader on Nazir and his many moods.
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HISTORY OF SINDHI LITERATURE
$ 3.99Sindhi, like Punjabi, Urdu and Bengali, is one of the languages of the sub-continent which goes back to the earliest recorded evidence of civilisation.
According to Grierson, it can be bracketed with Lahnda as one of the two languages of the north-west group of Sanskrit languages. John Beames characterized it as ‘infinitely more natural and captivating than anything which the hide-bound Pandit-ridden languages of the eastern part of India can show.’
The present history traces the development of Sindhi literature from its remote beginnings to 1947.
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CONTEMPORARY URDU SHORT STORIES
$ 2.27The modern Urdu short story, which took root in India and Pakistan not very long ago, has today become a vibrant art form with writers from both countries contributing to its growth and status. It can boast a wealth of literature as yet little known outside the Urdu world. This anthology presents to the discriminating English reader a selection of stories comparable in excellence to short fiction written in any other language.
Starting with the years immediately preceding the independence of India and the creation of Pakistan, it spans nearly half a century of intense literary activity, varied in approach and wide in scope. The anthology features both literary stalwarts like Premchand and Mumtaz Mufti, as well as younger writers who have shown unmistakable promise.
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THE UNVANQUISHED
$ 4.98Set in Mississippi during the Civil War and Reconstruction, THE UNVANQUISHED focuses on the Sartoris family, who, with their code of personal responsibility and courage, stand for the best of the Old South’s traditions.
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A CLERGYMAN’S DAUGHTER
$ 4.76Intimidated by her father, the rector of Knype Hill, Dorothy performs her submissive roles of dutiful daughter and bullied housekeeper. Her thoughts are taken up with the costumes she is making for the church school play, by the hopelessness of preaching to the poor and by debts she cannot pay in 1930s Depression England. Suddenly her routine shatters and Dorothy finds herself down and out in London. She is wearing silk stockings, has money in her pocket and cannot remember her name. Orwell leads us through a landscape of unemployment, poverty and hunger, where Dorothy’s faith is challenged by a social reality that changes her life.
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MEMOIRS OF AN EGOIST
$ 4.48Badr-ud-Din Tyabji’s first volume of memoirs is a personal record encompassing half a century of India’s recent history. The momentous changes this period witnessed are chronicled by Tyabji from a unique position of vantage. Diverse cultural and intellectual influences – an enlightened Islamic and strongly nationalist family tradition, tempered by a liberal Western education – shaped his forceful personality and distinguished career. This volume traces the author’s childhood and youth under the Raj, his experience as a civil service officer, the rough crossing over into Independence under the shadow of Partition, the shaping of the new sovereign republic, and his experiences of the Indian Foreign Service in its infancy.
The Tyabji family rose from a background of entrepreneurial prosperity to social prominence in an age when emerging nationalism was propelling the country swiftly towards a final confrontation with its colonial identity. These memoirs bring to life personalities and events of this vibrant period, not too distant but already sadly fading from national memory. The value of the book as a historical documentation is greatly enhanced by the author’s robust wisdom, eye for detail and wry sense of humour. But his sharp observation, unflinching candour and cutting wit are always mellowed by a lively curiosity and instinctive generosity of heart. A self confessed egoist, Tyabji counter – balances his nostalgia for the past with pragmatic evaluation without detracting from its essential period charm.
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MAULANA AZAD
$ 4.48Three passions dominated Maulana Azad’s life: love of learning, Hindu-Muslim unity and freedom of India. This comprehensive and sensitive study, using extensive source material offers, for the first time, a critical portrait of a remarkable intellectual who fought for his country’s freedom.
He never ceased cultivating his own garden even when, as a rebel against British rule, he had to live in gaol for about a decade.
Shy and reserved by nature and temperamentally a private person who would rather commune with the minarets of the Tajat Agra on moonlit nights than mix with crowds, this scholar extraordinaire was pushed into the arena of political battle and consecrated his life to the service of the country.
Forsaken by his own community and distrusted by others, he never compromised on his integrity. Jinnah refused to shake hands with him.
In high politics he showed a rare sagacity but his advice was disregarded on some crucial occasions for which the country has had to pay a heavy price. Towards the close of his life he was a sad man.
His thwarted love affair, like Dante’s, had given him a new, exalted vision of life. But the ideals he stood for lay shattered and the sense of utter failure in his mission seized him.
This work captures the unique spirit of this remarkable personality, torn by conflict and caught up in paradoxical situations.
It also provides a sound understanding of the inner turmoils of the man by reviewing them in the broad historical perspective of his times when the destiny of the country which he helped to shape was taking a new turn.
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