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MEMOIRS OF AN EGOIST
$ 2.99Badr-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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AN INTRODUCTION TO THE POETRY OF FAIZ AHMED FAIZ
$ 3.99FAIZ AHMED FAIZ (1911-1984), poet, teacher, editor, freedom- fighter, dramatist, critic, progressive writer and Lenin Peace Prize recipient, was the author of eight collections of poems in Urdu and is considered one of the great poets of the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent. He was no mere ‘dreamer of dreams’. Great poets like Faiz are warriors and act as the conscience their times. Countries have frontiers but the war against slavery and exploitation has no frontier. Faiz espoused the cause of freedom in Pakistan, and for the peoples of the world. He ranks with poets like Pablo Neruda, Nizam Hikmat and Louis Aragon. His poetry, rich with the classical blood of Ghalib and Iqbal, acquired a characteristic hue and he excelled in both the nazm and ghazal form, blazing a trail of love and revolution. This is the first English language study to be published anywhere of the poetry of Faiz and a critical appreciation of his life and times.
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MEMOIRS OF A BASTARD ANGEL
$ 2.67In his autobiography, Harold Norse reflects half a century spent in the vanguard of literary and homosexual subcultures. His career began in 1939, when W. H. Auden seduced his college lover. In Greenwich Village Norse became an intimate of James Baldwin and in Provincetown lived with Tennessee Williams, who was completing The Glass Menagerie. In 1952, William Carlos Williams presented Norse at his reading debut calling Norse “the best poet of your generation.” Other admirers included Anais Nin, Dylan Thomas, Christopher Isherwood, and E. E. Cummings.
In the 1960s in Paris, Norse codeveloped the innovative Cut-up method while living in the Beat Hotel with William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Gregory Corso. In North Africa, Greece, and Spain Norse befriended Robert Graves, Leonard Cohen, and Paul and Jane Bowles. Repatriating to Venice, California, in 1968, Norse formed a literary alliance with Charles Bukowski (who called him “one of the great ones”) and lifted weights with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Under any circumstances this book would be a major social document, but because he is a superb, evocative stylist, Harold Norse’s candid autobiography is an engrossing classic of its kind.
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MATILDA
$ 3.49From the bestselling author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The BFG!
Matilda is a sweet, exceptional young girl, but her parents think she’s just a nuisance. She expects school to be different but there she has to face Miss Trunchbull, a kid-hating terror of a headmistress. When Matilda is attacked by the Trunchbull she suddenly discovers she has a remarkable power with which to fight back. It’ll take a superhuman genius to give Miss Trunchbull what she deserves and Matilda may be just the one to do it!
Matilda will surely go straight to children’s hearts. –The New York Times Book Review
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INTRODUCTION TO THE PRACTICE OF THE DEWEY DECIMAL CLASSIFICATION
$ 2.99The invention of the DDC has played a vital role in giving a direction and shape to the modern librarianship. It is not for nothing that Melvil Dewey is given the appellation of the father of modern librarianship.
The book has undergone 18 revisions to keep itself abreast of the ever advancing frontiers of knowledge and to cater to the increasing demand of its users. The 19th revision is presently underway. In every revision, it has been expanded, modified, rectified and made more modern in methods by applying the results of the latest research in library classification.
The book simply aims to introduce students to the process of assigning and especially synthesising the class numbers by the 19th edition of the DDC.
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IMPERIAL RULE IN PUNJAB 1818-1881
$ 1.49In this beautifully written and fully detailed study, J. Royal Roseberry makes a major contribution to understanding the interaction of the agents of the British Raj and local leadership and elites in the nineteenth century.
In extending their power over the subcontinent, the British encountered their most difficult and complex task in the Indus Valley, northwest of Delhi. In playing the imperial game on this turbulent frontier they were often overmatched and outwitted by local leaders and their forces. Nowhere was the challenge greater than in Multan, a historic Muslim city, where power shifted continuously among a wavering dynasty, Hindu merchants, and tribal mercenaries.
A new factor entered the political arena in the 1840s with the arrival of representatives of the East India Company. Herbert Edwardes contested successfully with Diwan Mulraj and, through 1857, the administrative and land revenue systems of the Company were haltingly applied.
As elsewhere in India, local leaders and elites sought advantages under the new system and evaded its burdens when they could. Continuing the story after the disturbances of 1857-58 Roseberry discusses the continued jostling for power among Multan’s Muslims, Hindus, and British interlopers. He devotes attention to the judicial and revenue administrations, economic growth and social dislocation, and the growing communal tensions after 1880.
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RAHMAT ALI
$ 3.49Rahmat Ali was the first Indian Muslim to argue the 2-nation theory in irrefutable syllogism, to demand a sovereign Muslim state in the sub-continent, and to establish a movement to realize the ideal, and to invent a beautiful and apt name for the country which was still in the womb of time.
What he said and did between 1933 and 1947 grants him a pivotal position in the origin, evolution and consummation of the idea of Pakistan, and makes him one of the truest founding-fathers of the state of Pakistan. Hounded out of Pakistan when he came to live here, betrayed by his friends, ignored by the leaders of the Pakistan movement, neglected by scholars and historians, and libelled by the Establishment, he yet lives in our history as a figure of heroic proportions.
It has taken Prof. Aziz 15 years to draw this portrait. Using all the Rahmat Ali papers within his reach, interviews with his contemporaries, newspaper reports of that period and a vast amount of other sources, he has written a book which fits the importance of the subject. Immaculate documentation, a graceful style, and unaffected erudition combine to make it probably the finest biography ever published in Pakistan. It is a daring and memorable piece of historical scholarship.
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WAJID ALI SHAH’S THEATRICAL GENIUS
$ 0.77This book discusses the development of Theatre in the sub-continent under Wajid All Shah in the nineteenth century and its cultural impact on society. Extensive commentary details the relations between the rulers and ordinary people and their mode of life and enjoyment. Most of the material in the book is new for students of Urdu Literature and this is the first English language publication on this subject in Pakistan.
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G D BIRLA
$ 0.95Ghanshyamdas Birla was a unique personality, and the framework in which the author chose to paint his life is also unique. Though Ram Niwas Jaju has presented his portrait on the basis of books, newspapers and journals, old correspondence and fresh interviews in a systematic and gripping narrative, yet the book is not a mere biography. It is an attempt to delineate the many-sided Ghanshyamdas Birla from various angles.
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TOM SAWYER DETECTIVE
$ 4.30Twain’s two most famous creations, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, are reunited for a high-spirited and engaging tale of mystery and murder in deepest Arkansas. When Tom and Huck are invited to stay on Tom’s uncle’s farm in Arkansas, they jump at the opportunity to escape the tedium of a long winter at home. A chance encounter on a steamboat downriver, though, leads to a complex plot of diamond heists, mistaken identity and murder, involving the two boys in a bigger adventure than even they had in mind. Huck’s typical bemused and timid observation provides a poignant contrast to Tom’s frenetic ingenuity, as the mystery begins tortuously to unravel, and it is in these two wryly affectionate portrayals that Twain breathes life and warmth into his charming and unjustly neglected story.
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