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Bread, Cement, Cactus
In this prize-winning exploration of the meaning of home, Annie Zaidi reflects on places, cultures and conflicts that shape identity.
Known Turf
Annie Zaidi combines reportage with a personal narrative that goes into places we may know of but very rarely visit. However it is the stories of humble folk-tortured by hunger, discriminated against for reasons of caste, or gender-that linger.
Gulab
On a warm, muggy summer's day, Nikunj is at the cemetery to attend Saira's burial. Saira, the long-lost love he has been searching for, even though he is married to another woman now. But what are Usman and Parmod doing at her grave? Who are these women - Gulab, Mumtaz - that lay claim to her resting place?This is a love story. But what sort of relationship can you have with a dead person, what sort of future? Ghosts don't grow old. Or have children. But do we really know? If they can reclaim a body for themselves, perhaps they can cover that body with stretch marks. In the afterlife, possibilities stretch into infinity. Gulab tests the limits that our mind sets upon a ghost's powers. If you see her as a woman clinging to life, there is not much to fear. Yet: what if she wants to return to your life? And what makes you think you can make her leave?Annie Zaidi brings her characteristically clear-eyed exploration of love to this beguiling, hair-raising ghost story.
Mumbai Noir
Following the Bombay Communal Riots of 1992 which saw neighbour pitched against neighbour in fierce bouts of internecine violence, came the retaliatory bomb blasts of 1993 and the name change to Mumbai in 1995. Mumbai Noir captures the essence of a city dominated by wealth and the lack of it, where the shadowy aspects of life are never far from the ordinary person. Psychopath Romeos stalk ordinary women, men flirt with death in dance bars and families fall through the cracks of communal living in this phenomenal collection of noir literature.
Eat the Sky, Drink the Ocean
Be transported into dystopian cities and alternate universes. Hang out with unicorns, cyborgs and pixies. Learn how to waltz in outer space. Be amazed and beguiled by a fairy tale with an unexpected twist, a futuristic take on a TV cooking show, and a playscript with tentacles. In other words, get ready for a wild ride! This collection of sci-fi and fantasy writing, including six graphic stories, showcases twenty of the most exciting writers and artists from India and Australia, in an all-female, all-star line-up! Published by Zubaan.
The Good Indian Girl
Who is the ‘Good Indian Girl’? What does she look like? How does she dress? Is she real — or is she a myth? In this funny, wicked, touching, irreverent, poignant collection of stories, Annie Zaidi and Smriti Ravindra lift the veil (or sari pallu) on the lives and loves of girls who have been born or raised in the subcontinent. The niceties have to be observed, but the urge to subvert is often overwhelming. As they shimmy down drainpipes at midnight, or steal covert glances at the boys across the street, the real life incidents from which these stories are drawn will ring a bell with any woman who has negotiated the minefield of family love and romantic longing and desire that lies between childhood and womanhood. Fiction—but based on fact. Searingly funny—with a serious edge. Exploding stereotypes—and creating a few new ones. This is the Good Indian Girl as she has never been seen before—fiesty, imaginative, a little crazy, smart, vulnerable. Prepare to be surprised. Published by Zubaan.
Sapeurs
British photographer Tariq Zaidi presents a fashion subculture of Kinshasa & Brazzaville: La Sape, Societe des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Elegantes. Its followers are known as 'Sapeurs' ('Sapeuses' for women). Most have ordinary day jobs as taxi-drivers, tailors and gardeners, but as soon as they clock off they transform themselves into debonair dandies. Sashaying through the streets they are treated like rock stars - turning heads, bringing 'joie de vivre' to their communities and defying their circumstances.
Love Story # 1 To 14
'Curious villagers stopped to stare at this shameless man and woman whose fingers were wound in each others' hair, and whose lips were stretched with impossible smiles, and faces were glowing like warm red wax in the late afternoon. But after a minute or two, they too walked away, because looking at the two any longer became unbearable.' A woman who won't let the shadow of death disrupt her love life, another who falls irrevocably in love with a dead police officer, a devoted wife who steps out twice a week for Narcotics Anonymous meetings, friends who should have been lovers, the woman who offers all her pent-up love to a railway announcer's voice ... Annie Zaidi's stories are at once warm and distant, violent and gentle - and, above all, untroubled by cynicism. This is a look at love, straight in the eye, to understand the alluring nature of the beast.
Rococo and Other Worlds
Afzal Ahmed Syed holds a unique place among contemporary poets of the Urdu language, as an acknowledged master of both the classical and modern Urdu poetic forms. The poems in Rococo and Other Worlds explore the mythology and historical realities of South Asia and the Middle East; their bold imagery creates narratives of voluptuous perfection, which remain inseparable from the political realities that Syed witnessed as a young observer of the violent separation of East Pakistan and emergence of Bangladesh in 1971 and of the Lebanese civil war in 1976. Musharraf Ali Farooqi's sensitive translations bring this extraordinary work to English readers for the first time.
