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‘A luminous, hypnotic novel, as much about the beauty of language as it is about the struggles of life’ – ANN PATCHETT An extraordinary tale of love in a world being torn asunder. It's a sunny day in 2001 and Daya, a ballet student, is sitting in a park in Wales far away from her home in India. Unbeknownst to her, she is about to meet Aaftab, a young Muslim lawyer from Pakistan, and fall inexplicably in love. Even as Aaftab battles his heart, their relationship transcends the divides of religion, nationality and language. They forge profound bonds but the cataclysmic events of the year will have dangerous ramifications and push them to confront the most difficult complexities of their lives. Set in a world of students but breathtaking in its expansiveness, The Heart Asks Pleasure First is a spellbinding first novel that speaks urgently to the frailties of our times. Karuna Ezara Parikh humanizes the big themes of friendship and family, migration and xenophobia, with the deftness of a poet and the magic of a born storyteller.
Where Stories Gather, Karuna Ezara Parikh's first volume of poetry, presents a curation of her most popular work alongside new material where she delves into a deeply personal realm, asking and answering questions of identity, memory, womanhood, and the heart. Her poem Pray for the World, published on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in 2015, echoed around a bruised, grieving world, speaking directly to those bewildered and outraged by the moral contradictions of international politics. Again and again since then, Karuna's subtle commentary has garnered wide readership. The collection marks her as a poet of the fragile human condition, with poetry that is urgent and lyrical, intimate and fiery, empathetic and hopeful.
Never afraid of taking risks, Saikat Majumdar has taken his place as one the most striking novelists writing today. – SHASHI DESHPANDE In prose of spare elegance and understated precision, Saikat Majumdar explores an ethical conflict around mentorship, as well as a welter of questions around creative compromise, cultural privilege and entitlement, including the insidious pressures on poets to be ‘snarky and snappy’. Here is a storyteller whose language is writerly yet beautifully unmannered, supple enough to combine irony with gentleness, finely-modulated observation with axiomatic ease. – ARUNDHATHI SUBRAMANIUM A novel of love and friendship, pleasure, pain and jealousy. – R. RAJ ...
Seventy years on, the Partition of India fades from memory. Can it be restored?
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Every year on Leila's birthday Shalini kneels by the wall with a little yellow spade and scoops dry earth to make a pit for two candles. One each for herself and for Riz, the husband at her side.But as Shalini walks from the patch of grass where she held her vigil the man beside her melts away. It is sixteen years since they took her, her daughter's third birthday party, the last time she saw the three people she loves most dearly: her mother, her husband, her child.There are thirty-two candle stubs buried in that lawn, and Shalini believes her search is finally drawing to a close. When she finds Leila, she will return and dig up each and every one.
A Christian boy in Pakistan is accused of blasphemy―a crime punishable by death. Haunted by a tragic past, a young lawyer named Sikander Ghaznavi returns to Pakistan after many years abroad, and takes on the defence of the boy. He reaches out to the sharpest human rights lawyer he knows―the woman he has loved for years, but now another man’s wife. As they deal with their unresolved feelings, the lawyers confront a corrupt system, a town turned against them, and a prophecy that predicts their death. Will they save the boy? Or will the city of Quetta, its prejudice inflamed by religious extremists, consume them and deliver them to a deadly fate?
2020 has made us all re-examine our relationship with our homes and family. Sometimes, it's easy to leave. But how do you make it work where you are? As the world around us rapidly shifts, Reinvention explores the darker side of growing up. Can we preserve our identity, while building a family? What sacrifices do we have to make for success? Can we have it all- and keep it? Natasha wrote Reinvention after moving back to India after ten years. Her popular first poetry book, Boundless, captured the author's search for her own identity, as she experimented with geographies, and built her career. Here, she tries to reconnect with her roots. Boundless was about finding your voice. Reinvention is about making it heard. The sharpness and honesty of the poems will resonate with you. In a post-pandemic world, change is the only constant.
Arriving fourteen years after his debut collection, Feroze Varun Gandhi's second poetry offering, Stillness, is a study in elegance. The poet displays a rare maturity and confidence in allowing access into his inner world. Searchingly introspective, suffused with a strange calm, the poems are both poignant and profound. The language is sophisticated and self-restrained, the tone reflective, honest, vulnerable.A beautifully produced collection of short poems illustrated with fine photography, this is a sublime experience for poetry 'passionista' and layman alike.