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How It Happened
Dadi, the imperious matriarch of the Bandian family in Karachi, swears by the virtues of arranged marriage. All her ancestors – including a dentally and optically challenged aunt – have been perfectly well-served by such arrangements. But her grandchildren are harder to please. Haroon, the apple of her eye, has to suffer half a dozen candidates until he finds the perfect Shia-Syed girl of his dreams. But it is Zeba, his sister, who has the tougher time, as she is accosted by a bevy of suitors, including a potbellied cousin and a banker who reeks of sesame oil. Told by the witty, hawk-eyed Saleha, the precocious youngest sibling, this is a romantic, amusing and utterly delightful story about how marriages are made and unmade---not in heaven, but in the drawing room and over the phone.
A Firefly in the Dark
'By turns terrifying and amusing, this is not a book you want to read before you go to sleep. Or maybe you do...'--Jerry Pinto Sharmeen's life is disrupted when, after an unexpected tragedy, she moves into her Nani's rambling ancestral bungalow with her family. She hates this new life: her mother, Aliya, and Nani fight constantly; her new schoolmates bully her; and the family retainer, her loving Aziz Bhai, suddenly becomes dominating. The only place where Sharmeen finds solace is the world of Nani's fantastical stories: tales of Jinn, shapeshifters and other dastardly creatures. But slowly, unseen forces that had lain dormant for centuries start to awaken. Sharmeen meets her own personal Jinn, the prankster Jugnu, who reveals her family's history, a pact one of her ancestors made with the Jinn-world, and also some not-so-good news--and Sharmeen realizes that it is up to her to rescue the adults in her life... Mysterious, magical and moving, A Firefly in the Dark is a page-turner and a work of fantasy and soaring imagination that will delight readers of all ages.
The Party Worker
A burnt-out New York cop; an eighty-year-old Parsi sitting in a decaying Karachi mansion; a hitman whose days are numbered; a journalist who dreams of the big time. When a Jewish woman is killed on the steps of the Natural History Museum in New York, disparate lives are thrown together for one purpose: to bring about the downfall of the Don, the uncrowned king of Karachi. The Party Worker explores the Machiavellian politics of Pakistan's busiest city, where friends come bearing bullets, and enemies can wait patiently for decades before striking. Gritty, disturbing, and compelling, this is Omar Shahid Hamid at his best.
The Prisoner
An international literary sensation, this chilling thriller “exposes. . . a world so dark that readers will come away terrified” (Wall Street Journal, India). An American journalist has been kidnapped in Karachi, Pakistan, days before the American president is due to visit. Those responsible have promised to execute him on video on Christmas Day. With no other leads, Constantine D’Souza, a Christian police officer, must get his former colleague Akbar Khan, a rogue cop imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit, to help track down the journalist. But to do so, he has to navigate the streets of Karachi, where police corruption is a way of life and political motives are never what they see...
No Country for Old Men
In 2005, Cormac McCarthy's novel, No Country for Old Men, was published to wide acclaim, and in 2007, Ethan and Joel Coen brought their adaptation of McCarthy's novel to the screen. The film earned praise from critics worldwide and was honored with four Academy Awards', including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay. In No Country for Old Men: From Novel to Film, scholars offer varied approaches to both the novel and the award-winning film. Beginning with several essays dedicated entirely to the novel and its place within the McCarthy canon, the anthology offers subsequent essays focusing on the film, the adaptation process, and the Coen Brothers more broadly. The book also features an interview with the Coen brothers' long-time cinematographer Roger Deakins. This entertaining and enriching book for readers interested in the Coen Brothers' films and in McCarthy's fiction is an important contribution to both literature and film studies.
Slumchild
Slum Child is the Story of a girl forced to run alone, strong and courageous, to a future that cannot deny her happiness
This House of Clay and Water
Set in Lahore, This House of Clay and Water explores the lives of two women. Nida, intelligent and lonely, has married into an affluent political family and is desperately searching for meaning in her life, while impulsive, lovely Sasha, from the ordinary middle class, willingly consorts with rich men who can satisfy her frantic longing for designer labels and upmarket places. Nida and Sasha meet at the famous Daata Sahib Dargah and connect-their need to understand why their worlds feel so alien and empty bringing them together. On her frequent visits to the dargah, Nida also meets the gentle, flute-playing hijra Bhanggi, who sits under a bargadh tree and yearns for acceptance and affection, but is invariably shunned. A friendship-fragile, tentative and tender-develops between the two, both exiles within their own lives; but it flies in the face of all convention and cannot be allowed. Faiqa Mansab's accomplished and dazzling debut novel explores the themes of love, betrayal and loss in the complex, changing world of today's Pakistan.
Superstar India
Vintage Shobhaa Dé, with scathing take-offs on everything, from the caste system to male chauvinism, from sex to social pretension . . . in other words, it's all great fun'-Economic Times Watching the preparations for independent India's 60th birthday in 2007, Dé-poised then to enter her own sixth decade-was struck by the thought, 'Surely my life has taken the same trajectory as the country's!' While she reflected on this, many more questions arose: Does India really deserve to congratulate itself? Has it lived up to the early promises it made to its people? Does Dé herself believe in India? In Superstar India, an intimate confession to her readers, Dé answers these questions and discovers a jawan-young-India, ready to find its place in today's world. Witty, passionate and gloriously opinionated, Superstar India celebrates the spirit of a nation that is certainly not about to lose its glow.
Momspeak
Mother. Woman. Human. What is it like to be a mother in India? Is there only one kind of woman as mother or can mothers be as different as chalk and cheese? In this original, provocative book, Pooja Pande peels off the layers of social propriety to delve deep into the visceral reality of motherhood, much glorified but barely understood in India. Exploring the spectrum of experiences mothers have as women, as humans—from ecstasy to depression, jealous possessiveness to indifference, exhaustion to sensual desire—she reveals the personal, social and emotional roller-coaster that motherhood can be. Through vignettes of her personal journey, and hilarious and poignant episodes in the lives of different mothers—married, divorced, single, queer, adoptive—Pooja celebrates and shines new light on this transformative, life-affirming experience. Whatever kind of mother you are, you will find your truth reflected in these pages.
Our Lady of Alice Bhatti
Alice Bhatti has just come out of prison and is looking for a second chance. She’s hungry, tough, and full of fight, but being a Catholic choohra in Karachi means she also needs good luck. A lot of it. Alice’s prayers are answered when she gets a job as Junior Nurse at the Sacred Heart Hospital, a squalid public hospital full of shoot-out victims and homeless drug addicts. There she meets Teddy Butt, a trigger happy, ex-body builder, and a part-time goon for the police. The two could not be further apart and that’s why they fall in love—Teddy with sudden violence, Alice in cautious hope. How will their unlikely romance end? In A Case of Exploding Mangoes, Mohammed Hanif tore into the corruption of the army and General Zia’s dictatorship; in this novel he draws a dark and compelling portrait of Pakistan today where killers fall in love and lovers are forced to make impossible choices. Written with savage humour and in sizzling prose, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti is a tour de force from one of the most brilliant young writers today.
