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Tabish Khair
This volume approaches Tabish Khair’s writings (both his theoretical proposals and his novels) from numerous different perspectives. Contributors engage from varied critical stances with Khair’s academic writings in a fruitful dialogue, analyze his social, political and religious concerns, and elucidate his characteristics as a novelist and his literary powers. Furthermore, this volume is highly enriched by the presence of a hitherto unpublished play by Khair, entitled The One Percent Agency, which focuses on a tourism agency specializing in bringing “Bollywood”-style Indian weddings to foreign tourists. In the process, it becomes a satirical commentary on the packaging of international tourism as well as the ability of common Indians to adapt and thrive. It depicts the “metropolitan” India of the new millennium and inter-community relations in subtle and powerful ways.
How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position
CAN THE GLASS EVER REALLY BE MORE THAN HALF-FULL? A young Pakistani academic relives his days sharing a cramped apartment in Aarhus, Denmark, with two unlikely bedfellows. They are Ravi, his incorrigible best friend and a wry observer of the human condition; and Karim, their fundamentalist Muslim landlord, whose apparent double life soon intrigues his tenants. While Ravi finds his jaded world outlook challenged when he falls for an unlikely Danish girl, and our narrator embarks upon a complicated love affair of his own, Karim's bizarre and secretive behaviour leads to creeping suspicions that something might, indeed, be rotten in the state of Denmark . . . By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position is a sparkling account of strangers in strange lands, told with wit and humanity.
Filming
Set primarily in India and spanning the twentieth century, Filming tells a series of stories, including that of one-time prostitute Durga, who is persuaded to give away her young son, Ashok, and that of Saleem, the son of a prostitute and two-times star of the silver screen. As these stories intertwine and overlap, they combine to create a novel that is simultaneously about the small details and the bigger picture, weaving together major historical events – including Partition, the assassination of Gandhi, the rise of photography and the Bombay film industry, and the development of barbed wire – with the everyday moments that make up the fabric of our lives. ‘Its plot, like a Bollywood...
Tabish Khair
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The Thing About Thugs
A subversive, macabre novel of a young Indian man’s misadventures in Victorian London as the city is racked by a series of murders In a small Bihari village, Captain William T. Meadows finds just the man to further his phrenological research back home: Amir Ali, confessed member of the infamous Thugee cult. With tales of a murderous youth redeemed, Ali gains passage to England, his villainously shaped skull there to be studied. Only Ali knows just how embroidered his story is, so when a killer begins depriving London’s underclass of their heads, suspicion naturally falls on the “thug.” With help from fellow immigrants led by a shrewd Punjabi woman, Ali journeys deep into a hostile city in an attempt to save himself and end the gruesome murders. Ranging from skull-lined mansions to underground tunnels a ghostly people call home, The Thing about Thugs is a feat of imagination to rival Wilkie Collins or Michael Chabon. Short-listed for the 2010 Man Asian Literary Prize, this sly Victorian role reversal marks the arrival of a compelling new Indian novelist to North America.
Jihadi Jane
High-school best friends Ameena and Jamilla couldn’t be more different: while one smokes cigarettes in their school playground, the other is a member of her mosque’s discussion group in suburban Yorkshire. When heartbreak and doubt leave Ameena bereft and alone, she turns to Jamilla’s beloved Allah for solace and purpose. It is then that both girls find themselves entranced by a powerful Internet preacher—Hejjiye, a woman running an orphanage home in support of the men fighting in the name of jihad. Leaving their families and country behind, they run to join the Islamic State in Syria to serve a cause they unquestioningly believe in. However, things begin to change for the worse once Ameena marries Hassan, a jihadi leader, and suddenly Jamilla begins to see the world that she left everything for differently. Getting out is almost impossible, but there is one way. Will the girls choose a path which might change their lives beyond recognition? Heart-wrenching, masterful and stunningly powerful, Jihadi Jane paints a vivid picture of militant-brides operating around the world and the terrifying cost of religious fanaticism.
The Bus Stopped
A very angry bus driver, abandoned by his wife and going nowhere in his career; a sanctimonious conductor; a hijra, or eunuch, a remnant of India's Muslim glory days; a nervous, half-Indian businessman clutching a briefcase-full of cash; a right-wing Hindu matriarch; a young boy returning to his village after robbing his employer . . . They meet – and witness a tragic event – only because they are all travelling on the same bus, in the same direction, on the same day. With exceptional poise and beguiling simplicity, Khair introduces a range of voices, thoughts, ideas and identities, allowing each individual’s story to unfold gradually. ‘A novel that reflects deeply into the nature and circumstances of human mobility in our modern, unforgiving world’ Siddhartha Deb, Outlook ‘There is much to enjoy here . . . The twist at the end is hilarious. Khair’s talent is as a miniaturist’ Fiona Hook, The Times ‘It’s a fine work: short, sweet and brutal’ James Smart, Sunday Herald ‘A lyrical journey through small-town India’ Independent ‘[The Bus Stopped] allows stories to emerge with immediacy and leisure, with abrupt shafts of humour’ Guardian
The Family Clause
'A bold and remarkable novel...full of heart and compassion' Dinaw Mengestu A bad-tempered grandfather, now living abroad, is back in Stockholm to see his adult children. The son is a failure, the daughter is having a baby with the wrong man, and their mother is a heartless deserter. Only he, the patriarch, is perfect - according to himself, at least. Over ten intense days, the strained relationships of this chaotic but entirely normal family unfold, and painful memories begin to resurface. Something has to give. But the son is duty-bound to his father by a murky, years-old agreement - can it be renegotiated, or will it bind everyone to the past for ever? 'The dynamics of each relationship are superbly complex, and Khemiri's wry, comic touch gives a lightness to the inevitability as the children follow in their father's footsteps' Guardian 'Excellent...the complex portrait of a family that is both identifiable and distinctive, normal and strange' TLS
Man Of Glass
Man of Glass is the first collection of poems by Tabish Khair in a decade, following the critically acclaimed Where Parallel Lines Meet (2000). In the three sections of this new collection, Khair draws upon three writers from across centuries, cultures, literary genres and languages: Kalidasa and his fifth-century Sanskrit play The Recognition of Shakuntala, Asadullah Khan Ghalib and his early nineteenth-century Urdu ghazals, and H.C. Andersen and his Danish 'fairy tales'. All three are united not only by Khair's chosen language of creativity, English, but also by a concern with reflecting about life and loss, identity and indoctrination, humanity and divinity, and the nature of things and being. Drawing subtly upon the past, Khair engages powerfully and movingly with many issues and events, particular and perennial, of vital concern to the reader today: immigration, Afghanistan, terror, love, loss, death, human duplicity, faith, prejudice, the Iraq War, genocide...
The New Xenophobia
Xenophobia, the fear or dislike of strangers, can be seen throughout the course of history in the form of communal riots, racist attacks, religious hatred, and genocide. HinduMuslim riots in India, SinhaleseTamil tensions in Sri Lanka, ethnic cleansing in former Yugoslavia, purging of Shias and Sunnis in Iraq and Syria, skinheads attacking immigrants, and the Jewish holocaust in Europe are a few examples. In The New Xenophobia, Tabish Khair studies this fear in a historical, philosophical, and socio-economic context. Tracing the changes in xenophobic thinking over the past three decades, he examines the unexplored relationship of xenophobia with power and capitalism and shows how changes in capitalism have altered the image of the stranger. Through his study, Khair provides new insights into racism and slavery, and fresh perspectives on the rise of ethnic, cultural, and religious politics in todays age of globalization.
