Same-Sex Love in India: A Literary History Edited by Saleem Kidwai, Ruth Vanita

Title: Same-Sex Love in India: A Literary History
Author: Saleem Kidwai, Ruth Vanita
ISBN13: 9780143102069
Binding: Paper back
Date: October 2008
Publisher: Penguin Books India
Number of Pages:
Price: Rs 450.00

About the book

Same-Sex Love in India offers an eloquent range of writings spanning more than two thousand years of Indian literature. Drawn from Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist and contemporary fictional sources these writings convincingly demonstrate that same-sex love has flourished, evolved and been embraced in various forms since ancient times. From the Mahabharata to modern writers and artists such as Ismat Chughtai and Bhupen Khakhar, the eclectic and expressive selections in this anthology include excerpts from devotional books, legal and erotic treatises, story cycles, medieval histories and biographies to modern novels, short stories, letters, memoirs, plays and poems. This pioneering book is invaluable for gender studies, for Indian history, and for all readers interested in the fascinating development of homoerotic traditions and writings.

More on the book

Same-Sex Love: In Conversation with Dr Ruth Vanita

Interview with Saleem Kidwai

Interview with Ruth Vanita

The Essential Einstein: His Greatest Works-Stephen Hawking

RRP: £12.99
Special Indian Price: 395.00
Publisher: PENGUIN GROUP
Format: Paperback
ISBN-13: 9780141034621
Publishing Date: September-2008
Pages: 480

The world of physics and the way the world was viewed no longer remained the same after Einstein. Though an integral part of scientific thought at present, his theory of relativity with a curved space and a slow moving time, was fabulous a hundred years back when it was first presented. Relativity has also been judged to be the most important scientific development in explaining the cosmos. In this book, Stephen Hawking has put together the highlights of Einstein's ideas of relativity and related concepts. The book is a collection of Einstein's works on the Theory of Relativity. Yet Einstein was known not only for his landmark ideas in physics. Here too are his reflections on politics and religion, and his musings on the ultimate significance of his scientific findings.

The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga

The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga
ISBN: 9788172237455
Cover Price: Rs. 395.00
Format: Hardback
Extent: 328 pages

Review

The White Tiger is a compelling first novel about the new India that is growing roots all around us, in unexpected and often ominous ways.
'Compelling, angry, and darkly humorous, The White Tiger is an unexpected journey into a new India. Aravind Adiga is a talent to watch.' Mohsin Hamid, Booker-shortlisted author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist
'In the grand illusions of a "rising" India, Aravind Adiga has found a subject Gogol might have envied. With remorselessly and delightfully mordant wit The White Tiger anatomises the fantastic cravings of the rich; it evokes, too, with startling accuracy and tenderness, the no less desperate struggles of the deprived.' Pankaj Mishra

Onitsha - J.M.G Le Clezio- Nobel Price winner's fiction

Onitsha

JMG Le Clezio

Publisher : Rupa & co.

ISBN 81-291-0939-5

Price : 295/-

Onitsha tells the story of Fintan, a youth who travels to Africa in 1948 with his Italian mother to join the English father he has never met. Fintan is initially enchanted by the exotic world he discovers in Onitsha, a bustling city prominently situated on the eastern bank of the Niger River. But gradually he comes to recognize the intolerance and brutality of the colonial system. His youthful point of view provides the novel with a notably direct, horrified perspective on racism and colonialism. In the words of translator Alison Anderson, Onitsha is remarkable for its “almost mythological evocation of local history and beliefs.” It is full of atmosphere—sights, sounds, smells —and at times the author’s sentences seem to flow with the dreamy languor of the river itself. But J. M. G. Le Clézio “never lets us forget the harsh realities of life nor the subsequent tragedy of war.” A startling account—and indictment—of colonialism, Onitsha is also a work of clear, forthright prose that ably portrays both colonial Nigeria and a young boy’s growing outrage.

The Gyanendra Pandey Omnibus

The Gyanendra Pandey Omnibus

Author(s) : Gyanendra Pandey
9780195697032, Hardback August 2008

Rs. 995

Gyanendra Pandey’s writings have profoundly influenced our understanding of anti-colonial nationalism, communal strife, and history-writing. This omnibus brings together three landmark books by him that describe an arc from a critique of nationalism to a critique of history.
By uncovering the layered character of Indian nationalism and underlining the contests between classes, communities and aspirations that went into its making, The Ascendancy of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh helps to transform the received understanding of the Indian national movement.
The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India, described as a classic of modern Indian history and sociology, re-envisions the relationship between communalism and nationalism, and argues that what is called communalism in the subcontinent gained a great deal of its force from its likeness to nationalism.
In Remembering Partition, Gyanendra Pandey turns to a more direct investigation of the matter of collective violence, and the history and memory of such violence in the making of communities and nations, in the Indian subcontinent and elsewhere.
Unified by an attention to two questions,‘Whose nation is this?’ and ‘Whose history?’ this collection raises a fundamental question about what counts as the historical – a question that is adjacent to feminist and other critiques of the declared boundaries of the political.
In his introduction, written especially for this omnibus, Gyanendra Pandey highlights the need for ongoing engagement with the ‘unpalatable’ and the ‘fragmentary’, moments that interrupt the received narratives of mainstream nationalism and standard history.

Chocolate, and Other Writings on Male-Male Desire

Chocolate, and Other Writings on Male-Male Desire

by Ruth Vanita

 Hardcover - 103 Pages (Year: 2006) 

Oxford University Press ~ ISBN: 0195674863

Our Price : Rs  375/-

The Penguin History of Latin America

The Penguin History of Latin America Edwin Williamson - Author

Price : 900/-rs

Book: Paperback 5.07 x 7.79in 640 pages ISBN 9780140125597 07 Sep 1993 Penguin 18 - AND UP

Edwin Williamson traces 500 years of history from the time of Columbus and the Spanish Conquest to the present day. By the 1750s the Spaniards and the Portuguese governed vast territories in the New World. It was not until the eighteenth century that reforms and political upheavals undermined the stability of the Iberian empires in America and led to bitter conflicts between liberals and conservatives in the independent nations that succeeded them. The author shows how this turbulent modernization continued into the twentieth century, as well as giving an overview of the last hundrerd years, looks in detail at developments within Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Chile and Cuba.

Pramoedya Ananta Toer (1925-2006)

Indonesian novelist, short-story writer, essayist, and critic. The Japanese occupation (1942-1944) and Indonesia's struggle for independence has provided the basic material for Pramoedya's writing. His best-known work is the Buru Quartet (1980-88), banned by the Suharto regime. The story is set at the turn of the 19th century and depicts the emergence of anticolonial Indonesian nationalism. Pramoedya's books have been translated into at least 28 languages.

It's Not an All Night Fair Pramoedya Ananta Toer - Author C. W. Watson - Translator C. W. Watson - Introduction by C. W. Watson - Notes by

Book: Paperback 8.26 x 5.23in 112 pages ISBN 9780143037026 26 Sep 2006 Penguin 18 - AND UP

Price: Rs 380/-

Now available for the first time in English, a classic from “a novelist who should get in line for the Nobel Prize” (Los Angeles Times)
Pramoedya Ananta Toer is Indonesia’s most celebrated writer, with over thirty works of fiction translated into over thirty languages, and the recipient of many major international awards, including the grand prize in the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize competition, Japan’s highest literary honor. Narrated in the first person in Pramoedya’s signature style, It’s Not an All Night Fair tells the deeply affecting story of a son returning home to central Java to confront the fact of his father’s death. Struggling to understand his reticent father, the son embarks on a personal quest to find value and meaning not only in his father’s life but also in his own.

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All That Is Gone Pramoedya Ananta Toer - Author

Book: Paperback 5.23 x 7.87in 272 pages ISBN 9780143034469 25 Jan 2005 Penguin 18 - AND UP

Price: Rs 480/-

The first collection of short fiction available in English from "Indonesia's Albert Camus" (San Francisco Chronicle
Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s transcendent novels have become part of the world literary canon, but it is his short fiction that originally made him famous. The first full-size collection of his short stories to appear in English, All That Is Gone draws from the author’s own experiences in Indonesia to depict characters trying to make sense of a war-torn culture haunted by colonialism, among them an eight-year-old girl soon to be married off by her parents for money and an idealistic young soldier who witnesses the savage beating of a man accused of being a spy. Though violence and brutality pervade these tales, there is present throughout a profound sense of compassion—an extraordinary combination of despair and hope that gives All That Is Gone rare power and beauty.

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The Mute's Soliloquy A MemoirPramoedya Ananta Toer - Author

Book: Paperback 5.11 x 7.95in 400 pages ISBN 9780140289046 01 Apr 2000 Penguin 18 - AND UP

Price : 500/-

In 1965, Pramoedya Ananta Toer was detained by Indonesian authorities and eventually exiled to the penal island of Buru. Without a formal accusation or trial, the onetime national hero was imprisoned on Buru for eleven years. He survived under brutal conditions, somehow managing to produce his masterwork, the four novels of the Buru Quartet, as well as the remarkable journal entries, essays, and letters that comprise this moving memoir. Reminiscent of the work of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Mute's Soliloquy is a harrowing portrait of a penal colony and a heartbreaking remembrance of life before it. With a resonance far beyond its particular time and place, it is Pramoedya's crowning achievement—a passionate tribute to the freedom of the mind and a celebration of the human spirit.

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The Fugitive Pramoedya Ananta Toer - Author

Book: Paperback 5.15 x 7.71in 176 pages ISBN 9780140296525 01 Dec 2000 Penguin 18 - AND UP

Rs: 480/-

Written while Pramoedya Ananta Toer was imprisoned by the Dutch for his role in the Indonesian revolution after World War II, The Fugitive was his first major novel and the first to be published in the United States. Set during the final days of World War II, The Fugitive tells the harrowing story of a young platoon leader who has led a failed nationalist revolt against Japanese forces occupying Indonesia. Betrayed by a co-conspirator and forced to disguise himself as a beggar, he sets out to find his fiancee, while eluding the military forces who will kill him if they capture him. Combining acute political and social criticism with a gripping, deeply moving narrative, this timeless story of a soldier's return home will haunt the memories of all who read it.

Khairlanji A Strange and Bitter Crop - Anand Teltumbde

KhairlanjiA Strange and Bitter Crop
Anand Teltumbde
Demy Octavo. Paperback. 210 pages. Rs 190.

ISBN 9788189059156

On 29 September 2006, in Khairlanji, Maharashtra, Surekha Bhotmange and her daughter Priyanka Bhotmange were stripped, paraded naked, raped repeatedly and killed. Surekha’s sons Roshan and Sudhir were lynched. The entire village was involved. The four bodies were dumped into a canal. The Bhotmanges were dalit. The Bhotmanges have been forgotten. After all, two dalits are murdered every day in India. ANAND TELTUMBDE reconstructs one of post-independence India’s worst caste atrocities and tells us how and why Khairlanjis are always around us. (excerpt from http://www.navayana.org/)

Frida's Bed - Slavenka Drakulic

Frida's Bed Slavenka Drakulic - Author Christina Pribichevich-Zoric - Translator

Book: Paperback 8.26 x 5.23in 176 pages ISBN 9780143114154 26 Aug 2008 Penguin 18 - AND UP

Price : Rs 400/-

A beautifully imagined story of the last days of Frida Kahlo’s life
A few days before Frida Kahlo’s death in 1954, she wrote in her diary, “I hope the exit is joyful—and I hope never to return.” Diagnosed with polio at the age of six and plagued by illness and injury throughout her life, Kahlo’s chronic pain was a recurrent theme in her extraordinary art. In Frida’s Bed, Slavenka Drakulic´ explores the inner life of one of the world’s most influential female artists, skillfully weaving Frida’s memories into descriptions of her paintings, producing a meditation on the nature of chronic pain and creativity. With an intriguing subject whose unusual life continues to fascinate, this poignant imagining of Kahlo’s thoughts during her final hours by another daringly original and uncompromising creative talent will attract readers of literary fiction and art lovers alike.

A history of reading - Alberto Manguel

The History of Reading Alberto Manguel - Author

Book: Paperback 6.14 x 9.01in 384 pages ISBN 9780140166545 01 Oct 1997 Penguin 18 - AND UP

At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book—that string of confused, alien ciphers—shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader. Noted essayist Alberto Manguel moves from this essential moment to explore the 6000-year-old conversation between words and that magician without whom the book would be a lifeless object: the reader. Manguel lingers over reading as seduction, as rebellion, as obsession, and goes on to trace the never-before-told story of the reader's progress from clay tablet to scroll, codex to CD-ROM.

Spain, Take This Chalice from Me and Other Poems Cesar Vallejo

Spain, Take This Chalice from Me and Other Poems Cesar Vallejo - Author Margaret Sayers Peden - Translator Ilan Stavans - Introduction by

Book: Paperback 5.07 x 7.79in 352 pages ISBN 9780143105305 25 Mar 2008 Penguin Classic Adult

Price: Rs 775/-

A major new bilingual edition of the Peruvian poet’s work
Cesar Vallejo is one of the best-known Latin American poets of the twentieth century. Challenging, intense, and difficult to translate, Vallejo’s work has often been overshadowed by his fervent endorsement of communism. Noted scholar Ilan Stavans tackles the avant-garde poet’s politics head-on in an enlightening new introduction that places Vallejo in his proper literary context, while Margaret Sayers Peden’s new translation does full justice to Vallejo’s complex literary style. Including Spanish and English versions of more than eighty poems that span the arc of his career, this volume is certain to become the leading collection of Vallejo’s work for years to come.

Zubin Mehta - The Score of My Life

Zubin Mehta - The Score of My Life
Zubin Mehta
A simple, yet engrossing narrative of his life, influences and his years as one of the most famous conductors
Hardback 5.5” x 8.5” 232 pp
ISBN 9788174366870Rs.395.00

About this book
Zubin Mehta left the sheltered environs of his parental home in Bombay in 1954, as an eighteen year old, and moved to Vienna into the very unique culture of the Music Academy where he studied under illustrious teachers like Hans Swarowsky. Just seven years later he conducted the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras and became the director of the Montrèal Symphony Orchestra at the age of twenty-five. Further assignments included Los Angeles, New York, Florence, Tel Aviv, and eventually, Munich where he was working as general music director of the Bavarian State Opera from 1998 to 2006.Zubin Mehta is one of the most celebrated conductors in the world. He has worked with all the top-class international orchestras and with excellent instrumentalists and opera stars of the past many decades. Musicians like Daniel Barenboim, Claudio Abbado, Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman count among his intimate friends. Despite his tremendous success, this popular Indian with a zest for life still remains a restless spirit – a wanderer between the worlds, who is as famous for his commitment to Israel as for his musical openness to everything from open-air concerts to operas. His exciting life makes for a gripping autobiography.


About the author
Zubin Mehta was born in 1936 in Bombay. At the age of eighteen he abandoned the study of medicine to dedicate himself entirely to music. Today he is one of the most prominent musicians worldwide. Zubin Mehta was the general music director of the National Theatre in Munich for eight years. In addition he is the chief conductor of the Maggio Musicale in Florence and music director of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

Grundrisse Foundations of the Critique of Political EconomyKarl Marx - Author Martin Nicolaus - Translator Martin Nicolaus - Introduction by

Book: Paperback 5.07 x 7.79in 912 pages ISBN 9780140445756 07 Nov 1993 Penguin Classic 18 - AND UP

Price : Rs.1000

Written between The Communist Manifesto (1848) and the first volume of Capital (1867), Grundrisse--essential to the understanding of Marx's ideas--provides the only outline of his full political-economic theories.