Envy

Title: Envy
Author: Yury Olesha
ISBN: 0-88233-091-8
Binding: Paper
Publisher: Ardis
Number of Pages: 315
Price: $12.95

Translated with an introduction by T.S. Berczynski

First published in 1927, Yury Olesha's Envy is, both stylistically and thematically one of the most provocative novels from the soviet era. Andrei Babichev is a paragon of Soviet values, an innovative and practical man, Director of the Food Industry Trust, a man whose vision encompasses such future advances for mankind as the 35-kopeck sausage and the self-peeling potao. Out of kindness, he rescues from the gutter Nikolai Karalerov, violently tossed from a bar after a drunken and self-destructive tirade. But instead of gratitude, Babichev finds himslf the subject of an endlessly malignant jealousy, as Kavaelrov sees in him a representative of the new bredd of man who has prevented him from realizing his true greatness. A scathing social satire, Envy is a concise and incisive exploration of the paradigmatic conflicts of the early Soviet age: old versus new, imagination versus pragmatism, and the alienation of the romantic artist in the age of technology.

Critics as far apart as Gleb Struve ("One of the most interesting and original works in the whole of Soviet literature") and Pravda ("Olesha's style is masterful, his psychological analysis infinitely subtle, his portrayal of negative characters truly striking") have praised the novel, and one of the signs of its universality is the fact that it has been claimed by nearly every school of critics and interpreted as everything from a submerged homosexual story to a 10th century Noes from the Underground.

Singing from the Well - Reinaldo Arenas

Title: Singing from the Well
Author: Reinaldo Arenas
ISBN: 978-0140094442
Binding: paper
Publisher: Penguin USA
Number of Pages: 206
Price: $ 10.00


His mother talks piously of the heaven that awaits the good, and disciplines him with an ox prod. His grandmother burns his precious crosses for kindling. His cousins meet to plot their grandfather's death. Yet in the hills surrounding his home, another reality exists, a place where his mother wears flowers in her hair, and his cousin Celestino, a poet who inscribes verse on the trunks of trees, understands his visions.

The first novel in Reinaldo Arenas's "secret history of Cuba," a quintet he called the Pentagonia, Singing from the Well is by turns explosively crude and breathtakingly lyrical. In the end, it is a stunning depiction of a childhood besieged by horror--and a moving defense of liberty and the imagination in a world of barbarity, persecution, and ignorance.

Othappu : The Scent of the Other Side

Title: Othappu : The Scent of the Other Side
Author: Sarah Joseph , Valson Thampu (Translator)
ISBN: 9780198062165
Binding: Hardback
Date: June 2009
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Number of Pages: 330

Price: Rs. 395

This transfiguring work opens with Sister Margalitha leaving the Convent in search of God. When she decides to live with Karikkan, a priest who has abandoned his vocation, she offends her family, society, the Church, and the law. The scandal rocks Thrissur, and the couple become social outcasts.

Othappu, the first Malayalam novel of its kind, is about a woman’s yearning for a true understanding of spirituality and her own sexuality. The novel is a powerful indictment of the hypocrisy that plagues Christianity in many parts of the Subcontinent. Othappu unfolds at many levels to critique notions of class, caste, antiquity, and prestige that have, over time, eroded the power of the first Church.

The detailed Introduction by Jancy James provides rare insights into the work and skillfully sketches the social history of Kerala, the location of the novel. Two special inclusions— Paul Zacharia on the different meanings of ‘othappu’ and a dialogue between the author and Githa Hiranyan—lend fresh perspectives to the work.

Reena Spaulings by Bernadette Corporation

Title: Reena Spaulings
Author: Bernadette Corporation
ISBN: 978-1-58435-030-9
Binding: Paper
Publisher: SEMIOTEXT(E)
Number of Pages: 205
Price: $14.95

Set in post-9/11 New York City, Reena Spaulings was written by a large collective of writers and artists that bills itself as The Bernadette Corporation. Like most contemporary fiction, Reena Spaulings is about a female twenty-something. Reena is discovered while working as a museum guard and becomes a rich international supermodel. Meanwhile, a bout of terrible weather seizes New York, leaving in its wake a strange form of civil disobedience that stirs its citizens to mount a musical song-and-dance riot called "Battle on Broadway." Fashioned in the old Hollywood manner by a legion of professional and amateur writers striving to achieve the ultimate blockbuster, the musical ends up being about a nobody who could be anybody becoming a somebody for everybody. The result is generic and perfect—not unlike Reena Spaulings itself, whose many authors create a story in which New York itself strives to become the ultimate collective experiment in which the only thing shared is the lack of uniqueness.

About Bernadette Corporation

The artist-collective Bernadette Corporation was founded in a night club in 1994. In the beginning the group organized spontaneous, purposeless events in public space. In 1995 they morphed into a fashion label, then a self-publishing company that from 1999 to 2001 published an art magazine called Made in USA. Bernadette Corporation has also produced films, including Hell Frozen Over (2000), and Get Rid of Yourself (2003), as well as exhibits at art galleries and museums throughout the world.

Review from Frieze magazine

The Assault - Reinaldo Arenas

Title: The Assault
Author: Reinaldo Arenas
ISBN: 978-0140157185
Binding: Paper
Date: 1995
Publisher: Penguin
Number of Pages:
Price: $8.99

This is the final volume of what the author called his agony in five parts, or pentagony, which begins with Singing in the Well (LJ 7/87). Boatlifted from Cuba in 1980, Arenas settled in New York, where he felt frustrated by America's diehard Castro supporters, contracted AIDS, and committed suicide. Here he takes deadly aim at Cuba's glorious "represident," in whose service the narrator rounds up dissidents and deviants to be juiced for patriotic irrigation. People are nameless insects who aspire to "disacquaintance" with their neighbors. The narrator is obsessed by his mother, whom he must annihilate before he assumes her shape, and in the climactic scene he nukes her in a smoky blast of shrapnel and unspeakable substances. Not for traditional readers, this book will delight fans of 1984, Kafka, and magic realism as well as Castro countdowners.

The Misfortunes of Virtue and Other Early Tales - Marques De sade

Title: The Misfortunes of Virtue and Other Early Tales
Author: Sade, Marquis de
ISBN: 9780199540426
Binding: Paper
Date: 2008, reprint
Publisher: Oxford
Number of Pages: 282
Price: INR 295/-

Trying to Grow

Title: Trying to Grow
Author: Firdaus Kanga
ISBN: 9780143100782
Binding: Paper Back
Date: November 2008
Publisher: Penguin
Number of Pages: 280 pp
Price: 250 Rs

Description

Brit Kotwal breaks his legs eleven times before he is five years old. His teeth crumble and chip if he tries to bite into anything. It was his sister Dolly’s idea to call him Brit, short for brittle, because of his bones. Besides, Parsees don’t really like long first-names, and it pleased his mother Sera because it sounded so English.It was fun sometimes, being different. None of the other children drank powdered pearls in their milk, or had almond oil rubbed into their legs until it gleamed like Bangalore silk. And Brit knew he could always get his own way with Dolly—even if it took a little blackmail. But when you reach eighteen and are still the size of an eight year old, it is not much fun, and Brit has to begin to try and grow in his own way…Trying to Grow is a many-splendoured work built around the experiences of a physically handicapped boy turning into manhood, a deeply moving story told with a remarkable blend of directness, humour and irreverence.

Broken bones and a broken heart : An Article by Firdaus Kanga

Fever - J M G LeClezio

Title: Fever
Author: J M G LeClezio

Translator : Daphne Woodward

ISBN:9780141191423
Binding: Paperback
Date: 2008
Publisher: Penguin UK
Number of Pages: 224
Price: 325/-

Terra Amata - J M G Le Clezio

Title: Terra Amata
Author: J M G Le Clezio

Translator : Barbara Bray
ISBN: 9780141191416
Binding: Paperback
Date: 2008
Publisher: Penguin
Number of Pages: 224

Price: 325/-

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.

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.

You Are Here - Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan

	Title:	You Are Here
	Author:	Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan
	Published by :	Penguin Books India
	Published :	August 2008
	Cover Price :	Rs 199.00
	ISBN13 :	9780143064343
	Edition :	Paperback
	Extent :	272 pp
	Classification :	Fiction

'The trouble with my life is that it's like a bra strap when you put your bra on wrong . . .'

At twenty-five, life's innumerable entanglements are getting to Arshi.

Her blonde American step-mom's trying too hard (she's taken to welcoming guests with a traditional aarti). The gorgeous guy who has Arshi all flushed and dreamy doesn't seem to be trying at all (he's the Ice Prince who thaws at his own convenience). Her best friend Deeksha's going to be married in a few months (Arshi's still in the process of finding the correct labels for the men in her life). And, her otherwise unruffled, cocktail-concocting flatmate Topsy's getting testier by the day because her conservative family will never approve of the darling guy she's in love with. What's more, there's a cheating ex-boyfriend, a weepy neighbour and a heinous boss who need to be told where to get off.

Her head spinning wildly with the sheer gravity of her life's quandaries, Arshi realizes what she needs most now (besides a barrelful of alcohol and some serious postcoital cuddling) are just a few epiphanies of the right kind . . .

Saucy, wise and audaciously candid, You Are Here introduces a bold and irresistible new voice.

To order this book email to bookportcochin@gmail.com