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Author: Jayant Kaikini
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 194822691X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 138

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Book Description
For readers of Jhumpa Lahiri and Rohinton Mistry, as well as Lorrie Moore and George Saunders, here are stories on the pathos and comedy of small–town migrants struggling to build a life in the big city, with the dream world of Bollywood never far away. Jayant Kaikini’s gaze takes in the people in the corners of Mumbai—a bus driver who, denied vacation time, steals the bus to travel home; a slum dweller who catches cats and sells them for pharmaceutical testing; a father at his wit’s end who takes his mischievous son to a reform institution. In this metropolis, those who seek find epiphanies in dark movie theaters, the jostle of local trains, and even in roadside keychains and lost thermos flasks. Here, in the shade of an unfinished overpass, a factory–worker and her boyfriend browse wedding invitations bearing wealthy couples’ affectations—”no presents please”—and look once more at what they own. Translated from the Kannada by Tejaswini Niranjana, these resonant stories, recently awarded the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, take us to photo framers, flower markets, and Irani cafes, revealing a city trading in fantasies while its strivers, eating once a day and sleeping ten to a room, hold secret ambitions close.

Author: Rohinton Mistry
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
ISBN: 1551991381
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 834

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Book Description
A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry’s stunning internationally acclaimed bestseller, is set in mid-1970s India. It tells the story of four unlikely people whose lives come together during a time of political turmoil soon after the government declares a “State of Internal Emergency.” Through days of bleakness and hope, their circumstances – and their fates – become inextricably linked in ways no one could have foreseen. Mistry’s prose is alive with enduring images and a cast of unforgettable characters. Written with compassion, humour, and insight, A Fine Balance is a vivid, richly textured, and powerful novel written by one of the most gifted writers of our time.

Author: Gregory David Roberts
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1429908270
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 945

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Book Description
Based on his own extraordinary life, Gregory David Roberts’ Shantaram is a mesmerizing novel about a man on the run who becomes entangled within the underworld of contemporary Bombay—the basis for the Apple + TV series starring Charlie Hunnam. “It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured.” An escaped convict with a false passport, Lin flees maximum security prison in Australia for the teeming streets of Bombay, where he can disappear. Accompanied by his guide and faithful friend, Prabaker, the two enter the city’s hidden society of beggars and gangsters, prostitutes and holy men, soldiers and actors, and Indians and exiles from other countries, who seek in this remarkable place what they cannot find elsewhere. As a hunted man without a home, family, or identity, Lin searches for love and meaning while running a clinic in one of the city’s poorest slums, and serving his apprenticeship in the dark arts of the Bombay mafia. The search leads him to war, prison torture, murder, and a series of enigmatic and bloody betrayals. The keys to unlock the mysteries and intrigues that bind Lin are held by two people. The first is Khader Khan: mafia godfather, criminal-philosopher-saint, and mentor to Lin in the underworld of the Golden City. The second is Karla: elusive, dangerous, and beautiful, whose passions are driven by secrets that torment her and yet give her a terrible power. Burning slums and five-star hotels, romantic love and prison agonies, criminal wars and Bollywood films, spiritual gurus and mujaheddin guerrillas—this huge novel has the world of human experience in its reach, and a passionate love for India at its heart.

Author: Gyan Prakash
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069114284X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
Starting from the catastrophic floods and terrorist attacks of recent years, Prakash reaches back to the sixteenth-century Portuguese conquest to reveal the stories behind Mumbai's historic journey. Examining Mumbai's role as a symbol of opportunity and reinvention, he looks at its nineteenth-century development under British rule and its twentieth-century emergence as a fabled city on the sea. Different layers of urban experience come to light as he recounts the narratives of the Nanavati murder trial and the rise and fall of the tabloid Blitz, and Mumbai's transformation from the red city of trade unions and communists into the saffron city of Hindu nationalist Shiv Sena. Starry-eyed planners and elite visionaries, cynical leaders and violent politicians of the street, land sharks and underworld dons jostle with ordinary citizens and poor immigrants as the city copes with the dashed dreams of postcolonial urban life and lurches into the seductions of globalization. --

Author: Altaf Tyrewala
Publisher: Akashic Books
ISBN: 1617750271
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
Following the Bombay Communal Riots of 1992 which saw neighbour pitched against neighbour in fierce bouts of internecine violence, came the retaliatory bomb blasts of 1993 and the name change to Mumbai in 1995. Mumbai Noir captures the essence of a city dominated by wealth and the lack of it, where the shadowy aspects of life are never far from the ordinary person. Psychopath Romeos stalk ordinary women, men flirt with death in dance bars and families fall through the cracks of communal living in this phenomenal collection of noir literature.

Author: Abhimanyu Jha,
Publisher: Sristhi Publishers & Distributors
ISBN: 9380349335
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
Abhimanyu (Abhi) writes about men and women falling in love, and then running into people who wouldn’t let them live happily ever after. While also running Talent Bridge, www.talentbridge.co.in, he plans to write more till the world needs such saving, catch him @ abhimanyujha.com, Twitter (4abhimanyu), facebook.com/4abhimanyu or [email protected].

Author: S Hussain Zaidi
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 9351180794
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
On the afternoon of 12 March 1993, a series of explosions cut a swathe of terror and destruction through Bombay. The toll: 257 killed or missing, 713 injured, and a city in a shambles. In Black Friday, S. Hussain Zaidi takes us into the heart of the conspiracy which spanned several countries and the massive investigation that ensued. A product of four years of meticulous research, the book gives chilling insights into the criminal mind, through interviews with close associates of Dawood Ibrahim and Tiger Memon, among others. The characters we meet are compelling: the terrorists, the corrupt law enforcement agents who abetted the plot, the investigators who would stop at nothing, and, above all, the people of Bombay of whose resilient spirit this book is a celebration. Riveting and incisive, Black Friday reveals the true dimensions of a horrific tragedy which shook the nation.

Author: Chandaria-Mamania
Publisher: Little Ustaads Arts Pvt. Limited
ISBN: 9780692814758
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 42

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Book Description
Grab a copy! Namaste Mumbai is the first children's book on one of India's largest and most diverse cities, Mumbai.The 44-page book brings the bustling city alive through characters, colors and couplets. Children will relate to endearing characters as they travel from monuments to parks to bridges to beaches to capture the daily life of a Mumbaikar. Through the adventure, children will eat food at Chowpatty, dance on the streets during Ganpati's birthday, and whiz in a black and yellow taxi across the flyover. Ideal for children under 10 years old, the lyrical couplets will leave your child asking to read the book one more time! Open the book and you will wake up to the sun rising over the Arabian Sea and below is Mumbai, a busy city in India buzzing like a bee....

Author: Varsha Shah
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
ISBN: 1338875477
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
A high-stakes adventure full of heart and the power of words to create change in modern day Mumbai, from debut author Varsha Shah, winner of the Times/Chicken House competition. Abandoned on the Mumbai railways, Ajay has grown up with nothing but a burning wish to be a journalist. And after finding an abandoned printing press, his dreams might just come true. But when he and his friends Saif, Vinod, Yasmin and Jai create their own newspaper, The Mumbai Sun, and begin to hunt down stories to fill their pages, the children uncover a plan to tear down their slum—which will leave hundreds of more people homeless. Can Ajay and his friends really succeed in bringing the truth to light against some of the most powerful forces in the city, fight for justice, and save their slum from bulldozers?

Author: Shivya Nath
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
ISBN: 9353052653
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
Shivya Nath quit her corporate job at age twenty-three to travel the world. She gave up her home and the need for a permanent address, sold most of her possessions and embarked on a nomadic journey that has taken her everywhere from remote Himalayan villages to the Amazon rainforests of Ecuador. Along the way, she lived with an indigenous Mayan community in Guatemala, hiked alone in the Ecuadorian Andes, got mugged in Costa Rica, swam across the border from Costa Rica to Panama, slept under a meteor shower in the cracked salt desert of Gujarat and learnt to conquer her deepest fears. With its vivid descriptions, cinematic landscapes, moving encounters and uplifting adventures, The Shooting Star is a travel memoir that maps not just the world but the human spirit.