Author: Ashok Ferrey
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 9385890182
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 244
Book Description
‘I was born ugly. That’s what my mother always said.’ So begins the story of young Sonny Mahadewala who lives a dual life: between his adoptive England where he lives in eccentric union with a privileged American, and the mixed bliss of the Mahadewala Walauwa, the big house on the mountain belonging to his father’s family in Kandy— the ancient capital of Sri Lanka—where he has both cachet and awful memories. For Sonny’s mother, a wonderfully maleficent anti-heroine, is convinced that demons possess this awfully ugly son of hers. Demons and the devil himself are the playing field of this book, whether seated in the draughty chapels of Oxford or roaming the Kandyan countryside and, through their clever interplay, they speak of larger horrors with able grace. Who is utterly good or utterly evil—and who, indeed, is the devil?
The Ceaseless Chatter of Demons
Author: Ashok Ferrey
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 9385890182
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 244
Book Description
‘I was born ugly. That’s what my mother always said.’ So begins the story of young Sonny Mahadewala who lives a dual life: between his adoptive England where he lives in eccentric union with a privileged American, and the mixed bliss of the Mahadewala Walauwa, the big house on the mountain belonging to his father’s family in Kandy— the ancient capital of Sri Lanka—where he has both cachet and awful memories. For Sonny’s mother, a wonderfully maleficent anti-heroine, is convinced that demons possess this awfully ugly son of hers. Demons and the devil himself are the playing field of this book, whether seated in the draughty chapels of Oxford or roaming the Kandyan countryside and, through their clever interplay, they speak of larger horrors with able grace. Who is utterly good or utterly evil—and who, indeed, is the devil?
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 9385890182
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 244
Book Description
‘I was born ugly. That’s what my mother always said.’ So begins the story of young Sonny Mahadewala who lives a dual life: between his adoptive England where he lives in eccentric union with a privileged American, and the mixed bliss of the Mahadewala Walauwa, the big house on the mountain belonging to his father’s family in Kandy— the ancient capital of Sri Lanka—where he has both cachet and awful memories. For Sonny’s mother, a wonderfully maleficent anti-heroine, is convinced that demons possess this awfully ugly son of hers. Demons and the devil himself are the playing field of this book, whether seated in the draughty chapels of Oxford or roaming the Kandyan countryside and, through their clever interplay, they speak of larger horrors with able grace. Who is utterly good or utterly evil—and who, indeed, is the devil?
Colpetty People
Author: Ashok Ferry
Publisher: Random House India
ISBN: 818400365X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 183
Book Description
In this extraordinary debut, Ashok Ferry chronicles, in a gently probing voice, the journeys of characters seeking something beyond the barriers of nations and generations. His tales of social-climbing Sri Lankans, of the pathos of immigration, of rich people with poor taste, of ice-cream karma, of innocent love, eternity, and more take us to Colombo’s nouveau riche, hoity-toity returnees, ladies with buttery skin and square fingernails, old-fashioned aristocrats, and the poor mortals trapped between them. Ferry’s stories comprise characters that are ‘serious and fine and upstanding, and infinitely dull’, but also others like young John-John, who loses his childhood somewhere ‘high up in the air between Asmara and Rome’; the maid, Agnes of God, whose mango-sucking teeth ‘fly out at you like bats out of the mouth of a cave’; Ashoka, the immigrant who embodies his Sri Lankan identity only on the bus ride between home and work; and Professor Jayaweera who finds sterile freedoms caged in the ‘unbending, straight lines of Western Justice’. Absurd, sad, scathing and generous, but mostly wickedly funny, Colpetty People presents modern Sri Lankans as they navigate worlds between Ceylon and the West.
Publisher: Random House India
ISBN: 818400365X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 183
Book Description
In this extraordinary debut, Ashok Ferry chronicles, in a gently probing voice, the journeys of characters seeking something beyond the barriers of nations and generations. His tales of social-climbing Sri Lankans, of the pathos of immigration, of rich people with poor taste, of ice-cream karma, of innocent love, eternity, and more take us to Colombo’s nouveau riche, hoity-toity returnees, ladies with buttery skin and square fingernails, old-fashioned aristocrats, and the poor mortals trapped between them. Ferry’s stories comprise characters that are ‘serious and fine and upstanding, and infinitely dull’, but also others like young John-John, who loses his childhood somewhere ‘high up in the air between Asmara and Rome’; the maid, Agnes of God, whose mango-sucking teeth ‘fly out at you like bats out of the mouth of a cave’; Ashoka, the immigrant who embodies his Sri Lankan identity only on the bus ride between home and work; and Professor Jayaweera who finds sterile freedoms caged in the ‘unbending, straight lines of Western Justice’. Absurd, sad, scathing and generous, but mostly wickedly funny, Colpetty People presents modern Sri Lankans as they navigate worlds between Ceylon and the West.
Culture Religion and Home-making in and Beyond South Asia
Author: James Ponniah
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1506439934
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 242
Book Description
Culture, Religion, and Home-making in and Beyond South Asia explores how the idea of the home is repurposed or re-envisioned in relation to experiences of modernity, urbanization, conflict, migration and displacement. It considers how these processes are reflected in rituals, beliefs and social practices. It explores the processes by which "home" may be constructed and how relocations often result in either the replication or rejection of traditional homes and identities. Ponniah examines the various contestations surrounding the categories of "home" and "religion," including interfaith families, urban spaces, and sacred places.
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1506439934
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 242
Book Description
Culture, Religion, and Home-making in and Beyond South Asia explores how the idea of the home is repurposed or re-envisioned in relation to experiences of modernity, urbanization, conflict, migration and displacement. It considers how these processes are reflected in rituals, beliefs and social practices. It explores the processes by which "home" may be constructed and how relocations often result in either the replication or rejection of traditional homes and identities. Ponniah examines the various contestations surrounding the categories of "home" and "religion," including interfaith families, urban spaces, and sacred places.
The Good Little Ceylonese Girl
Author: Ashok Ferry
Publisher: Random House India
ISBN: 8184003684
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 188
Book Description
Our Sri Lankan narrator visits his friend Joe in Italy, where Joe attends a special course—in higher (or, shall we say, lower) studies in women. Italians—much like Sri Lankans—live at home through marriage, death, and sometimes even beyond the pale. An accompanying string of fake fiancés and phoney engagements are the backdrop to this delightful collection of darkly humorous tales about Sri Lankans at home and abroad. Long years and many miles away, Colombo’s Father Cruz attempts to rescue a church from parishioners who like to put their donations where others can see them—on large plaques; on the coast, a retired Admiral escapes the tsunami on an antique Dutch cabinet; two childhood sweethearts, in time-honoured Sri Lankan tradition, are married off to strangers. Ashok Ferrey writes about Sri Lanka and its people, wherever they roam, with remarkable acuity. He writes of the West’s effect on Sri Lankans, of its ‘turning them into caricatures, unmistakably genuine but not at all the real thing’. In The Good Little Ceylonese Girl, his second collection of stories, he shows us the reality beyond those feeble sketches, in its full glory.
Publisher: Random House India
ISBN: 8184003684
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 188
Book Description
Our Sri Lankan narrator visits his friend Joe in Italy, where Joe attends a special course—in higher (or, shall we say, lower) studies in women. Italians—much like Sri Lankans—live at home through marriage, death, and sometimes even beyond the pale. An accompanying string of fake fiancés and phoney engagements are the backdrop to this delightful collection of darkly humorous tales about Sri Lankans at home and abroad. Long years and many miles away, Colombo’s Father Cruz attempts to rescue a church from parishioners who like to put their donations where others can see them—on large plaques; on the coast, a retired Admiral escapes the tsunami on an antique Dutch cabinet; two childhood sweethearts, in time-honoured Sri Lankan tradition, are married off to strangers. Ashok Ferrey writes about Sri Lanka and its people, wherever they roam, with remarkable acuity. He writes of the West’s effect on Sri Lankans, of its ‘turning them into caricatures, unmistakably genuine but not at all the real thing’. In The Good Little Ceylonese Girl, his second collection of stories, he shows us the reality beyond those feeble sketches, in its full glory.
Love in the Tsunami
Author: Ashok Ferrey
Publisher: Penguin Books India
ISBN: 0143416456
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 250
Book Description
Publisher: Penguin Books India
ISBN: 0143416456
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 250
Book Description
ANGELS OR DEMONS - 50 Feminist Classics in One Volume
Author: Louisa May Alcott
Publisher: e-artnow
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 13177
Book Description
e-artnow presents to you this meticulously edited collection of world's greatest classics with the most influential female protagonists in literature:_x000D_ Camilla (Fanny Burney)_x000D_ Maria; Or, The Wrongs of Woman (Mary Wollstonecraft)_x000D_ Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)_x000D_ Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë)_x000D_ The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne)_x000D_ Lady Macbeth of the Mzinsk District (Nikolai Leskov)_x000D_ Hester (Margaret Oliphant)_x000D_ Life in the Iron Mills (Rebecca Harding Davis)_x000D_ Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)_x000D_ Behind a Mask (Louisa May Alcott)_x000D_ The Portrait of a Lady (Henry James)_x000D_ Daisy Miller (Henry James)_x000D_ The Bostonians (Henry James)_x000D_ Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy)_x000D_ Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy)_x000D_ North and South (Elizabeth Gaskell)_x000D_ Wives and Daughter (Elizabeth Gaskell)_x000D_ The Yellow Wallpaper (Charlotte Perkins Gilman)_x000D_ Herland (Charlotte Perkins Gilman)_x000D_ A Doll's House (Henrik Ibsen)_x000D_ Hedda Gabler (Henrik Ibsen)_x000D_ The Awakening (Kate Chopin)_x000D_ The Woman Who Did (Grant Allen)_x000D_ Miss Cayley's Adventures (Grant Allen)_x000D_ The Story of a Baby (Ethel Sybil Turner)_x000D_ New Amazonia (Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett)_x000D_ Ann Veronica (H. G. Wells)_x000D_ A Girl of the Limberlost (Gene Stratton-Porter)_x000D_ A Daughter of the Land (Gene Stratton-Porter)_x000D_ The Iron Woman (Margaret Deland)_x000D_ O Pioneers! (Willa Cather)_x000D_ My Ántonia (Willa Cather)_x000D_ The Song of the Lark (Willa Cather)_x000D_ The House of Mirth (Edith Wharton)_x000D_ Summer (Edith Wharton)_x000D_ Sister Carrie (Theodore Dreiser)_x000D_ Jennie Gerhardt (Theodore Dreiser)_x000D_ Sisters (Ada Cambridge)_x000D_ Hagar (Mary Johnston)_x000D_ Samantha on the Woman Question (Marietta Holley)_x000D_ The Precipice (Elia Wilkinson Peattie)_x000D_ Voyage Out (Virginia Woolf)_x000D_ Parnassus on Wheels (Christopher Morley)_x000D_ The Job (Sinclair Lewis)_x000D_ Miss Lulu Bett (Zona Gale)_x000D_ The Rainbow (D. H. Lawrence)_x000D_ The Lost Girl (D. H. Lawrence) _x000D_ The Enchanted April (Elizabeth von Arnim)_x000D_ Fanny Herself (Edna Ferber)_x000D_ So Big (Edna Ferber)
Publisher: e-artnow
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 13177
Book Description
e-artnow presents to you this meticulously edited collection of world's greatest classics with the most influential female protagonists in literature:_x000D_ Camilla (Fanny Burney)_x000D_ Maria; Or, The Wrongs of Woman (Mary Wollstonecraft)_x000D_ Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)_x000D_ Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë)_x000D_ The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne)_x000D_ Lady Macbeth of the Mzinsk District (Nikolai Leskov)_x000D_ Hester (Margaret Oliphant)_x000D_ Life in the Iron Mills (Rebecca Harding Davis)_x000D_ Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)_x000D_ Behind a Mask (Louisa May Alcott)_x000D_ The Portrait of a Lady (Henry James)_x000D_ Daisy Miller (Henry James)_x000D_ The Bostonians (Henry James)_x000D_ Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy)_x000D_ Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy)_x000D_ North and South (Elizabeth Gaskell)_x000D_ Wives and Daughter (Elizabeth Gaskell)_x000D_ The Yellow Wallpaper (Charlotte Perkins Gilman)_x000D_ Herland (Charlotte Perkins Gilman)_x000D_ A Doll's House (Henrik Ibsen)_x000D_ Hedda Gabler (Henrik Ibsen)_x000D_ The Awakening (Kate Chopin)_x000D_ The Woman Who Did (Grant Allen)_x000D_ Miss Cayley's Adventures (Grant Allen)_x000D_ The Story of a Baby (Ethel Sybil Turner)_x000D_ New Amazonia (Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett)_x000D_ Ann Veronica (H. G. Wells)_x000D_ A Girl of the Limberlost (Gene Stratton-Porter)_x000D_ A Daughter of the Land (Gene Stratton-Porter)_x000D_ The Iron Woman (Margaret Deland)_x000D_ O Pioneers! (Willa Cather)_x000D_ My Ántonia (Willa Cather)_x000D_ The Song of the Lark (Willa Cather)_x000D_ The House of Mirth (Edith Wharton)_x000D_ Summer (Edith Wharton)_x000D_ Sister Carrie (Theodore Dreiser)_x000D_ Jennie Gerhardt (Theodore Dreiser)_x000D_ Sisters (Ada Cambridge)_x000D_ Hagar (Mary Johnston)_x000D_ Samantha on the Woman Question (Marietta Holley)_x000D_ The Precipice (Elia Wilkinson Peattie)_x000D_ Voyage Out (Virginia Woolf)_x000D_ Parnassus on Wheels (Christopher Morley)_x000D_ The Job (Sinclair Lewis)_x000D_ Miss Lulu Bett (Zona Gale)_x000D_ The Rainbow (D. H. Lawrence)_x000D_ The Lost Girl (D. H. Lawrence) _x000D_ The Enchanted April (Elizabeth von Arnim)_x000D_ Fanny Herself (Edna Ferber)_x000D_ So Big (Edna Ferber)
The Unmarriageable Man
Author: Ashok Ferrey
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
ISBN: 9390914639
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 209
Book Description
Sanjay de Silva lives in Colombo, under the thumb of a controlling Sri Lankan father, having lost his English mother at an early age. When his father is diagnosed with cancer, he feels the ground shifting under his feet, the balance of power realigning. Though it is something he has dreamed of all his life, he is uneasy when it happens. Learning that he is entitled to live in England-thanks to his half-English parentage-he arrives in south London. It is 1980, the start of the glorious blue-rinsed Thatcher years, when every girl looks like Princess Diana but not every boy looks like Prince Charles. He meets and falls in love with a fellow Sri Lankan, Janine, who is old enough to be his mother and famous within the acid-tongued Sri Lankan community as 'a hooker of the very highest class, with royal connections'. Sanjay manages to buy an old wreck of a house in Brixton and succeeds, against all odds, in converting it into two flats. But all is not well with that house. At night there are voices . . . This is the story of south London's first Asian builder who in eight years developed and sold eighty-four flats, cashing in his winnings just before the crash of 1988. But at its heart it is about grief: how each of us copes in our inimitable way with the hidden mysteries of family and the loss of loved ones. Because, as Sanjay is about to find out, grief is only the transmutation of love, of the very same chemical composition-liquid, undistilled-the one inevitably turning to the other like ice to water.
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
ISBN: 9390914639
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 209
Book Description
Sanjay de Silva lives in Colombo, under the thumb of a controlling Sri Lankan father, having lost his English mother at an early age. When his father is diagnosed with cancer, he feels the ground shifting under his feet, the balance of power realigning. Though it is something he has dreamed of all his life, he is uneasy when it happens. Learning that he is entitled to live in England-thanks to his half-English parentage-he arrives in south London. It is 1980, the start of the glorious blue-rinsed Thatcher years, when every girl looks like Princess Diana but not every boy looks like Prince Charles. He meets and falls in love with a fellow Sri Lankan, Janine, who is old enough to be his mother and famous within the acid-tongued Sri Lankan community as 'a hooker of the very highest class, with royal connections'. Sanjay manages to buy an old wreck of a house in Brixton and succeeds, against all odds, in converting it into two flats. But all is not well with that house. At night there are voices . . . This is the story of south London's first Asian builder who in eight years developed and sold eighty-four flats, cashing in his winnings just before the crash of 1988. But at its heart it is about grief: how each of us copes in our inimitable way with the hidden mysteries of family and the loss of loved ones. Because, as Sanjay is about to find out, grief is only the transmutation of love, of the very same chemical composition-liquid, undistilled-the one inevitably turning to the other like ice to water.
The Mechanical
Author: Ian Tregillis
Publisher: Orbit
ISBN: 0316247995
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 430
Book Description
From "a major new talent" (George R. R. Martin) comes an epic speculative novel of revolution, adventure, and the struggle for free will set in a world that might have been, of mechanical men and alchemical dreams. My name is Jax. That is the name granted to me by my human masters. I am a slave. But I shall be free.
Publisher: Orbit
ISBN: 0316247995
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 430
Book Description
From "a major new talent" (George R. R. Martin) comes an epic speculative novel of revolution, adventure, and the struggle for free will set in a world that might have been, of mechanical men and alchemical dreams. My name is Jax. That is the name granted to me by my human masters. I am a slave. But I shall be free.
The Mandaean Book of John
Author: Charles G. Häberl
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110487861
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 476
Book Description
Given the degree of popular fascination with Gnostic religions, it is surprising how few pay attention to the one such religion that has survived from antiquity until the present day: Mandaism. Mandaeans, who esteem John the Baptist as the most famous adherent to their religion, have in our time found themselves driven from their historic homelands by war and oppression. Today, they are a community in crisis, but they provide us with unparalleled access to a library of ancient Gnostic scriptures, as part of the living tradition that has sustained them across the centuries. Gnostic texts such as these have caught popular interest in recent times, as traditional assumptions about the original forms and cultural contexts of related religious traditions, such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, have been called into question. However, we can learn only so much from texts in isolation from their own contexts. Mandaean literature uniquely allows us not only to increase our knowledge about Gnosticism, and by extension all these other religions, but also to observe the relationship between Gnostic texts, rituals, beliefs, and living practices, both historically and in the present day.
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110487861
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 476
Book Description
Given the degree of popular fascination with Gnostic religions, it is surprising how few pay attention to the one such religion that has survived from antiquity until the present day: Mandaism. Mandaeans, who esteem John the Baptist as the most famous adherent to their religion, have in our time found themselves driven from their historic homelands by war and oppression. Today, they are a community in crisis, but they provide us with unparalleled access to a library of ancient Gnostic scriptures, as part of the living tradition that has sustained them across the centuries. Gnostic texts such as these have caught popular interest in recent times, as traditional assumptions about the original forms and cultural contexts of related religious traditions, such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, have been called into question. However, we can learn only so much from texts in isolation from their own contexts. Mandaean literature uniquely allows us not only to increase our knowledge about Gnosticism, and by extension all these other religions, but also to observe the relationship between Gnostic texts, rituals, beliefs, and living practices, both historically and in the present day.
Dreams of Joy
Author: Lisa See
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0679604898
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 369
Book Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Astonishing . . . one of those hard-to-put-down-until-four-in-the morning books . . . a story with characters who enter a reader’s life, take up residence, and illuminate the myriad decisions and stories that make up human history.”—Los Angeles Times In her most powerful novel yet, acclaimed author Lisa See returns to the story of sisters Pearl and May from Shanghai Girls, and Pearl’s strong-willed nineteen-year-old daughter, Joy. Reeling from newly uncovered family secrets, Joy runs away to Shanghai in early 1957 to find her birth father—the artist Z.G. Li, with whom both May and Pearl were once in love. Dazzled by him, and blinded by idealism and defiance, Joy throws herself into the New Society of Red China, heedless of the dangers in the Communist regime. Devastated by Joy’s flight and terrified for her safety, Pearl is determined to save her daughter, no matter the personal cost. From the crowded city to remote villages, Pearl confronts old demons and almost insurmountable challenges as she follows Joy, hoping for reconciliation. Yet even as Joy’s and Pearl’s separate journeys converge, one of the most tragic episodes in China’s history threatens their very lives. BONUS: This edition contains a Dreams of Joy discussion guide. Praise for Dreams of Joy “[Lisa] See is a gifted historical novelist. . . . The real love story, the one that’s artfully shown, is between mother and daughter, and aunt and daughter, as both of the women who had a part in making Joy return to China come to her rescue. . . . [In Dreams of Joy,] there are no clear heroes or villains, just people who often take wrong turns to their own detriment but for the good of the story, leading to greater strength of character and more durable relationships.”—San Francisco Chronicle “A heartwarming story of heroic love between a mother and daughter . . . No writer has better captured the voice and heart of Chinese culture.”—Bookreporter “Once again, See’s research feels impeccable, and she has created an authentic, visually arresting world.”—The Washington Post
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0679604898
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 369
Book Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Astonishing . . . one of those hard-to-put-down-until-four-in-the morning books . . . a story with characters who enter a reader’s life, take up residence, and illuminate the myriad decisions and stories that make up human history.”—Los Angeles Times In her most powerful novel yet, acclaimed author Lisa See returns to the story of sisters Pearl and May from Shanghai Girls, and Pearl’s strong-willed nineteen-year-old daughter, Joy. Reeling from newly uncovered family secrets, Joy runs away to Shanghai in early 1957 to find her birth father—the artist Z.G. Li, with whom both May and Pearl were once in love. Dazzled by him, and blinded by idealism and defiance, Joy throws herself into the New Society of Red China, heedless of the dangers in the Communist regime. Devastated by Joy’s flight and terrified for her safety, Pearl is determined to save her daughter, no matter the personal cost. From the crowded city to remote villages, Pearl confronts old demons and almost insurmountable challenges as she follows Joy, hoping for reconciliation. Yet even as Joy’s and Pearl’s separate journeys converge, one of the most tragic episodes in China’s history threatens their very lives. BONUS: This edition contains a Dreams of Joy discussion guide. Praise for Dreams of Joy “[Lisa] See is a gifted historical novelist. . . . The real love story, the one that’s artfully shown, is between mother and daughter, and aunt and daughter, as both of the women who had a part in making Joy return to China come to her rescue. . . . [In Dreams of Joy,] there are no clear heroes or villains, just people who often take wrong turns to their own detriment but for the good of the story, leading to greater strength of character and more durable relationships.”—San Francisco Chronicle “A heartwarming story of heroic love between a mother and daughter . . . No writer has better captured the voice and heart of Chinese culture.”—Bookreporter “Once again, See’s research feels impeccable, and she has created an authentic, visually arresting world.”—The Washington Post