Nectar in a Sieve

Nectar in a Sieve PDF Author: Kamala Markandaya
Publisher: Ravenio Books
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
“This Is a Novel to Retain in Your Heart and Library” —Milwaukee Journal In the sun-baked fields of rural India, Rukmani and Nathan toil side by side, their love woven into the very fabric of the land. Their days are marked by the rhythm of seasons—the planting of rice saplings, the monsoon rains that breathe life into parched soil, and the harvest that sustains their family. But life is not idyllic. Famine stalks the village, and hunger gnaws at their bellies. Rukmani clings to hope, her spirit unyielding even as the world shifts around her. She witnesses the encroachment of modernity—the distant hum of factories, the allure of city lights—and wonders if progress will bring salvation or destruction. As Rukmani’s children grow, so do their dreams. Selvam, the eldest, seeks education beyond the village; Irawaddy, the daughter, yearns for love and security. Through it all, Rukmani remains the heart of their home, her hands stained with the colors of life—earth, blood, and sweat. Nectar in a Sieve is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. Kamala Markandaya’s prose weaves a tapestry of love, loss, and endurance. Amidst the harsh realities of poverty and change, Rukmani’s unwavering love for Nathan becomes a beacon—a nectar that sustains them through hardship. “An elemental book. It has something better than power, the truth of distilled experience.” —New York Herald Tribune “Unique in poetic beauty, in classically restrained and controlled tragedy.”—Dorothy Canfield Fisher, noted author and critic “Will wring your hearts.”—Associated Press “A superb job in telling her story.”—Christian Science Monitor

Nectar in a Sieve

Nectar in a Sieve PDF Author: Kamala Markandaya
Publisher: Ravenio Books
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 234

Get Book Here

Book Description
“This Is a Novel to Retain in Your Heart and Library” —Milwaukee Journal In the sun-baked fields of rural India, Rukmani and Nathan toil side by side, their love woven into the very fabric of the land. Their days are marked by the rhythm of seasons—the planting of rice saplings, the monsoon rains that breathe life into parched soil, and the harvest that sustains their family. But life is not idyllic. Famine stalks the village, and hunger gnaws at their bellies. Rukmani clings to hope, her spirit unyielding even as the world shifts around her. She witnesses the encroachment of modernity—the distant hum of factories, the allure of city lights—and wonders if progress will bring salvation or destruction. As Rukmani’s children grow, so do their dreams. Selvam, the eldest, seeks education beyond the village; Irawaddy, the daughter, yearns for love and security. Through it all, Rukmani remains the heart of their home, her hands stained with the colors of life—earth, blood, and sweat. Nectar in a Sieve is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. Kamala Markandaya’s prose weaves a tapestry of love, loss, and endurance. Amidst the harsh realities of poverty and change, Rukmani’s unwavering love for Nathan becomes a beacon—a nectar that sustains them through hardship. “An elemental book. It has something better than power, the truth of distilled experience.” —New York Herald Tribune “Unique in poetic beauty, in classically restrained and controlled tragedy.”—Dorothy Canfield Fisher, noted author and critic “Will wring your hearts.”—Associated Press “A superb job in telling her story.”—Christian Science Monitor

Guide, The (Modern Classics)

Guide, The (Modern Classics) PDF Author: R.K. Narayan
Publisher: Penguin Books India
ISBN: 0143414984
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
‘The best of R.K. Narayan’s enchanting novels’—The New Yorker Raju, a corrupt tourist guide, together with his lover, the dancer Rosie, leads a prosperous life before he is thrown into prison. After release he rests on the steps of an abandoned temple when a peasant passing by mistakes him for a holy man. Slowly, almost reluctantly, he begins to play the part, acting as a spiritual guide to the village community. Raju’s holiness is put to the test when a drought strikes the village, and he is asked to fast for twelve days to summon the rains. Set in Narayan’s fictional town, Malgudi, The Guide is the greatest of his comedies of self-deception. ‘A brilliant accomplishment … Narayan is the compassionate man who can write of human life as comedy’—The New York Times Book Review ‘Narayan is such a natural writer, so true to his experience and emotions’—V.S. Naipaul

A Handful of Rice

A Handful of Rice PDF Author: Kamala Markandaya
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Criminals
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
"Kamala Markandaya, whose Nectar in a Sieve (1955) was a miniature epic about India's poor, returns to the earlier concerns of that book in A Handful of Rice. Ravi is a village son who has left his desolate, destitute home for the promise of the city. There he falls into the company of similarly rootless young men, presided over by the wily city boy, Damodar, who appears fitfully through the book as a seducer to criminal and get-rich-quick schemes which Damodar is clever enough to survive and thrive by. By a chance misdeed, Ravi becomes acquainted with the tailor Apu and his family; Apu's daughter Nalini wins his heart and brings him from the streets into the already crowded household, first as Apu's apprentice, then his son-in-law. The author recreates the life of the respectable poor with moving fidelity as they face the problems of food, illness, unemployment. When Apu dies, the still rebellious but worn Ravi, now a father of three and head of the household, cannot keep his customers. After the death of his son, he reverts to the street, but Damodar now discards him as unfit for dangerous enterprises, and he ends storming the rice supplies with the mob. A portrait in poverty, which is part of the history of our times. It is less compelling than the earlier book as a novel while managing the same concerned compassion."--Kirkus

Dark Holds No Terrors

Dark Holds No Terrors PDF Author: Shashi Deshpande
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 9351181618
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Why are you still alive-why didn't you die?' Years on, Sarita still remembers her mother's bitter words uttered when as a little girl she was unable to save her younger brother from drowning. Now, her mother is dead and Sarita returns to the family home, ostensibly to take care of her father, but in reality to escape the nightmarish brutality her husband inflicts on her every night. In the quiet of her old father's company Sarita reflects on the events of her life: her stultifying small town childhood, her domineering mother, her marriage to the charismatic young poet Mahohar.

Thousand Pieces of Gold

Thousand Pieces of Gold PDF Author: Ruthanne Lum McCunn
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807083267
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
The extraordinary biographical novel about a Chinese-American woman who fought for independence and dignity in the American West—“an important contribution to the history of pioneer women” (Ms. Magazine) Lalu Nathoy’s father called his thirteen-year-old daughter his treasure, his “thousand pieces of gold”—yet when famine strikes northern China in 1871, he is forced to sell her. Polly, as Lalu is later called, is sold to a brothel, sold again to a slave merchant bound for America, auctioned to a saloonkeeper, and offered as a prize in a poker game. With over a quarter of a million copies sold, Thousand Pieces of Gold is a classic of biographical historical fiction that stars an unforgettable Chinese-American heroine whose struggles put a human face on the anti-immigration policies of the past and present.

Nectar in a Sieve

Nectar in a Sieve PDF Author: Kamala Markandaya
Publisher: Ravenio Books
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
“This Is a Novel to Retain in Your Heart and Library” —Milwaukee Journal In the sun-baked fields of rural India, Rukmani and Nathan toil side by side, their love woven into the very fabric of the land. Their days are marked by the rhythm of seasons—the planting of rice saplings, the monsoon rains that breathe life into parched soil, and the harvest that sustains their family. But life is not idyllic. Famine stalks the village, and hunger gnaws at their bellies. Rukmani clings to hope, her spirit unyielding even as the world shifts around her. She witnesses the encroachment of modernity—the distant hum of factories, the allure of city lights—and wonders if progress will bring salvation or destruction. As Rukmani’s children grow, so do their dreams. Selvam, the eldest, seeks education beyond the village; Irawaddy, the daughter, yearns for love and security. Through it all, Rukmani remains the heart of their home, her hands stained with the colors of life—earth, blood, and sweat. Nectar in a Sieve is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. Kamala Markandaya’s prose weaves a tapestry of love, loss, and endurance. Amidst the harsh realities of poverty and change, Rukmani’s unwavering love for Nathan becomes a beacon—a nectar that sustains them through hardship. “An elemental book. It has something better than power, the truth of distilled experience.” —New York Herald Tribune “Unique in poetic beauty, in classically restrained and controlled tragedy.”—Dorothy Canfield Fisher, noted author and critic “Will wring your hearts.”—Associated Press “A superb job in telling her story.”—Christian Science Monitor

Small Remedies

Small Remedies PDF Author: Shashi Deshpande
Publisher: Penguin Books India
ISBN: 9780140294873
Category : India
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Shashi Deshpande's latest novel explores the lives of two women, one obsessed with music and the other a passionate believer in Communism, who break away from their families to seek fulfilment in public life. Savitribai Indorekar, born into an orthodox Hindu family, elopes with her Muslim lover and accompanist, Ghulaam Saab, to pursue a career in music. Gentle, strong-willed Leela, on the other hand, gives her life to the Party, and to working with the factory workers of Bombay. Fifty years after these events have been set in motion, Madhu, Leela's niece, travels to Bhavanipur, Savitribai's home in her last years, to write a biography of Bai. Caught in her own despair over the loss of her only son. Madhu tries to make sense of the lives of Bai and those around her, and in doing so, seeks to find a way out of her own grief.

Pleasure City

Pleasure City PDF Author: Kamala Markandaya
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 9351187446
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
An unlikely friendship helps create beauty and luxury in a coastal paradise. When British multinational AIDCORP lands a project to build a tourist complex—Shalimar—in a coastal village in south India, Mr Tully, one of the directors, arrives at the village to oversee the construction. There he meets Rikki, an orphaned fisher boy, and a deep and abiding friendship arises between the two, notwithstanding the gulf between their lives. The fisher community is torn when half the fishermen begin to work with the company, leaving the other half to suffer from a shrinking catch. Rikki must find a way to pay off his parents’ debt, but he cannot abandon his life near the sea. Thanks to his fluent English, learned from an old English couple who used to live in the village, he begins to work for Tully. Though they come from vastly different worlds, Tully and Rikki learn to accept and value each other: a human relationship forged from the shared human need for goodwill, affection and understanding. It is with the help of this alliance of mutual respect that Shalimar is successfully built, and Tully manages to restore Avalon, a mansion his grandfather built in the area. Pleasure City explores the issues of the interaction between East and West, native tradition and imported technology, in the context of the scientific and technical development of an India that is, well after Independence, racing ahead to forge its postcolonial identity. It is an identity that, like Shalimar, grows from collaboration between East and West, and mutual exchange of ideas and knowledge.

A Silence of Desire

A Silence of Desire PDF Author: Kamala Markandaya
Publisher: Penguin Books India
ISBN: 0143102516
Category : Anglo-Indian fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
He Was Not Himself Because His Wife Was Not Herself, Because In Marriage You Acted And Reacted One Upon The Other, However Much You Wished It Otherwise, And Whether You Wanted To Or No. Dandekar Is A Routine-Bound Government Clerk Who Is Able To Provide His Family With A Comfortable Life. But His Ordered Existence Is Thrown Off Course When, One Day, He Comes Home From Work To Find His Wife, Sarojini, Missing. On Her Return She Gives Him An Excuse For Her Disappearance Which He Realizes Is A Lie, Further Rousing His Suspicions. Doubt And Mistrust Plague Him And He Puts His Career In Jeopardy When He Begins To Trail Sarojini In The Hope That He Might Find Her With Another Man. But When He Stumbles Across The Truth He Gets More Than He Bargained For. In A Silence Of Desire Kamala Markandaya Explores The Tension Between The East And The West Between Superstition And Science, Faith And Reason, Tradition And Progress In A Profound Manner.

Five Famous Fairy Tales

Five Famous Fairy Tales PDF Author: Michael West
Publisher: Addison Wesley Publishing Company
ISBN: 9780582541474
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 68

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Book Description
The White Birds; The Fisherman and the Giant; The Glass Box; The Prince and his Servants; The Table, the Donkey and the Stick.