Author: David Davidar
Publisher: Emblem Editions
ISBN: 1551993864
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 258
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Book Description
Suffocating in the small-town world of his parents, Vijay is desperate to escape to the raw energy of Bombay in the early 1990s. His big chance arrives unexpectedly when the family servant, Raju, is recruited by a right-wing organization. As a result of an article he writes about the increasing power of sectarian politicians, Vijay gets a job in a small Bombay publication, The Indian Secularist. There he meets Rustom Sorabjee — the inspirational founder of the magazine who opens Vijay’s eyes to the damage caused to the nation by the mixing of religion and politics. A year after his arrival in Bombay, Vijay is caught up in violent riots that rip though the city, a reflection of the upsurge of fundamentalism everywhere in the country. He is sent to a small tea town in the Nilgiri Mountains to recover, but finds that the unrest in the rest of India has touched this peaceful spot as well, specifically a spectacular shrine called The Tower of God, which is the object of political wrangling. He is befriended by Noah, an enigmatic and colourful character who lives in the local cemetery and quotes Pessoa, Cavafy, and Rimbaud, but is ostracized by a local elite obsessed with little more than growing their prize fuchsias. As the discord surrounding the local shrine comes to a head, Vijay tries to alert them to the dangers, but his intervention will have consequences he could never have foreseen. The Solitude of Emperors is a stunningly perceptive novel about modern India, about what drives fundamentalist beliefs, and what makes someone driven, bold, or mad enough to make a stand. I thought about the taxi driver who had been murdered. Deepak hadn’t said whether he was young or old, but I imagined him to be as young as I was, and there was a good chance that he, like me, was a recent immigrant to the city, perhaps from Hyderabad, or some smaller place that did not have enough work or resources to hold on to its young. He would have come here hoping to make his fortune, and maybe in time he would have. Why had he worn the badges of his faith to the very end, I wondered. Even when his life was at stake, why hadn’t he thought to take them off? Maybe they were so much a part of him, he hadn’t even seen them as symbols to be discarded. They would have helped him link himself to a community, of course, until he had saved enough to bring his family over from his home town because it was likely he had married young. Until this fateful day, his religion would have saved him from the loneliness of the room in the chawl or slum. He would go to the mosque, meet others as lonely as he was. They would do their namaz together, celebrate the great festivals of Id and Ramzan with feasts of biryani on Mohammed Ali Road. Yes, his religion had been good to him, until the day it had devoured him. —From The Solitude of Emperors
Author: Guy Gavriel Kay
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101464518
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 449
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Book Description
Guy Gavriel Kay, multiple award-winning author of The Fionavar Tapestry and Sailing to Sarantium, completes his magnificent tale of an alternate Byzantine world… In the golden city of Sarantium, a renowned mosaicist seeks to fill his artistic ambitions and his destiny high upon a dome intended to be the emperor’s enduring sanctuary and legacy. The beauty and solitude of Crispin's work cannot protect him from the dangerous intrigues of court and city, swirling with rumors of war and conspiracy, while otherworldly fires mysteriously flicker and disappear in the streets at night. The emperor is plotting a conquest of Crispin’s homeland to regain an empire. And with his fate entwined with that of his royal benefactor, Crispin’s loyalties come with a very high price. And another voyager has come to the imperial city: Rustem of Kerakek, a physician from an eastern desert kingdom, determined to find his own fate amid the shifting, treacherous currents of passion and violence that define Sarantium.
Author: David Davidar
Publisher: Penguin Books India
ISBN: 9780143029342
Category : India
Languages : en
Pages : 438
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Book Description
It Is The Last Year Of The Nineteenth Century In The Village Of Chevathar In Southern India. Solomon Dorai, The Headman, Is Desperately Trying To Hold Together The Fraying Ends Of Village Life At A Time Of Huge Social And Political Unease. When Violence Finally Erupts, It Takes Solomon And The Traditional Structure Of The Village With It. Three Generations Of Dorais Come And Go In The Village By The Sea, Winning And Losing The Battle For Chevathar. There Are Solomon S Sons: The Dazzling, Athletic Aaron And The Studious Daniel, Both Exiled By Their Father S Death But, In Different Ways, Both Determined To Make Their Mark On The World. And There Is Daniel S Son, Kannan, Faced With A Set Of Challenges That Could Break Him If He Isn T Strong Enough.
Author: John Lindsay-Poland
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822384604
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 279
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Book Description
Emperors in the Jungle is an exposé of key episodes in the military involvement of the United States in Panama. Investigative journalism at its best, this book reveals how U.S. ideas about taming tropical jungles and people, combined with commercial and military objectives, shaped more than a century of intervention and environmental engineering in a small, strategically located nation. Whether uncovering the U.S. Army’s decades-long program of chemical weapons tests in Panama or recounting the invasion in December 1989 which was the U.S. military’s twentieth intervention in Panama since 1856, John Lindsay-Poland vividly portrays the extent and costs of U.S. involvement. Analyzing new evidence gathered through interviews, archival research, and Freedom of Information Act requests, Lindsay-Poland discloses the hidden history of U.S.–Panama relations, including the human and environmental toll of the massive canal building project from 1904 to 1914. In stunning detail he describes secret chemical weapons tests—of toxins including nerve agent and Agent Orange—as well as plans developed in the 1960s to use nuclear blasts to create a second canal in Panama. He chronicles sustained efforts by Panamanians and international environmental groups to hold the United States responsible for the disposal of the tens of thousands of explosives it left undetonated on the land it turned over to Panama in 1999. In the context of a relationship increasingly driven by the U.S. antidrug campaigns, Lindsay-Poland reports on the myriad issues that surrounded Panama’s takeover of the canal in accordance with the 1977 Panama Canal Treaty, and he assesses the future prospects for the Panamanian people, land, and canal area. Bringing to light historical legacies unknown to most U.S. citizens or even to many Panamanians, Emperors in the Jungle is a major contribution toward a new, more open relationship between Panama and the United States.
Author: Allan Massie
Publisher: Sceptre
ISBN: 147363699X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 275
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Book Description
Habitually vilified as a monstrous tyrant, Emperor Tiberius has been one of history's enigmas. Now he speaks for himself - a proud, secretive, troubled man, a great general yet reluctant ruler, disgusted by the degeneracy which surrounds him. In this sequel to Augustus, Allan Massie combines a compelling study in public power and private tragedy with a vibrant portrait of the Roman world.
Author: Jean-Henri Schnitzler
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Russia
Languages : en
Pages : 528
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Book Description
Author: Prabhat K. Singh
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443852147
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 180
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Book Description
The Indian English Novel of the New Millennium is a book of sixteen pieces of scholarly critique on recent Indian novels written in the English language; some on specific literary trends in fictional writing and others on individual texts published in the twenty-first century by contemporary Indian novelists such as Amitav Ghosh, Kiran Desai, Aravind Adiga, K. N. Daruwalla, Upamanyu Chatterjee, David Davidar, Esterine Kire Iralu, Siddharth Chowdhury and Chetan Bhagat. The volume focuses closely on the defining features of the different emerging forms of the Indian English novel, such as narratives of female subjectivity, crime fiction, terror novels, science fiction, campus novels, animal novels, graphic novels, disability texts, LGBT voices, dalit writing, slumdog narratives, eco-narratives, narratives of myth and fantasy, philosophical novels, historical novels, postcolonial and multicultural narratives, and Diaspora novels. A select bibliography of recent Indian English novels from 2001–2013 has been given especially for the convenience of the researchers. The book will be of great interest and benefit to college and university students and teachers of Indian English literature.
Author: Guy Gavriel Kay
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101462310
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 415
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Book Description
Guy Gavriel Kay, the international bestselling and multiple award-winning author of The Fionavar Tapestry, brings his unique storytelling imagination to an alternate Byzantine world… Sarantium is the golden city: holy to the faithful, exalted by the poets, jewel of the world and heart of an empire. Caius Crispus, known as Crispin, is a master mosaicist, creating beautiful art with colored stones and glass. Still grieving the loss of his family, he lives only for his craft—until an imperial summons draws him east to the fabled city. Bearing with him a Queen’s secret mission and seductive promise, and a talisman from an alchemist, Crispin crosses a land of pagan ritual and mortal danger, confronting legends and dark magic. Once in Sarantium, with its taverns and gilded sanctuaries, chariot races and palaces, intrigues and violence, Crispin must find his own source of power in order to survive. He finds it, unexpectedly, high on the scaffolding of his own greatest creation.
Author: Rositta Joseph Valiyamattam
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 144381430X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 325
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Book Description
Personal and National Destinies in Independent India is an innovative analysis of the interface between individual lives and national history, between citizen and state in modern India, as reflected in contemporary fiction. It critiques the selected works of a host of distinguished Indian English novelists such as Gurcharan Das, Arun Joshi, Rohinton Mistry, Arundhati Roy, Meher Pestonji, Kiran Desai, Vikas Swarup, David Davidar, Aravind Adiga, Manjula Padmanabhan and Tarun Tejpal. The author offers a new interpretation of twelve major novels with reference to the enormous framework of nearly seventy years of the history and politics, culture and economy of independent India. This is a study of fiction that re-writes the grand Indian narrative from a genuine, subaltern point of view and pays tribute to the heroism of ordinary Indians in times of extraordinary transformation. In these times of conflict and disparity which threaten democratic values, these novelists advocate an inclusive and humane India with a strong moral core instead of aggressive or elitist nationalism. They represent an era of painful introspection, an attempt to keep the soul of the nation alive. This unique project would be of interest to students and scholars of Literature, Political Science and History, especially Post-colonial studies. The vast scope of the time period, geographical expanse, social groups, writers and works covered here makes the work comprehensive and contemporary; very few such works on recent Indian history and fiction exist as of now.
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 308
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Book Description
