Download or read book Another Gulmohar Tree written by Aamer Hussein and published by Saqi. This book was released on 2012-07-15 with total page 83 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Usman is visiting post-war London from Pakistan when he meets a young aspiring artist called Lydia who has, like him, come out of an unhappy marriage. Just as the lonely strangers' friendship begins to blossom into something deeper Usman has to return to Karachi, leaving Lydia behind. Two years later, Lydia impulsively abandons her life in London and boards a ship to Karachi, where the two are married. But as the years flit by Usman feels distanced from his life and realises that he hasn't noticed the buds of the gulmohar tree unfurl. A beautiful account of a marriage that is in turns wry and unashamedly romantic. 'We are lucky to have Hussein among us, telling us stories as few can.' Amit Chaudhuri 'A lovely, strange, and very moving novel.' Ruth Padel 'At its heart it is a story of love, into which Hussein weaves all his remarkable skills of storytelling.' Kamila Shamsie 'In his splendid, dreamy Another Gulmohar Tree, Hussein gives us an indelible sense of two worlds - Karachi and London - in miniature and the strong parable of a love story that endures over a lifetime.' Joseph Olshan
Download or read book The Cloud Messenger written by Aamer Hussein and published by Saqi. This book was released on 2011-10-10 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A thing of beauty. . . . You must read it."—Nadeem Aslam "A shower of pleasures."—Julia O'Faolain "Sophisticated, cosmopolitan and seductive, the novel engages mind and senses alike."—André Naffis-Sahely, The Times Literary Supplement Like his parents, he too spent many hours sending cloud messages to other places, messages of longing for something that he knew existed otherwhere. London, that distant rainy place his father lived in once, is where Mehran finds himself after leaving Karachi in his teens. And it is there that his adult life unfolds: he discovers the joys of poetry, faces the trials of love and work, and spends his dreaming hours "sending cloud messages to other places," hoping, one day, to tell his own story. A feeling of not quite belonging anywhere pursues Mehran as he travels to Italy, India, and Pakistan. But the relationships he forms—with wounded, passionate Marvi, volatile Marco, and the enigmatic Riccarda—and his power of recollection finally bring him some sense, however fleeting, of home. Aamer Hussein was born in Karachi in 1955 and moved to London in his teens. He lectures at the University of Southampton and the Institute of English Studies and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His novella Another Gulmohar Tree was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize Europe and South Asia 2010.
Download or read book This Other Salt written by Hussein Aamer and published by Saqi. This book was released on 2014-05-22 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Betrayal, bereavement, exile, belonging - these are the themes that resonate throughout This Other Salt. A writer torn between two loves looks for his lost words in the gap between memory, mourning and desire; a poet revenges herself on her faithless lover by turning their romance into a legend of biblical proportions; and a teenage boy's life uncannily begins to resemble the role he plays in a school operetta ...Combining satire, legend, poetry, history and memoir, the linked stories of This Other Salt reveal an author of uncommon talent at the height of his craft.
Download or read book The Gulmohar Tree and Other Stories written by Abhisek Mitra and published by Educreation Publishing. This book was released on with total page 57 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Gulmohar Tree & Other Stories is a collection of the day to day happenings around us. This book is a bunch of emotions that one can relate to his/her own experiences.
Download or read book Land of Smoke written by Sara Gallardo and published by Pushkin Press Classics. This book was released on 2023-09-12 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Land of Smoke is one of my favourite books by one of my favourite Argentinian authors." – Samanta Schweblin, author of Seven Empty Houses Dazzling, hallucinatory short stories by a rediscovered Argentinian contemporary of García Márquez, whose groundbreaking novel January is being published in English for the first time Resplendent with otherworldly imagery and beguiling prose, Land of Smoke presents a uniquely compelling voice in Latin American literature. An old man wakes up one morning to find that his beloved garden, the envy of all his neighbours, is floating away with him on board. A young woman moves to Buenos Aires, bringing with her a replacement head. A meek German missionary leaves Paraguay for the Pampas, completely unprepared for what he will encounter there. Dazzling and hallucinatory, the stories collected here recall the masters of magical realism – but with Gallardo’s distinctive, idiosyncratic slant.
Download or read book How I Became a Tree written by Sumana Roy and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-31 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exquisite, lovingly crafted meditation on plants, trees, and our place in the natural world, in the tradition of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass and Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek “I was tired of speed. I wanted to live tree time.” So writes Sumana Roy at the start of How I Became a Tree, her captivating, adventurous, and self-reflective vision of what it means to be human in the natural world. Drawn to trees’ wisdom, their nonviolent way of being, their ability to cope with loneliness and pain, Roy movingly explores the lessons that writers, painters, photographers, scientists, and spiritual figures have gleaned through their engagement with trees—from Rabindranath Tagore to Tomas Tranströmer, Ovid to Octavio Paz, William Shakespeare to Margaret Atwood. Her stunning meditations on forests, plant life, time, self, and the exhaustion of being human evoke the spacious, relaxed rhythms of the trees themselves. Hailed upon its original publication in India as “a love song to plants and trees” and “an ode toall that is unnoticed, ill, neglected, and yet resilient,” How I Became a Tree blends literary history, theology, philosophy, botany, and more, and ultimately prompts readers to slow down and to imagine a reenchanted world in which humans live more like trees.
Download or read book British Muslim Fictions written by C. Chambers and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-03-09 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through interviews with leading writers (including Ahdaf Soueif and Hanif Kureishi), this book analyzes the writing and opinions of novelists of Muslim heritage based in the UK. Discussion centres on writers' work, literary techniques, and influences, and on their views of such issues as the hijab, the war on terror and the Rushdie Affair.
Download or read book Human Matter written by Rodrigo Rey Rosa and published by Univ of TX + ORM. This book was released on 2019-06-07 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This prizewinning Guatemalan author’s meta-novel delves into the secret police records and history of political violence in his homeland. In 2005, novelist Rodrigo Rey Rosa started visiting the Historical Archive of the Guatemala National Police, where millions of previously hidden records were being cataloged, bringing to light detailed evidence of crimes against humanity. In response, Rey Rosa crafted a meta-novel that weaves the language of arrest records and surveillance reports with the contemporary journal entries of a novelist (named Rodrigo) who is attempting to synthesize the stories of political activists, indigenous people, and others ensnared in a deadly web of state-sponsored terrorism. When Rodrigo’s access to the archive is suspended, he proceeds to the General Archives of Central America and the Library of Congress, also collaborating with the son of the Identification Bureau's former head in a relentless pursuit of understanding. Human Matter is both a tour de force of fiction and a sobering meditation on the realities of collective memory, raising timely questions about how our history is recorded and retold.
Download or read book The Lady from Tel Aviv written by Raba'i al-Madhoun and published by Saqi. This book was released on 2013-07-01 with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the economy class of a plane, the lives of two passengers intersect: Walid, a Palestinian writer, is returning to Gaza for the first time in thirty-eight years; Dana, an Israeli actress, is on her way back to Tel Aviv. As the night sky hurtles past, what each confides and conceals will expose the chasm between them in the land they both call home. Walid soon discovers that Gaza has changed beyond all recognition. Yet through the haze of checkpoints and lives lived across borders, he finds a message from Dana that will change the course of his life. The Lady from Tel Aviv is a powerful and poetic story of love, loss and the desire to belong. The Lady from Tel Aviv will take you to the height of reading pleasure' Elias Khoury Al-Madhoun brings Gaza to life vividly through his characters and his ability to acknowledge the absurd within the tragic.' Selma Dabbagh
Download or read book Thus Were Their Faces written by Silvina Ocampo and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2015-01-27 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An NYRB Classics Original Thus Were Their Faces offers a comprehensive selection of the short fiction of Silvina Ocampo, undoubtedly one of the twentieth century’s great masters of the story and the novella. Here are tales of doubles and impostors, angels and demons, a marble statue of a winged horse that speaks, a beautiful seer who writes the autobiography of her own death, a lapdog who records the dreams of an old woman, a suicidal romance, and much else that is incredible, mad, sublime, and delicious. Italo Calvino has written that no other writer “better captures the magic inside everyday rituals, the forbidden or hidden face that our mirrors don’t show us.” Jorge Luis Borges flatly declared, “Silvina Ocampo is one of our best writers. Her stories have no equal in our literature.” Dark, gothic, fantastic, and grotesque, these haunting stories are among the world’s most individual and finest.
Download or read book Ambiguity Machines written by Vandana Singh and published by Small Beer Press. This book was released on 2018-02-13 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philip K. Dick Award finalist Praise for Vandana Singh: “A most promising and original young writer.”—Ursula K. Le Guin “Lovely! What a pleasure this book is . . . full of warmth, compassion, affection, high comedy and low.”—Molly Gloss, author of The Hearts of Horses “Vandana Singh’s radiant protagonist is a planet unto herself.”—Village Voice “Sweeping starscapes and daring cosmology that make Singh a worthy heir to Cordwainer Smith and Arthur C. Clarke.”—Chris Moriarty, Fantasy & Science Fiction “I’m looking forward to the collection . . . everything I’ve read has impressed me—the past and future visions in ‘Delhi’, the intensity of ‘Thirst’, the feeling of escape at the end of ‘The Tetrahedron’...” —Niall Harrison, Vector (British Science Fiction Association) “...the first writer of Indian origin to make a serious mark in the SF world ... she writes with such a beguiling touch of the strange.” —Nilanjana Roy, Business Standard In her first North American collection, Vandana Singh’s deep humanism interplays with her scientific background in stories that explore and celebrate this world and others and characters who are trying to make sense of the people they meet, what they see, and the challenges they face. An eleventh century poet wakes to find he is as an artificially intelligent companion on a starship. A woman of no account has the ability to look into the past. In "Requiem," a major new novella, a woman goes to Alaska to try and make sense of her aunt’s disappearance. Singh's stories have been performed on BBC radio, been finalists for the British SF Association award, selected for the Tiptree award honor list, and oft reprinted in Best of the Year anthologies. Her dives deep into the vast strangeness of the universe without and within and with her unblinking clear vision she explores the ways we move through space and time: together, yet always apart.
Download or read book Cities and Canopies written by Harini Nagendra and published by Viking. This book was released on 2019-05 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Native and imported, sacred and ordinary, culinary and floral, favourites of various kings and commoners over the centuries, trees are the most visible signs of nature in cities, fundamentally shaping their identities. Trees are storehouses of the complex origins and histories of city growth, coming as they do from different parts of the world, brought in by various local and colonial rulers. From the tree planted by Sarojini Naidu at Dehradun's clock tower to those planted by Sher Shah Suri and Jahangir on Grand Trunk Road, trees in India have served, above all, as memory keepers. They are our roots: their trunks our pillars, their bark our texture, and their branches our shade. Trees are nature's own museums. Drawing on extensive research, Cities and Canopies is a book about both the specific and the general aspects of these gentle life-giving creatures.
Download or read book The Town Slowly Empties written by Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee and published by SCB Distributors. This book was released on 2020-01-01 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does one record an extraordinary time? Confined to his Delhi apartment, Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee unravels the intimate paradoxes of life he encounters in the first weeks of a global pandemic. His stories about local fish sellers, gardeners, barbers and lovers merge with his concerns for the exodus of migrant labourers, the challenges faced by health workers, and a mother braving checkposts to bring her son home. Drawing inspiration from contemporary literature and cinema, The Town Slowly Empties is a unique window on a world desperate for love, care and hope. Manash is our Everyman, urging us to slow down and mend our broken ties with nature. Written with rare candour and elegance, this meditative book is a compelling account of the human condition that soars high above the empty streets.
Download or read book North of Ithaka written by Eleni N. Gage and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2005-05 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the poignant story of the author's move from New York to Lia--the remote Greek village where her grandmother was murdered, and which her father Nicholas Gage, made famous 20 years ago with his international bestseller "Eleni."
Download or read book Pakistan written by Ziauddin Sardar and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ziauddin Sardar questions the question mark that is always placed in front of Pakistan, Robin Yassin-Kassab asks why Pakistan has not imploded, Taimur Khan breaks bread with the gangsters and bookies of Karachi, Muhammad Idrees Ahmad revisits Peshawar, Mahvish Ahmad tracks down the separatist in Quetta, Ehsan Masood watches Pakistani television, Merryl Wyn Davies deconstructs 'imaginariums' of Pakistan, Aamer Hussein discusses Pakistani modern classic fiction, Bina Shah asks if there is boom in Pakistani literature, Bilal Tanweer listens to 'Coke Studio', Muneeza Shamsie discovers the literary secrets of her family, Taymiya R. Zaman overcomes her fear of talking about Pakistan, Ali Maraj assesses Imran Khan, Shazia Mirza tells rude jokes in Lahore, and a fake novel by Ibn-e-Safi is spotted in Bahwalnagar. Plus a new translation of an old short story by A R Khatoon, a new story by Yasir Shah, poems by Ghalib, John Siddique and Zehra Nigah, Atia Jilani's Quranic art, photographs by Ayesha Malik, and 'Ten Things We Love About Pakistan'. About Critical Muslim: A quarterly publication of ideas and issues showcasing groundbreaking thinking on Islam and what it means to be a Muslim in a rapidly changing, interconnected world. Each edition centers on a discrete theme, and contributions include reportage, academic analysis, cultural commentary, photography, poetry, and book reviews.
Download or read book Turquoise written by Aamer Hussein and published by Saqi. This book was released on 2013-08-01 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Direct and startlingly intimate, Hussein's stories are set in troubled times - in Karachi, Lahore and London, where war, partition and military rule form the backdrop for the anticipation and anxiety of changing homes and family life, the hopes and failures of love and work. Turquoise illuminates the passions and fears of a world more complex and more beautiful than the media images of Islam and Pakistan convey. 'Hussein's stories are about individuals and their countries of exile, where the world itself is seen as a place of transit ... A moving and highly aesthetic expression of a new sensibility.' Amit Chaudhuri 'Turquoise must be read slowly to savour its many pleasures ... The fluid prose is sometimes simple and pristine, sometimes sinuous and visceral ... The stories' imagery is radiant.' Mary Flanagan, Independent 'The symbolic and intellectual complexity of Hussein's collection is undeniable.' Times Literary Supplement 'This Other Salt will add to the richness and density of writings in English, and help the reader traverse different cultures.' Wasafiri
Download or read book The Eastern Brew written by Syed Sarwar Hussain and published by Partridge Publishing. This book was released on 2013-12-03 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Eastern Brew is a translation of some selected Urdu short stories written by prominent writers from India and Pakistan. These stories are as varied in their subject matters as they are in the assortment of writers presented in this anthology. The selection is not incidental or impulsive but premeditated and is based on careful consideration. It encapsulates almost fifty years of Urdu short story writing from both sides of the border, representing the vicissitudes of life and times during the years of drastic political and social changes and the struggles and conflicts, psychological or otherwise, of characters living through those tumultuous times. Though it is not possible to collect the works of representative writers of Urdu fiction spanning more than two generations in a short anthology of fifteen stories, an attempt has, nevertheless, been made to bring before the English readers the various threads of human relationships, social, personal, and psychological, that weaved or warped the life of characters in the exciting stories in this collection. The anthology thus provides to the readers of other languages an insight into the changing patterns and concerns of Urdu literary art during a span of two generations and the life and times of people in the subcontinent living through the change.
