Download or read book Londonstani written by Gautam Malkani and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2007-08-28 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A talented new writer whose portrayal of the serious business of assimilation and young masculinity is disturbing and hilarious Hailed as one of the most surprising British novels in recent years, Gautam Malkani's electrifying debut reveals young South Asians struggling to distinguish themselves from their parents' generation in the vast urban sprawl that is contemporary London. Chronicling the lives of a gang of four young middle-class men-Hardjit, the violent enforcer; Ravi, the follower; Amit, who's struggling to come to terms with his mother's hypocrisy; and Jas, desperate to win the approval of the others despite lusting after Samira, a Muslim girl-Londonstani, funny, disturbing, and written in the exuberant language of its protagonists, is about tribalism, aggressive masculinity, integration, alienation, bling-bling economics, and "complicated family-related shit."

Download or read book Londonstani written by Gautam Malkani and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2007-08-28 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A talented new writer whose portrayal of the serious business of assimilation and young masculinity is disturbing and hilarious Hailed as one of the most surprising British novels in recent years, Gautam Malkani's electrifying debut reveals young South Asians struggling to distinguish themselves from their parents' generation in the vast urban sprawl that is contemporary London. Chronicling the lives of a gang of four young middle-class men-Hardjit, the violent enforcer; Ravi, the follower; Amit, who's struggling to come to terms with his mother's hypocrisy; and Jas, desperate to win the approval of the others despite lusting after Samira, a Muslim girl-Londonstani, funny, disturbing, and written in the exuberant language of its protagonists, is about tribalism, aggressive masculinity, integration, alienation, bling-bling economics, and "complicated family-related shit."

Download or read book Hybridity in Londonstani s Italian Translation written by Valeria Monello and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2019-07-31 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume investigates how fictional literary varieties and characterising discourse in a literary text can be translated and reproduced in the target language and culture. For this purpose, selected examples from Gautam Malkani’s debut novel Londonstani (2006) and its Italian translation by Massimo Bocchiola (2007) are analysed and discussed, in terms of the solutions they offer for the study of linguistic variation as a translation issue, and in terms of the constraints involved in the translation of linguistic varieties. The contrastive analysis conducted on the novel and its Italian translation will serve to provide new insights into the several issues the translation of vernacular literature can raise. How can a translator linguistically recreate the hybrid identity of the characters as Londonstanis, and their performing of masculinity through ethnicity (by resorting to non-standard forms and linguistic repertoires other than the English language) in a new context (the Italian one), which only recently is experiencing the challenges of superdiversity? These are some of the questions this book answers. It will be of primary interest to a wide range of scholars in the fields of translation studies, sociolinguistics, and cross-cultural communication.

Download or read book Distortion written by Gautam Malkani and published by Unbound Publishing. This book was released on 2018-09-06 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Thought-provoking' Spectator 'Taut and timely . . . A brilliant exploration of social media' Nikesh Shukla 'Original and important . . . Essential reading' Sathnam Sanghera Meet Dillon: a high-functioning fuck-up and carer for his dying mum. Trapped in an absurd cycle of pre-bereavement bereavement, he has been hiding his pain and some horrible truths, not least from his girlfriend, Ramona. His distortions have been growing dangerously more hardcore and hardwired, both online and off, thanks to the self-reinforcing effects of social media and creepy digital surveillance. And when a pair of snooping goons turn up, threatening to expose him, he is forced to confront a gut-wrenching secret that he would rather leave well alone. This audacious novel asks what happens when our minds are twisted beyond recognition by our digital data and search histories, and when our darkest truths are forced into the light by the uncanny predictive capabilities of our smartphones. What lengths would you go to in order to hide from yourself?

Download or read book Multi ethnic Britain 2000 written by Lars Eckstein and published by Rodopi. This book was released on 2008 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Multi-Ethnic Britain 2000+ provides an encompassing survey of artistic responses to the changes in the British cultural climate in the early years of the 21st century. It traces topical reactions to new forms of racism and religious fundamentalism, to legal as well as 'illegal' immigration, and to the threat of global terror; yet it also highlights new forms of intercultural communication and convivial exchange. Framed by contributions from novelists Patrick Neate and Rajeev Balasubramanyam, Multi-Ethnic Britain 2000+ showcases how artistic representations in literature, film, music and the visual arts reflect and respond to social and political discourses, and how they contribute to our understanding of the current (trans)cultural situation in Britain. The contributions in this volume cover a wide range of writers such as Graham Swift, Ian McEwan, Zadie Smith, Jackie Kay, Nadeem Aslam, Gautam Malkani, Nirpal Dhaliwal and Monica Ali; films ranging from Gurinder Chadha's Bend It Like Beckham and Bride and Prejudice to Michael Winterbottom's In This World and Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men; paintings and photography by innovative black and Asian British Artists; and dubstep music.

Download or read book Coping with Difference written by Sabine Nunius and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on 2009 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Has British literature finally surpassed Postmodernism and are we thus currently witnessing the emergence of a new era? Choosing specific forms of engagement with difference as a starting point, the present study traces recent developments in the field of the novel and illustrates in how far these new ways of dealing with difference may be characterised as "non-postmodern". Moreover, the analysis aims to demonstrate the renewed importance of modern(ist) strategies and their employment in contemporary British fiction. Case studies of six novels complement and illuminate these findings.

Download or read book Literature and the Creative Economy written by Sarah Brouillette and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-15 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contends that mainstream considerations of the economic and social force of culture, including theories of the creative class and of cognitive and immaterial labor, are indebted to historic conceptions of the art of literary authorship. It shows how contemporary literature has been involved in and has responded to creative-economy phenomena, including the presentation of artists as models of contentedly flexible and self-managed work, the treatment of training in and exposure to art as a pathway to social inclusion, the use of culture and cultural institutions to increase property values, and support for cultural diversity as a means of growing cultural markets. Contemporary writers have tended to explore how their own critical capacities have become compatible with or even essential to a neoliberal economy that has embraced art's autonomous gestures as proof that authentic self-articulation and social engagement can and should occur within capitalism. Taking a sociological approach to literary criticism, Sarah Brouillette interprets major works of contemporary fiction by Monica Ali, Aravind Adiga, Daljit Nagra, and Ian McEwan alongside government policy, social science, and theoretical explorations of creative work and immaterial labor.

Download or read book Race and Antiracism in Black British and British Asian Literature written by Dave Gunning and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Race and Antiracism in Black British and British Asian Literature offers the first comprehensive exploration of the cultural impact of the politics of race and antiracism in recent novels by black British and British Asian writers. It examines works by Zadie Smith, Caryl Phillips, Nadeem Aslam, Ferdinand Dennis, and others, arguing that an understanding of how race and ethnicity function in contemporary Britain can only be gained through attention to antiracism and the ways it conditions racial categories, identities, and models of behavior. Looking at topics such as the role of Africa, the reception of Islam, and the meaning of multiculturalism, Dave Gunning offers a detailed engagement with the nuances of antiracism and their effects on British literature and culture.

Download or read book Londonistan written by Melanie Phillips and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2007-06-25 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The suicide bombings carried out in London in 2005 by British Muslims revealed an enormous fifth column of Islamist terrorists and their sympathizers. Under the noses of British intelligence, London has become the European hub for the promotion, recruitment and financing of Islamic terror and extremism - so much so that it has been mockingly dubbed Londonistan. In this ground-breaking book Melanie Phillips pieces together the story of how Londonistan developed as a result of the collapse of traditional English identity and accommodation of a particularly virulent form of multiculturalism. Londonistan has become a country within the country and not only threatens Britain but its special relationship with the U.S. as well.

Download or read book The Stars Can Wait written by Jay Basu and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2013-11-12 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this powerful debut set in 1940s German-occupied Poland, a young Catholic boy unearths the secrets of his brother's mysterious life. Fifteen-year-old Gracian Sofka is a stargazer. Every night for the past year he has broken curfew to view the constellations from a clearing in the forest-that is, until his older brother, Pawel, discovers his secret pastime. And now that the German troops have stepped up patrols of the area, the gruff, mysterious Pawel forbids his brother to continue his risky activity. Life in the previously quiet village of Malenkowice grows increasingly precarious. Men are accosted on the street by German soldiers, Gracian's widowed mother risks imprisonment to smuggle food, and Gracian's co-workers at the coal mines grow restless. As tension builds in the town, it also grows within Gracian's own household. After a run-in with his sister's husband, Pawel is forced to leave the house, becoming even more distant and elusive in Gracian's eyes. Then one day Pawel presents Gracian with a telescope, allowing the boy to slowly discover the truth about his brother's shadowy past. But while he succeeds in unlocking Pawel's secrets, Gracian is blind to the inevitable tragedy hurtling toward them all-and to his unwitting role as its catalyst. Haunting and lyrical, Jay Basu's The Stars Can Wait possesses the intense, concentrated power of a fable and introduces a stunning new voice to American readers.

Download or read book In Our Mad and Furious City written by Guy Gunaratne and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2018-12-11 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long-listed for the 2018 Man Booker Prize Short-listed for the 2018 Gordon Burn Prize Short-listed for the 2018 Goldsmiths Prize Inspired by the real-life murder of a British army soldier by religious fanatics, Guy Gunaratne’s In Our Mad and Furious City is a snapshot of the diverse, frenzied edges of modern-day London. A crackling debut from a vital new voice, it pulses with the frantic energy of the city’s homegrown grime music and is animated by the youthful rage of a dispossessed, overlooked, and often misrepresented generation. While Selvon, Ardan, and Yusuf organize their lives around soccer, girls, and grime, Caroline and Nelson struggle to overcome pasts that haunt them. Each voice is uniquely insightful, impassioned, and unforgettable, and when stitched together, they trace a brutal and vibrant tapestry of today’s London. In a forty-eight-hour surge of extremism and violence, their lives are inexorably drawn together in the lead-up to an explosive, tragic climax. In Our Mad and Furious City documents the stark disparities and bubbling fury coursing beneath the prosperous surface of a city uniquely on the brink. Written in the distinctive vernaculars of contemporary London, the novel challenges the ways in which we coexist now—and, more important, the ways in which we often fail to do so.

Download or read book 2000s The A Decade of Contemporary British Fiction written by Nick Bentley and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-10-22 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did social, cultural and political events in Britain during the 2000s shape contemporary British fiction? The means of publishing, buying and reading fiction changed dramatically between 2000 and 2010. This volume explores how the socio-political and economic turns of the decade, bookended by the beginning of a millennium and an economic crisis, transformed the act of writing and reading. Through consideration of, among other things, the treatment of neuroscience, violence, the historical and youth subcultures in recent fiction, the essays in this collection explore the complex and still powerful relation between the novel and the world in which it is written, published and read. This major literary assessment of the fiction of the 2000s covers the work of newer voices such as Monica Ali, Mark Haddon, Tom McCarthy, David Peace and Zadie Smith as well as those more established, such as Salman Rushdie, Hilary Mantel and Ian McEwan making it an essential contribution to reading, defining and understanding the decade.

Download or read book Contemporary Fictions of Multiculturalism written by Michael Perfect and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-12-04 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary Fictions of Multiculturalism analyses novels of the late 20th and early 21st centuries that explore ethnic and cultural diversity in London. It contributes to key, ongoing debates in literary and cultural studies and, in particular, to debates over the status and relevance of multiculturalism today.

Download or read book The Triumph of Caesar written by Steven Saylor and published by Minotaur Books. This book was released on 2008-05-13 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Roman civil war has come to its conclusion – Pompey is dead, Egypt is firmly under the control of Cleopatra (with the help of Rome's legions), and for the first time in many years Julius Caesar has returned to Rome itself. Appointed by the Senate as Dictator, the city abounds with rumors asserting that Caesar wishes to be made King – the first such that Rome has had in centuries. And that not all of his opposition has been crushed. Gordianus, recently returned from Egypt with his wife Bethesda, is essentially retired from his previous profession of ‘Finder' but even he cannot refuse the call of Calpurnia, Caesar's wife. Troubled by dreams foretelling disaster and fearing a conspiracy against the life of Caesar, she had hired someone to investigate the rumors. But that person, a close friend of Gordianus, has just turned up dead – murdered -- on her doorstep. With four successive Triumphs for Caesar's military victories scheduled for the coming days, and Caesar more exposed to danger than ever before, Calpurnia wants Gordianus to uncover the truth behind the rumored conspiracies -- to protect Caesar's life, before it is too late. No fan of Caesar's, Gordianus agrees to help – but only to find the murderer who killed his friend. But once an investigation is begun, there's no controlling what it will turn up, who it will put in danger, and where it will end.

Download or read book I Am Not Sidney Poitier written by Percival Everett and published by Graywolf Press. This book was released on 2011-08-02 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I Am Not Sidney Poitier is an irresistible comic novel from the master storyteller Percival Everett, and an irreverent take on race, class, and identity in America I was, in life, to be a gambler, a risk-taker, a swashbuckler, a knight. I accepted, then and there, my place in the world. I was a fighter of windmills. I was a chaser of whales. I was Not Sidney Poitier. Not Sidney Poitier is an amiable young man in an absurd country. The sudden death of his mother orphans him at age eleven, leaving him with an unfortunate name, an uncanny resemblance to the famous actor, and, perhaps more fortunate, a staggering number of shares in the Turner Broadcasting Corporation. Percival Everett's hilarious new novel follows Not Sidney's tumultuous life, as the social hierarchy scrambles to balance his skin color with his fabulous wealth. Maturing under the less-than watchful eye of his adopted foster father, Ted Turner, Not gets arrested in rural Georgia for driving while black, sparks a dinnertable explosion at the home of his manipulative girlfriend, and sleuths a murder case in Smut Eye, Alabama, all while navigating the recurrent communication problem: "What's your name?" a kid would ask. "Not Sidney," I would say. "Okay, then what is it?"

Download or read book Globalization and Literature written by Suman Gupta and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-30 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a state-of-the-art overview of the relationship between globalization studies and literature and literary studies, and the bearing that they have on each other. It engages with the manner in which globalization is thematized in literary works, examines the relationship between globalization theory and literary theory, and discusses the impact of globalization processes on the production and reception of literary texts. Suman Gupta argues that, while literature has registered globalization processes in relevant ways, there has been a missed articulation between globalization studies and literary studies. Examples are given of some of the ways in which this slippage is now being addressed and may be taken forward, taking up such themes as the manner in which anti-globalization protests and world cities have figured in literary works; the ways in which theories of postmodernism and postcolonialism, familiar in literary studies, have diverged from and converged with globalization studies; and how industries to do with the circulation of literature are becoming globalized. This book is intended for university-level students and teachers, researchers, and other informed readers with an interest in the above issues, and serves as both a survey of the field and an intervention within it.

Download or read book The Finkler Question written by Howard Jacobson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2010-09-10 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "He should have seen it coming. His life had been one mishap after another. So he should have been prepared for this one..." Julian Treslove, a professionally unspectacular and disappointed BBC worker, and Sam Finkler, a popular Jewish philosopher, writer and television personality, are old school friends. Despite a prickly relationship and very different lives, they've never quite lost touch with each other - or with their former teacher, Libor Sevick, a Czechoslovakian always more concerned with the wider world than with exam results. Now, both Libor and Finkler are recently widowed, and with Treslove, his chequered and unsuccessful record with women rendering him an honorary third widower, they dine at Libor's grand, central London apartment. It's a sweetly painful evening of reminiscence in which all three remove themselves to a time before they had loved and lost; a time before they had fathered children, before the devastation of separations, before they had prized anything greatly enough to fear the loss of it. Better, perhaps, to go through life without knowing happiness at all because that way you had less to mourn? Treslove finds he has tears enough for the unbearable sadness of both his friends' losses. And it's that very evening, at exactly 11:30pm, as Treslove hesitates a moment outside the window of the oldest violin dealer in the country as he walks home, that he is attacked. After this, his whole sense of who and what he is will slowly and ineluctably change. The Finkler Question is a scorching story of exclusion and belonging, justice and love, ageing, wisdom and humanity. Funny, furious, unflinching, this extraordinary novel shows one of our finest writers at his brilliant best.