Download or read book Narcopolis written by Jeet Thayil and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-04-12 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize Written in poetic and affecting prose, Jeet Thayil's luminous debut novel charts the evolution of a great and broken metropolis across three decades. A rich, hallucinatory dream that captures Bombay in all its compelling squalor, Narcopolis completely subverts and challenges the literary traditions for which the Indian novel is celebrated. It is a book about drugs, sex, death, perversion, addiction, love, and God and has more in common in its subject matter with the work of William S. Burroughs or Baudelaire than with that of the subcontinent's familiar literary lights. Above all, it is a fantastical portrait of a beautiful and damned generation in a nation about to sell its soul.

Download or read book These Errors Are Correct written by Jeet Thayil and published by Penguin Random House India Private Limited. This book was released on 2022-07-18 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A meditation on grief, These Errors are Correct is Jeet Thayil's most intimate work to date. In poems of tenderness and rage, time blurs into a continuous present visited by Billy the Kid, the Buddha, Lata Mangeshkar, Jesus and Beethoven, by unnamed protagonists for whom faith and addiction are interchangeable, and by a remote god-like figure who will 'lick / your wound with his infected tongue'. A range of fixed and invented forms--rhymed syllabics, terza rima, ghazals, sonnets, the sestina, the canzone, stealth rhymes--make for a virtuosic, haunting collection. Originally published in 2008, the book has been out of print since 2010. With illustrations by the author, this new edition returns to the reader an essential and timeless book of poems. These Errors are Correct won the 2013 Sahitya Akademi Award.

Download or read book Narcopolis and Other Poems written by Peggy Nadramia and published by Hells Kitchen Productions. This book was released on 1989-09-01 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Book of Chocolate Saints written by Jeet Thayil and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2018-02-27 with total page 604 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: LONGLISTED FOR THE DSC PRIZE FOR SOUTH ASIAN LITERATURE 2018 'Easily the most original and formally inventive novel to come out of India in years.' Salman Rushdie, Guardian Francis Newton Xavier has lived a wild existence of excess in pursuit of his uncompromising aesthetic vision. His paintings and poems - which embody the flamboyant and decadent jeu d'esprit of his heroes like Baudelaire - have forged his reputation, which is to be celebrated at a new show in Delhi. Approaching middle age in a body ravaged by hard-living, Xavier leaves Manhattan following the 9/11 attacks with his young girlfriend - and his journey home to India becomes a delirious voyage into the past. From his formative years with an infamous school of fin de siècle Bombay poets - as documented by his biographer, Diswas, in these pages - Xavier must move forward into an uncertain future of salvation or damnation. His story results in The Book of Chocolate Saints: an epic novel of contemporary Indian life that probes the mysterious margins where art bleeds into the occult, and celebrates the artist's life itself as a final monument. It is Jeet Thayil's spiritual, passionate, and demented masterpiece.

Download or read book The Lighthouse written by Alison Moore and published by Biblioasis. This book was released on 2017-07-10 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Futh, a middle-aged, recently separated man heads to Germany for a restorative walking holiday. During his circular walk along the Rhine, he contemplates the formative moments of his childhood. At the end of the week, Futh returns to what he sees as the sanctuary of the Hellhaus hotel, unaware of the events which have been unfolding there in his absence.

Download or read book The Eyelid written by S. D. Chrostowska and published by Coach House Books. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Greater America, with sleep under siege, this lucid and prophetic novel of ideas depicts the end of human reverie. An unnamed, unemployed, dream-prone narrator finds himself following Chevauchet, diplomat of Onirica, a foreign republic of dreams, to resist a prohibition on sleep in near-future Greater America. On a mission to combat the state-sponsored drugging of citizens with uppers for greater productivity, they traverse an eerie landscape in an everlasting autumn, able to see inside other people’s nightmares and dreams. As Comprehensive Illusion – a social media-like entity that hijacks creativity – overtakes the masses, Chevauchet, the old radical, weakens and disappears, leaving our narrator to take up Chevauchet's dictum that "daydreaming is directly subversive” and forge ahead on his own. In slippery, exhilarating, and erudite prose, The Eyelid revels in the camaraderie of free thinking that can only happen on the lam, aiming to rescue a species that can no longer dream. "A slight but quick-witted and thoughtful philosophical parable that falls somewhere between Camus and Gaiman’s Sandman universe." —Kirkus Reviews "S. D. Chrostowska's The Eyelid is a brilliant, visionary satire on the digital mindscape of twenty-first-century late capitalism embodied in the new global state of Greater America. Insomnia is in; dreams are seditious; sleep is outlawed. Lulled by false fantasies projected by Artificial Intelligence (CI in the book), video games, and media collaborators, humans drug themselves to stay awake so they can slave through the now standard twenty-hour work days. Witty, oracular, Surreal, trenchant, politically astute, and often hilarious, The Eyelid is a throwback to the classics of the genre, Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels and Samuel Butler's Erewhon. We are turning into a race of sleep-deprived automatons, Chrostowska warns, increasingly unable to mount political opposition or even dream a different future." —Douglas Glover

Download or read book Vishnu s Crowded Temple written by Maria Misra and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-01-01 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As it enters its sixtieth year of independence, India stands on the threshold of superpower status. Yet India is strikingly different from all other global colossi. While it is the world's most populous democracy and enjoys the benefits of its internationally competitive high-tech and software industries, India also contends with extremes of poverty, inequality, and political and religious violence. This accessible and vividly written book presents a new interpretation of India's history, focusing particular attention on the impact of British imperialism on Independent India. Maria Misra begins with the rebellion against the British in 1857 and tracks the country's advance to the present day. India's extremes persist, the author argues, because its politics rest upon a peculiar foundation in which traditional ideas of hierarchy, difference, and privilege coexist to a remarkable degree with modern notions of equality and democracy. The challenge of India's leaders today, as in the last sixty years, is to weave together the disparate threads of the nation's ancient culture, colonial legacy, and modern experience.

Download or read book Sacred Games written by Vikram Chandra and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2011-03-03 with total page 1203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An enormously satisfying, exciting and enriching book, Vikram Chandra's novel draws the reader deep into the lives of detective Sartaj Singh and Ganesh Gaitonde, the most wanted gangster in India. Sartaj, the only Sikh inspector in the whole of Mumbai, is used to being identified by his turban, beard and the sharp cut of his trousers. But 'the silky Sikh' is now past forty, his marriage is over and his career prospects are on the slide. When Sartaj gets an anonymous tip off as to the secret hideout of the legendary boss of the G-company, he's determined that he'll be the one to collect the prize. This is a sprawling, epic novel of friendships and betrayals, of terrible violence, of an astonishing modern city and its underworld. Drawing on the best of Victorian fiction, mystery novels, Bollywood movies and Vikram Chandra's years of first hand research on the streets of Mumbai, this novel reads like a potboiling page-turner but resonates with the intelligence and emotional depth of the best of literature.

Download or read book Names of the Women written by Jeet Thayil and published by Arrow. This book was released on 2022-03-24 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Orphan Master s Son written by Adam Johnson and published by Random House Incorporated. This book was released on 2012 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The son of a singer mother whose career forcibly separated her from her family and an influential father who runs an orphan work camp, Pak Jun Do rises to prominence using instinctive talents and eventually becomes a professional kidnapper and romantic rival to Kim Jong Il. By the author of Parasites Like Us.

Download or read book Mumbai Fables written by Gyan Prakash and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-10-10 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Starting from the catastrophic floods and terrorist attacks of recent years, Prakash reaches back to the sixteenth-century Portuguese conquest to reveal the stories behind Mumbai's historic journey. Examining Mumbai's role as a symbol of opportunity and reinvention, he looks at its nineteenth-century development under British rule and its twentieth-century emergence as a fabled city on the sea. Different layers of urban experience come to light as he recounts the narratives of the Nanavati murder trial and the rise and fall of the tabloid Blitz, and Mumbai's transformation from the red city of trade unions and communists into the saffron city of Hindu nationalist Shiv Sena. Starry-eyed planners and elite visionaries, cynical leaders and violent politicians of the street, land sharks and underworld dons jostle with ordinary citizens and poor immigrants as the city copes with the dashed dreams of postcolonial urban life and lurches into the seductions of globalization. --

Download or read book The Generals written by Per Wahloo and published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. This book was released on 2013-06-18 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Per Wahlöö—co-author with his wife, Maj Sjöwall, of the internationally bestselling Martin Beck series of mysteries—comes a political satire, told as a court transcript, about the court-martial of a general gone rogue. Time: the not too distant future. Place: a small island in the temperate zone. Scene: air-force headquarters. Corporal Edwin Velder is on trial for his life--accused of acts against the military, government, and society. As the proceedings unfold, we learn of a country's descent into political tyranny--a civil war erupted in the face of a secret armed force bringing the current generals to power. The military tribunal forces Velder to reconstruct the events, battles, and final defeat of the island rebellion. As the inevitable verdict is pronounced, Velder's testimony just might bring to bear yet another political revolution.

Download or read book English written by Jeet Thayil and published by Penguin Books India. This book was released on 2020-03-16 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The narrator in these poems abandons the sectarian histories of 1990's Bombay for the relative clam of New York, only to find himself a witness to September the 11th, 2001. The author's poems refract his vibrant, unique experience through the prism of this tremendous intellect.

Download or read book The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets written by Jeet Thayil and published by Bloodaxe Books. This book was released on 2008 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jeet Thayil's definitive selection covers 55 years of Indian poetry in English. It is the first anthology to represent not just the major poets of the past half-century - the canonical writers who have dominated Indian poetry and publishing since the 1950s - but also the different kinds of poetry written by an extraordinary range of younger poets who live in many countries as well as in India. It is a groundbreaking global anthology of 70 poets writing in a common language responding to shared traditions, different cultures and contrasting lives in the changing modern world.Thayil's starting-point is Nissim Ezekiel, the first important modern Indian poet after Tagore, who published his first collection in London in 1952. Aiming for "verticality" rather than chronology, Thayil's anthology charts a poetry of astonishing volume and quality. It pays homage to major influences, including Ezekiel, Dom Moraes and Arun Kolatkar, who died within months of each other in 2004. It rediscovers forgotten figures such as Lawrence Bantleman and Gopal Honnalgere, and it serves as an introduction to the poets of the future.The book also shows that many Indian poets were mining the rich vein of 'chutnified' (Salman Rushdie's word) Indian English long before novelists like Rushdie and Upamanyu Chatterjee started using it in their fiction. It explains why Pankaj Mishra and Amit Chaudhuri have said that Indian poetry in English has a longer, more distinguished tradition than Indian fiction in English. The Indian poet now lives and works in New York, New Delhi, London, Itanagar, Bangalore, Berkeley, Goa, Sheffield, Lonavala, Montana, Aarhus, Allahabad, Hongkong, Montreal, Melbourne, Calcutta, Connecticut, Cuttack and various other global corridors. While some may have little in common in terms of culture (a number of the poets have never lived in India), this anthology shows how they are all bound by the intimate histories of a shared English language.

Download or read book Special Topics in Calamity Physics written by Marisha Pessl and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-08-03 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The mesmerizing bestseller that combines the storytelling gifts of Donna Tartt and the suspense of Alfred Hitchcock—A New York Times Ten Best Book of the Year Special Topics in Calamity Physics is a darkly hilarious coming-of-age tale and a richly plotted suspense story, told with dazzling intelligence and wit. At the center of the novel is clever, deadpan Blue van Meer, who has a head full of literary, philosophical, scientific, and cinematic knowledge. But she could use some friends. Upon entering the elite St. Gallway School, she finds some—a clique of eccentrics known as the Bluebloods. One drowning and one hanging later, Blue finds herself puzzling out a byzantine murder mystery. Nabokov meets Donna Tartt (then invites the rest of the Western Canon to the party) in this novel—with visual aids drawn by the author—that has won over readers of all ages.

Download or read book Chanel written by Lisa Chaney and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2011-10-06 with total page 557 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Chanel: An Intimate Life, acclaimed biographer Lisa Chaney tells the controversial story of the fashion icon who starred in her tumultuous era Coco Chanel was many things to many people. Raised in emotional and financial poverty, she became one of the defining figures of the twentieth century. She was mistress to aristocrats, artists and spies. She broke rules of style and decorum, seducing both men and women, yet in her work expected the highest standards. She took a 'plaything' and turned it into a global industry which defined the modern woman. Filled with new insights and thrilling discoveries, Lisa Chaney's Chanel provides the most defining and provocative portrait yet. 'Chaney's research is laudable, uncovering fresh details of Chanel's well-trodden rag trade to riches story' Evening Standard 'An unflinching examination of the historically inscrutable designer' Vogue Lisa Chaney has lectured and tutored in the history of art and literature, made TV and radio broadcasts on the history of culture, and reviewed and written for journals and newspapers, including The SundayTimes, the Spectator and the Guardian. She is the author of two previous biographies: Elizabeth David and Hide-and-Seek With Angels: The Life of J.M. Barrie.

Download or read book Ripley Under Ground written by Patricia Highsmith and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2008-09-17 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Ripley is an unmistakable descendant of Gatsby, that 'penniless young man without a past' who will stop at nothing."—Frank Rich Now part of American film and literary lore, Tom Ripley, "a bisexual psychopath and art forger who murders without remorse when his comforts are threatened" (New York Times Book Review), was Patricia Highsmith's favorite creation. In these volumes, we find Ripley ensconced on a French estate with a wealthy wife, a world-class art collection, and a past to hide. In Ripley Under Ground (1970), an art forgery goes awry and Ripley is threatened with exposure; in The Boy Who Followed Ripley (1980), Highsmith explores Ripley's bizarrely paternal relationship with a troubled young runaway, whose abduction draws them into Berlin's seamy underworld; and in Ripley Under Water (1991), Ripley is confronted by a snooping American couple obsessed with the disappearance of an art collector who visited Ripley years before. More than any other American literary character, Ripley provides "a lens to peer into the sinister machinations of human behavior" (John Freeman, Pittsburgh Gazette).