Download or read book Sunlight on a Broken Column written by Attia Hosain and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2021-08-19 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sunlight on a Broken Column, first published in 1961, is an unforgettable coming-of-age story set against the turbulent background of Partition. 'The deftness with which Attia Hosain handles the interplay of manners, class, culture and different forms of female power is gorgeously done . . . Laila is such a remarkable heroine - sharp, spirited and passionate' - KAMILA SHAMSIE 'An extraordinary novel, with an extraordinary heroine. Laila - even from the confines of the women's quarters - is a sharp observer of the tumultuous politics, and the cultural, racial, and religious conflicts of the dying days of the Raj. There is such richness here, waiting to be rediscovered. And readers will fall in love with Laila' MONICA ALI 'My life changed. It had been restricted by invisible barriers almost as effectively as the physically restricted lives of my aunts in the zenana. A window had opened here, a door there, a curtain had been drawn aside; but outside lay a world narrowed by one's field of vision' Laila, orphaned daughter of a distinguished Muslim family, is brought up in her grandfather's traditional household by her aunts, who keep purdah. At fifteen she moves to the home of her 'liberal' but autocratic uncle in Lucknow. As the struggle for Independence sharpens, Laila is surrounded by relatives and university friends caught up in politics, but she is unable to commit herself to any cause: her own fight for independence is a struggle against tradition. With its stunning evocation of India, its political insight and unsentimental understanding of the human heart, Sunlight on a Broken Column is a classic of Muslim life. Attia Hosain published only two books, but her writing has influenced generations of writers. Discover Phoenix Fled, Hosain's acclaimed short-story collection, also published in Virago Modern Classics.
Download or read book Sunlight on a Broken Column written by Attia Hosain and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ýMy life changed. It had been restricted by invisible barriers almost as effectively as the physically restricted lives of my aunts in the zenana. A window had opened here, a door there, a curtain had been drawn aside; but outside lay a world narrowed by oneýs field of vision.ý Laila, orphaned daughter of a distinguished Muslim family, is brought up in her grandfatherýs household by orthodox aunts who keep purdah. At fifteen she moves to the home of a ýliberalý but autocratic uncle in Lucknow. Here, during the 1930s, as the struggle for Indian independence sharpens, Laila is surrounded by relatives and university friends caught up in politics. But Laila is unable to commit herself to any cause: her own fight for independence is a struggle against the claustrophobia of traditional life, from which she can only break away when she falls in love with a man whom her family has not chosen for her. With its beautiful evocation of India, its political insight and unsentimental understanding of the human heart, Sunlight on a Broken Column (1961) is a classic of Muslim life.
Download or read book Phoenix Fled written by Attia Hosain and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2021-08-19 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'There is so much to love and admire in these stories - their understanding of heartbreak, their attention to affection and love across many divides' KAMILA SHAMSIE 'Listen to me, child. You will be a woman soon and must behave well and with modesty. The Kazi will ask you three times whether you will marry Kalloo Mian. Now don't you be shameless, like these modern girls, and shout gleefully "Yes". Be modest and cry softly and say "Hoon".' A marriage is arranged between a little servant girl and a middle-aged cook with an opium habit; an idealistic political worker faces disillusionment; a man returns from years studying in England to a wife he scarcely knows; a conventional bride has her first encounter with her husband's 'emancipated' friends. Telling of the lives of servants and children, of conflict between the old traditions and new ways, and exploring the human repercussions of the Muslim/Hindu divide, these twelve stories present a moving and vivid picture of life in India in the mid-twentieth century. To each episode Attia Hosain brings a superb imaginative understanding and a sense of the poignancy of the smallest of human dramas. Attia Hosain published only two books, but her writing has influenced generations of writers. Discover Sunlight on a Broken Column, Hosain's acclaimed only novel - a coming-of-age story set against the turbulent background of Partition, also published in Virago Modern Classics.
Download or read book Dwelling in the Archive written by Antoinette M. Burton and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2003 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through an analysis of the writings of three 20th century Indian women, this book explores how the memoirs, fictions, and histories written by women can be read as counter-narratives of colonial modernity.
Download or read book Unmarriageable written by Soniah Kamal and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2019-01-22 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This inventive retelling of Pride and Prejudice charms.”—People “A fun, page-turning romp and a thought-provoking look at the class-obsessed strata of Pakistani society.”—NPR Alys Binat has sworn never to marry—until an encounter with one Mr. Darsee at a wedding makes her reconsider. A scandal and vicious rumor concerning the Binat family have destroyed their fortune and prospects for desirable marriages, but Alys, the second and most practical of the five Binat daughters, has found happiness teaching English literature to schoolgirls. Knowing that many of her students won’t make it to graduation before dropping out to marry and have children, Alys teaches them about Jane Austen and her other literary heroes and hopes to inspire the girls to dream of more. When an invitation arrives to the biggest wedding their small town has seen in years, Mrs. Binat, certain that their luck is about to change, excitedly sets to work preparing her daughters to fish for rich, eligible bachelors. On the first night of the festivities, Alys’s lovely older sister, Jena, catches the eye of Fahad “Bungles” Bingla, the wildly successful—and single—entrepreneur. But Bungles’s friend Valentine Darsee is clearly unimpressed by the Binat family. Alys accidentally overhears his unflattering assessment of her and quickly dismisses him and his snobbish ways. As the days of lavish wedding parties unfold, the Binats wait breathlessly to see if Jena will land a proposal—and Alys begins to realize that Darsee’s brusque manner may be hiding a very different man from the one she saw at first glance. Told with wry wit and colorful prose, Unmarriageable is a charming update on Jane Austen’s beloved novel and an exhilarating exploration of love, marriage, class, and sisterhood. Praise for Unmarriageable “Delightful . . . Unmarriageable introduces readers to a rich Muslim culture. . . . [Kamal] observes family dramas with a satiric eye and treats readers to sparkling descriptions of a days-long wedding ceremony, with its high-fashion pageantry and higher social stakes.”—Star Tribune “Thoroughly charming.”—New York Post “[A] funny, sometimes romantic, often thought-provoking glimpse into Pakistani culture, one which adroitly illustrates the double standards women face when navigating sex, love, and marriage. This is a must-read for devout Austenites.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Download or read book Distant Traveller written by Attia Hosain and published by Women Unlimited. This book was released on 2015-09-02 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The accidental discovery of chapters from an unfinished novel and of unpublished stories, made the publication of this anthology of Attia Hosain’s new and selected fiction an inevitability. Attia’s two worlds – the Lucknow she grew up in and the London she later lived and worked in – intersect and mesh in the stories and novel excerpts presented here, reflecting her deep and abiding concern with those caught in the cleft stick of history, and how they come to terms with it. The distinctive quality of her prose – subtle, elegant, with an uncanny ear for dialogue and sharp, yet sympathetic observation – is displayed to stunning effect as she delineates the tension and pathos of lives and societies in transition. Attia Hosain (1913-1998) was born in Lucknow and educated at La Martiniere and Isabella Thoburn College, blending an English liberal education with that of a traditional Muslim household where she was taught Persian, Urdu and Arabic. Influenced in the 1930s by the nationalist movement and the Progressive Writers’ Group in India, she became a journalist, broadcaster and writer. In 1947 she moved to England and presented her own women’s programme on the BBC Eastern Service for many years, and appeared on television and the West End stage. She is the author of Phoenix Fled, a collection of short stories, and Sunlight on a Broken Column, a novel.
Download or read book In Sunlight and in Shadow written by Mark Helprin and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2012 with total page 725 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Returning home after serving World War II to run his family business in New York, a paratrooper falls in love with a young heiress and actress he meets on the State Island ferry.
Download or read book The Hussaini Alam House written by Huma R. Kidwai and published by Zubaan. This book was released on 2014-03-11 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When nine-year-old Ayman arrives in Hyderabad in the early 1950s to come and live at the Hussaini Alam House, she little realizes that the house, and its many inmates, will come to haunt her life and shape her destiny as she grows to become a woman. The house is ruled over by her grandfather, a dignified despot, whom everyone but Ayman, her mother and sister, call ‘Sarkar’ (master). Her mother, ‘the eternal rebel,’ is irreverent, progressive and a communist: a bomb waiting to explode. Ayman herself alternates between being the ‘ugly duckling’ of the house and its little princess. Huma Kidwai’s sensitive and vivid portraits of the characters who teem around the House, offer a window onto the customs and mores of a traditional Hyderabadi Muslim family. Narrated by the forty-year-old Ayman as she recalls the events of her past, The Hussaini Alam House is an elegy to a vanished way of life, a lovesong to the people she has loved and lost, and a psychologically nuanced portrait of the women of the household as they tread a fine line between society’s expectations and their own yearning for freedom. Published by Zubaan.
Download or read book Sunlight on a Broken Column written by Suresh Tappoo and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 111 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Family Matters written by Rohinton Mistry and published by Emblem Editions. This book was released on 2011-02-18 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set in Bombay in the mid-1990s, Family Matters tells a story of familial love and obligation, of personal and political corruption, of the demands of tradition and the possibilities for compassion. Nariman Vakeel, the patriarch of a small discordant family, is beset by Parkinson’s and haunted by memories of his past. He lives with his two middle-aged stepchildren, Coomy, bitter and domineering, and her brother, Jal, mild-mannered and acquiescent. But the burden of the illness worsens the already strained family relationships. Soon, their sweet-tempered half-sister, Roxana, is forced to assume sole responsibility for her bedridden father. And Roxana’s husband, besieged by financial worries, devises a scheme of deception involving his eccentric employer at a sporting goods store, setting in motion a series of events that leads to the narrative’s moving outcome. Family Matters has all the richness, the gentle humour, and the narrative sweep that have earned Mistry the highest of accolades around the world.
Download or read book Sunlight on a Broken Column written by Catherine M. Rae and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 1997 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After their parents die, two sisters in 1890s New York, one plain, one beautiful, face a penniless future. So the plain one moves in with friends, while the beautiful one goes to New England to find a husband, only to return in disgrace.
Download or read book Sunlight on a Broken Column written by Attia Hosain and published by Penguin Group USA. This book was released on 1988 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book In the City by the Sea written by Kamila Shamsie and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2011-06-06 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: _______________ 'Full of fun, longing and wit ... a debut of spirit and imagination, loaded with intelligent charm' - Ali Smith 'A touching and engrossing story ... an assured debut' - The Times 'A colourful and peripatetic view of politics in Pakistan ... an interesting and promising novel' - Guardian _______________ BY THE ACCLAIMED WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION SHORTLISTED FOR THE JOHN LLEWELLYN RHYS PRIZE _______________ Hasan is eleven years old. He loves cricket, pomegranates, the night sky, his clever, vibrant artistic mother and his etymologically obsessed lawyer father, and he adores his next-door neighbour Zehra. One early summer morning, while lazing happily on the roof, Hasan watches a young boy flying a yellow kite fall to his death. Soon after, Hasan's idyllic, sheltered family life is shattered when his beloved uncle Salman, a dissenting politician, is arrested and charged with treason... Set in a land ruled by an oppressive military regime, this eloquent, charming and quietly political novel vividly recreates the confusing world of a young boy on the edge of adulthood, and beautifully illustrates the transformative power of the imagination.
Download or read book Drifts written by Kate Zambreno and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-05-19 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Drifts is a dazzling and enjoyable book. Kate Zambreno has invented a new form. It is a kind of absolute present, real life captured in closeup. I've never read truer pages on the subject of pregnancy. No writer has come so close to achieving a total grasp of life: the entanglement of everyday things, a writing project, and a pregnant body, in a single work.” —Annie Ernaux, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature Named a Best Book of the Year by The Paris Review, Elle, Harper's Bazaar, Esquire, Vulture, and Refinery29 “Reading all Zambreno feels like the jolt one gets from a surprise cut or burn in the kitchen, that sudden recognition that you’re in a body and the body can be hurt.” —Alicia Kennedy, Refinery29 Haunting and compulsively readable, Drifts is an intimate portrait of reading, writing, and creative obsession. At work on a novel that is overdue, spending long days walking neighborhood streets with her restless terrier, corresponding ardently with fellow writers, the narrator grows obsessed with the challenge of writing the present tense, of capturing time itself. Entranced by the work of Rainer Maria Rilke, Albrecht Dürer, Chantal Akerman, and others, she photographs the residents and strays of her neighborhood, haunts bookstores and galleries, and records her thoughts in a yellow notebook that soon subsumes her work on the novel. As winter closes in, a series of disturbances—the appearances and disappearances of enigmatic figures, the burglary of her apartment—leaves her distracted and uncertain . . . until an intense and tender disruption changes everything. A story of artistic ambition, personal crisis, and the possibilities and failures of literature, Drifts is the work of an exhilarating and vital writer.
Download or read book Unsettling Partition Literature Gender Memory written by Jill Didur and published by Pearson Education India. This book was released on 2007-09 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Five Queen s Road written by Sorayya Khan and published by Penguin Books India. This book was released on 2009 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Dina Lal wasn't moving . . . Hindu or not, he wasn't, goddamnit, going anywhere.' Lahore, 1947. Dina Lal, a true-blue Lahori, refuses to leave, staying put in Five Queen's Road, a house he bought, in spite of his wife's greatest misgivings, from an Englishman who was deeply reluctant to part with it. To insulate his family from the mayhem on the streets, Dina Lal converts to Islam and as added protection invites Amir Shah, a Muslim colleague, and his children, Javid and Rubina, to share the house with him. But the events that unfold over the next few months make a mockery of Dina Lal's plans. While Dina Lal and Amir Shah cross swords with each other at every given opportunity-though unexpectedly and in spite of themselves rushing to the other's defence in moments of crisis-a furtive friendship blossoms between Dina Lal and Javid.
Download or read book Radio Empire written by Daniel Ryan Morse and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Initially created to counteract broadcasts from Nazi Germany, the BBC’s Eastern Service became a cauldron of global modernism and an unlikely nexus of artistic exchange. Directed at an educated Indian audience, its programming provided remarkable moments: Listeners in India heard James Joyce reading from Finnegans Wake on the eve of independence, as well as the literary criticism of E. M. Forster and the works of Indian writers living in London. In Radio Empire, Daniel Ryan Morse demonstrates the significance of the Eastern Service for global Anglophone literature and literary broadcasting. He traces how modernist writers used radio to experiment with form and introduce postcolonial literature to global audiences. While innovative authors consciously sought to incorporate radio’s formal features into the novel, literature also exerted a reciprocal and profound influence on twentieth-century broadcasting. Reading Joyce and Forster alongside Attia Hosain, Mulk Raj Anand, and Venu Chitale, Morse demonstrates how the need to appeal to listeners at the edges of the empire pushed the boundaries of literary work in London, inspired high-cultural broadcasting in England, and formed an invisible but influential global network. Adding a transnational perspective to scholarship on radio modernism, Radio Empire demonstrates how the history of broadcasting outside of Western Europe offers a new understanding of the relationship between colonial center and periphery.
