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 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 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 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 Standard Deviation written by Katherine Heiny and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2017-05-23 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: TheSkimm’s Best of Skimm Reads NPR’s Guide to Great Reads The Washington Post’s 50 Notable Works of Fiction of the Year Minnesota Public Radio’s The Best Books to Give and Get: Fiction Picks of the Year An uproarious novel ("Both heart-piercing and, crucially, very funny." —Louise Erdrich, The New York Times) from the celebrated author of Single, Carefree, Mellow about the challenges of a good marriage, the delight and heartache of raising children, and the irresistible temptation to wonder about the path not taken. When Graham Cavanaugh divorced his first wife it was to marry his girlfriend, Audra, a woman as irrepressible as she is spontaneous and fun. But, Graham learns, life with Audra can also be exhausting, constantly interrupted by chatty phone calls, picky-eater houseguests, and invitations to weddings of people he’s never met. Audra firmly believes that through the sheer force of her personality she can overcome the most socially challenging interactions, shepherding her son through awkward playdates and origami club, and even deciding to establish a friendship with Graham’s first wife, Elspeth. Graham isn't sure he understands why Audra longs to be friends with the woman he divorced. After all, former spouses are hard to categorize—are they enemies, old flames, or just people you know really, really well? And as Graham and Audra share dinners, holidays, and late glasses of wine with his first wife he starts to wonder: How can anyone love two such different women? Did I make the right choice? Is there a right choice? A hilarious and rueful debut novel of love, marriage, infidelity, and origami, Standard Deviation never deviates from the superb.

Download or read book Sunlight on a Broken Column written by Catherine M. Rae and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2014-08-12 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set in turn-of-the-century New York and Newport, Rhode Island, Catherine Rae's novel Sunlight on a Broken Column blends romance and suspense in the story of two sisters who take different paths upon the loss of their family fortune. After Caroline Slade's parents die suddenly in 1892, her father's debts force Caroline and her brother and sister to leave the family's New York City mansion. With the kind help of their elderly neighbor in the adjoining house, Caroline and her brother are able to complete their schooling, while their sister, Laurel, goes to New England in the hope of marrying well. When Lauren returns to New York in disgrace and impulsively marries for money, Caroline is caught in the middle as her new brother-in-law's strange, tormented behavior threatens to drive her sister away and throws the family into turmoil.

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 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 Maps written by Nuruddin Farah and published by Arcade Publishing. This book was released on 1999 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a young adolescent seeking perspective on both his country and himself, Askar goes to live with his cosmopolitan aunt and uncle in the capital, Mogadiscio."--BOOK JACKET.

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 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Sunlight on a Broken Column written by Attia Hosain and published by . This book was released on 1979 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Hillbilly Elegy written by J. D. Vance and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2018-05-01 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER IS NOW A MAJOR-MOTION PICTURE DIRECTED BY RON HOWARD AND STARRING AMY ADAMS, GLENN CLOSE, AND GABRIEL BASSO "You will not read a more important book about America this year."—The Economist "A riveting book."—The Wall Street Journal "Essential reading."—David Brooks, New York Times Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans. The disintegration of this group, a process that has been slowly occurring now for more than forty years, has been reported with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck. The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J. D.’s grandparents were “dirt poor and in love,” and moved north from Kentucky’s Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually one of their grandchildren would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of success in achieving generational upward mobility. But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that J.D.'s grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, never fully escaping the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. With piercing honesty, Vance shows how he himself still carries around the demons of his chaotic family history. A deeply moving memoir, with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.