The saga of Alma Kabutari does not begin with Alma herself. It has its roots in centuries of social and sexual subjugation of the kabutaris by the upper-caste kajjas. Like Chittor's Rani Padmini of yore, from whom the kabutaris are descended, the onus of breaking the vicious circle and reclaiming human status for her people falls on young Alma. The engrossing story of young Alma's evolution from victim to survivor to tenacious rebel, Alma Kabutari opens a window to the suffering and exploitation of a tribe that teeters at the very fringes of society even today, and that urgently needs our concern and understanding.
Maitreyi Pushpa has written consistently about rural politics and has endeavoured to explore the web of human relationships in a time of moral ambivalence and social uncertainty. She is the recipient of many accolades including the SAARC Literary Award for Alma Kabutari, the Premchand Samman and the Sahityakar Samman
A timeless tale of a child denied his childhood; Arumugam explores the relationship between a mother and son, the difficult emotions that weave their stories into a single fabric of love.
When the last reel winds down in the projection room of the old cinema house, Madita Junghans, the German with Indian genes, teams up with her boyfriend Nikolaus as detective couple, Nick and Mattie, to set off on a search for Madita’s biological father. Their only clue is that he is an Indian. Mattie’s mother lives in a psychotic dream world. Her foster father Hinnarck is anything but talkative. Mattie and Nick soon get sucked into a deadly adventure, centred around a dark chapter of Indo-Germanic history. A scintillating fusion of whodunit, postcolonial fable and historical romance, Cut! Is a film in novel form. In her refreshingly subjective style, Merle Kroger portrays the tenuous connections between reel and real life, the past and the present, and with chilling perception, depicts the clash of stark Hamburg reality with the Bollywood dream factory.
Books Details: Structured as a biography of a fictional Malayalam writer, this novel is at one level a critique of the world of Tamil letters and on another, a novel of ideas engaged with the burning questions of being and existence.
Ruby Gupta- heiress, social worker, mother of two – has built, brick by brick, a wall around herself to soak up the fire within. It is her granddaughter, Kadambari, who manages to connect with her precious Nani. They live individual lives, die fleeting deaths, trying all the while to grasp the silences in between. And then a stranger comes into Rubydi’s life …
Thi Jaa weaves a lyrical story of a vedapadasalai by the Kaveri and an orthodox household in Madras with an array of vivid, lifelike characters. His portrayal of women who pursue their passions with calm self-assurance is bold and uncritical
It’s a complex universe that Kiran Nagarkar leads us into. Seven Sixes are Forty Three explores the dimensions of relationships in terms of an empty physicality and loneliness as an inherent element in modern lives.
Set in the first quarter of 20th century Delhi, The Heart Has Its Reasons dwells on the fine balance between love and family. Writer par excellence and recipient of the Katha Chudamani and Sahitya Akademi Awards, Sobti’s powerful narratives defy territorial specifics.
Published more than 125 years ago, The Life and Times of Pratapa Mudaliar, is an adventurous journey to the realm of folk tales and fables, mythology and morality. A colourful expedition from one story to another, it moves from humour to satire, from failure to success, from tears to laughter. Splendidly translated by Meenakshi Tyagarajan and with an Afterword by Sascha Ebeling, Katha proudly presents the very first Tamil novel.
The Man from Chinnamasta is set in the times of unrest and turmoil at the turn of the twentieth century, the novel paints the hoary history of Assam's most famous temple of the Sakta cult, Kamakhya.
A carpenter's son, winner of practically every literary award in the country, including the Padma Shri for literature, and the Jnanpith for lifetime achievement, Gurdialji has been and done so many things in his life: He has made wheels for bullock carts, been a college professor for a living, painted for leisure, moulded water tanks out of iron sheets. He's lived life and so can write life. His writings function in the realm of human creativity, hovering between the private and the public, the individual and the social.
The Survivors, Unhoye, is a novel that reminds us that humanity has a place apart on this earth.
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