For nearly thirty years from 1940, the Gemini Studios of Madras (Chennai) was the most influential film-producing organisation of India and its founder, the brilliant multi-faceted entrepreneur S.S.Vasan lent substance and quality to the rather fragile and unpredictable movie business.The Gemini emblem of two small boys with bugles was true to Vasan’s slogan for the Studios,‘when the bugles blow, there is a great show,’ Gemini films entertained millions all over India and abroad.Sahitya Akade...

The early 1960s, also known as the golden age of Indian cinema. Satyan Kumar, reigning screen god, moves from Mumbai to the Madras film industry. There he meets Gopalan, a middling studio writer. An inexplicable connection forms between the two men across the chasms of class and language. But just as an enduring bond springs up, tragedy intervenes. Gopalan’s son mysteriously dies and his wife’s dementia acquires homicidal overtones. Both men flounder as they try to understand their roles i...

Chandrasekhar, adolescent, vulnerable, confused, is growing up in the momentous period before and after 1947, when Hyderabad is the State of Nizam. This political setting drumbeats through the novel, closely and ironically interwoven with Chandrus life at home, in the city and at college. The Eighteenth Parallel, won the Ilakkia Chintanai Book-of-the-Year Award in 1977, and was selected by the National Book Trust of India for translation into several Indian languages. The novel appears in Eng...

The fictional events narrated in Mole! an English translation of Otran, a novel by Ashokamitran take place within a period of seven months, nearly all of them in the American Midwest. The narrator, a culturally rooted writer from Chennai, is transplanted amidst a motley group of fellow-writers from distant parts of the world, all of them as dangerously dislocated as him. Deprived of the language that has brought them fulfilment and distinction, these writers struggle to retain their place of ...

After her epic journey from Ireland to India by bicycle in 1963, Dervla Murphy immersed herself in the life of the sub-continent, working for six months in an orphanage for Tibetan children in Northern India. She fell in love with the 'Tiblets' - the cheerful, uncomplaining, independent and affectionate children of the new Tibet-in-exile - but she also managed to explore India's Tibetan frontier, leaving the reader panting in her wake. Alongside her enchantment, Dervla became a perceptive ...

Kuttiedathi and Other Stories is a careful collection of ten short stories. This collection brings together some of the most well known stories of M T Vasudevan Nair, fairly representative of his literary works. Written over a broad span of time from 1962 to 2000, the stories collected here reflect the built-in variety of his fictional concerns and the changing tones of his narration. M T Vasudevan Nair is a renowned Malayalam author and winner of the Jnanpith award for literature (1995). He...

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986) was a independent spiritual writing many books such as Krishnamurti Reader: No. 1, You are the World, Commentaries on living; First series, from the notebooks of J. Krishnamurti, etc.Mary Lutyens (1908-1999) was a British author best known for her three-volume biography of Jiddu Krishnamurti; the other volumes in this series are Krishnamurti: The Years of Awakening and Krishnamurti: The Years of Fulfillment.She observes, "He never liked to loo...

The first Dalit autobiography to be published, Baluta caused a sensation when it first appeared, in Marathi, in 1978. It quickly acquired the status of a classic of modern Indian literature and was also a bestseller in Hindi and other major languages. This is the first time that it has been translated into English. Set in Mumbai and rural Maharashtra of the 1940s and '50s, it describes in shocking detail the practice of untouchability and caste violence. But it also speaks of the pride and...

Set around the time of Partition and written with absorbing intelligence and sympathy, Difficult Daughters is the story of a young woman torn between the desire for education and the lure of illicit love.' Difficult Daughters is intensely imagined, fluidly written, moving. Through our struggles with our parents, it flings us into their own momentous times, their youthful yearnings for love and independence and life. And so it becomes an urgent and ...

Going beyond the typical "how to write" book, The Mindful Writer illuminates the creative process: where writing and creativity originate, how mindfulness plays into work, how to cultivate good writing habits, how to grow as a writer and a person, and what it means to live a life dedicated to the craft of writing. There's not a writer alive, novice or master, who will not benefit from this book and fall in love with it. Cover to cover, this wise little book is riveting and delight...

Four gems, with new introductions, mark acclaimed Indian writer R. K. Narayan's centennialIntroducing this collection of stories, R. K. Narayan describes how in India "the writer has only to look out of the window to pick up a character and thereby a story." Composed of powerful, magical portraits of all kinds of people, and comprising stories written over almost forty years, Malgudi Days presents Narayan's imaginary city in full color, revealing the essen...