An extraordinary account of ordinary people in troubled times In 2001, a calamitous earthquake struck Gujarat. A year later came the kind of communal carnage the nation had not seen since the Partition. For Robin David, then an assistant editor with the Times of India, the two events engendered a tectonic shift in his own life. The earthquake left deep cracks in his ancestral home, while the riots undermined all the certainties of life, making it impossible to walk through hitherto familia...

Anant, a thirty-five-year-old small-time photographer in Ahmedabad, has a recurring nightmare. In it, a three-legged bitch is chained to his ankle, slowing his step and dragging angrily behind him. Try as he might, he is neither able to free himself of the mongrel in the dream nor the dream itself. What does the dog signify? Raashee, his one-time lover who now exists only in online chat windows? Or Diane Arbus, the legendary 1960s' photographer whose groundbreaking ideas have no takers in ...

Cool Rules introduces the reader to a new cultural category. While the authors do not claim to have discovered Cool, they believe they are the first to attempt a serious, systematic analysis of Cool’s history, psychology, and importance.The contemporary Cool attitude is barely 50 years old, but its roots are older than that. Cool Rules traces Cool’s ancient origins in European, Asian, and African cultures, its prominence in the African-American jazz scene of the 1...

This book provides a view of literary life under the Nazis, highlighting the ambiguities, rivalries and conflicts that determined the cultural climate of that period and beyond. Focusing on a group of writers – in particular, Hans Grimm, Erwin Guido Kolbenheyer, Wilhelm Schäfer, Emil Strauß, Börries Freiherr von Münchhausen and Rudolf Binding – it examines the continuities in völkisch-nationalist thought in Germany from c. 1890 into the post-war period and the ways in which vö...

Now available in a single, abridged paperback, Ian Kershaw's Hitler is the definitive biography of the Nazi leader.Ian Kershaw's two volume biography, Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris and Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis, was greeted with universal acclaim as the essential work on one of the most malign figures in history, from his earliest origins to the final days of the Second World War.Now this landmark historical work is available in one si...

Salman Rushdie’s critically acclaimed magical realist novel explores good and evil, power and responsibility, exile and homecoming.'A masterpiece' Sunday TimesJust before dawn one winter's morning, a plane blows apart high above the English Channel and two figures tumble, clutched in an embrace, towards the sea: Gibreel Farishta, India's legendary movie star, and Saladin Chamcha, the man of a thousand voices.Washed up, aliv...

'A wonderful, rich and humane novel... a classic' GuardianBorn at the stroke of midnight at the exact moment of India's independence, Saleem Sinai is a special child.However, this coincidence of birth has consequences he is not prepared for: telepathic powers connect him with 1,000 other 'midnight's children' all of whom are endowed with unusual gifts. Inextricably linked to his nation, Saleem's story is a whirlwind of disasters an...

**'The most comprehensive history in any language of the disastrous epoch of the Third Reich' Ian Kershaw, author of Hitler'The most gripping account I've read of German life before and during the rise of the Nazis' A.S. Byatt, Times Literary Supplement**The Coming of the Third Reich: How the Nazis Destroyed Democracy and Seized Power in Germanyexplores how the First World War, the Weimar Republic and the Great Depression ...

The Third Reich in Power examines how it was possible for a group of ideological obsessive to remould a society famous for its sophistication and complexity into a one-party state directed at war and race hate. Richard J. Evans shows how the Nazis won over the hearts and minds of German citizens, twisted science, religion and culture, and transformed the economy, education, law and order to achieve total dominance in German politics and society. Drawing on an extraordinary range of researc...

The notorious concentration camp system was a central pillar of the Third Reich, supporting the Nazi war against political, racial and social outsiders whilst also intimidating the population at large. Established during the first months of the Nazi dictatorship in 1933, several million men, women and children of many nationalities had been incarcerated in the camps by the end of the Second World War. At least two million lost their lives.This comprehensive volume offers the first ...

The Nazis never won a majority in free elections, but soon after Hitler took power most people turned away from democracy and backed the Nazi regime. Hitler won growing support even as he established the secret police (Gestapo) and concentration camps. What has been in dispute for over fifty years is what the Germans knew about these camps, and in what ways were they involved in the persecution of 'race enemies', slave workers, and socialoutsiders.To answer these questions, and to explore ...

A BEAUTIFUL TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY EDITION OF THE BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING MASTERPIECE WITH A NEW PREFACE FROM THE AUTHOR‘A magnificent novel of humane breadth and wisdom, comic tenderness and political acuteness’ Hermione Lee, chair of the Booker Prize judgesHigh in the Himalayas sits a dilapidated mansion, home to three people, each dreaming of another time.The judge, broken by a world too messy for justice, is haunted by his ...