Books of The Good Muslim of Jackson Heights

Jaysinh Birjepatil was born in Baroda and educated in England. He teaches English literature at Marlboro College in Vermont, USA. He has also taught at the University of Baroda and Brown University. His poetry has appeared in journals and anthologies on both sides of the Atlantic.

In Jackson Heights, New York’s Little India, hardworking, honest-to-goodness traders rub shoulders with ruthless entrepreneurs, reclusive antique dealers, homeless nobodies, larger-than-life merchant princes, lawyers, doctors and IT specialists. Into this heady mix land the urbane and sophisticated Amolinis—Siraj and Shabnam—sectarian violence in their Central Indian hometown having driven them into enforced exile. While Shabnam, enrolls in law school, Siraj makes peace with his new surroundings and his academic career takes off. But his secular moorings suffer a severe shock when, with the banning of The Satanic Verses and the storming of the Babri Masjid, large cracks begin to disfigure the harmonious façade of Jackson Heights and even his relationship with his wife. He recuperates from what he thinks is the ultimate disaster—he is falsely charged, by the FBI, of complicity in a terrorist plot to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge—only to be rudely yanked back to the primal darkness of 9/11.

Weaving together the personal and the political, The Good Muslim of Jackson Heights is absorbing and a devastating portrait of our divided world.

ISBN: 9780143068297
Author: Birjepatil Jaysinh
Published by: Penguin Books India
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Young Samurai: The Ring of Water

AUGUST, 1613. Bruised and battered, Jack Fletcher wakes up in a roadside inn wrapped only in a dirty kimono. He has lost everything, including his memory of what happened.

Determined to discover the truth, Jack goes on a quest to retrieve his belongings - his precious swords, his friend Akiko''s black pearl and most important of all, his father’s prize possession. Relying on his samurai and ninja training, Jack realises The Ring of Water is the key to his survival.

But with only a washed up Ronin - a masterless samurai - for help, what will Jack manage to find? What will he lose? And what will he have to sacrifice?

For more information about the Young Samurai series please visit www.youngsamurai.com

ISBN: 9780141332543
Author: Chris Bradford
Published by: Penguin Books India
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Blue Blood

Uttara Chauhan grew up in Saskatchewan, Canada, and was educated in Canada and India. She has lived and worked in India as a planning consultant and freelance writer. Currently, she works as a policy analyst for the Government of Canada. Her first novel, A Model House, was published in 2003. She lives in Ottawa.

Peeling back the layers of myth and innuendo surrounding erstwhile royalty in India, the stories in Blue Blood explore the lives of individuals who, bereft of power and wealth, must now live as commoners, grappling with the banalities of modern life.

The title story, narrated by an elderly tour guide, unravels the truth behind the tragic fate of Anne Beckford, a European woman who married an Indian maharaja for love. In ‘The Birthday’, a disinherited gay prince risks disapproval when he returns to his ancestral home for the centennial celebrations of his great-grandfather, a war hero ravaged by Alzheimer’s disease. ‘The Last King of Portugal’, set on the island of Diu, describes the mysterious death of Eduardo Braganza, an Indian-born descendant of the Portuguese royal family. And ‘The Search’ follows a young woman from Toronto as she embarks on an international quest to find a family heirloom, only to discover a long-kept secret.

With intricate plots and nuanced characters, these eight tales skilfully capture the personal triumphs and tragedies of former royals as they navigate the space between past glory and the reality of the present.

ISBN: 9780143414421
Author: Uttara Chauhan
Published by: Penguin Books India
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The Big Bookshelf: Sunil Sethi in Conversation with Thirty Famous Authors

Sunil Sethi (b. 1954), journalist, columnist and television presenter, has hosted the weekly literary show Just Books on NDTV since early 2005. He was one of the founding editorial team of India Today, has worked for the Hindustan Times and been a columnist for the Times of India and the Indian Express. His journalism has appeared in The Economist, the Boston Globe and several international publications; he has scripted and presented documentaries for the BBC and Channel 4. A recipient of the Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University and the Japan Foundation fellowship, he is married to the textile designer Shalini. They have one daughter and live in New Delhi.

Famous writers are often reticent about how and why they write, how their ideas and themes develop or how their characters and plots emerge. They can be equally reserved about their personal histories. But in the hands of seasoned journalist and skilful interviewer Sunil Sethi, presenter of Just Books, NDTV’s long-running weekend literary show, they open up in unexpected and fascinating ways. In this selection of thirty of his best interviews from Just Books, they speak freely and frankly about their craft, their life stories and the nature of their creative impulse.

Featured here are literary giants, including Nobel laureates and Booker Prize winners; internationally acclaimed historians, biographers and philosophers; authors of best-selling thrillers, novels and travel books; and brilliant young trendsetters. Their conversations with Sethi are, in turn, reflective and incisive, witty and poignant, but always candid and intimate, as they provide rare insights into their inner lives and engagement with the world they inhabit. Each voice in this diverse collection is original, distinctive and revealing, as they cover the wide terrain of life and literature.

A veritable feast for all book lovers, and an indispensable companion for students and teachers of literature, this volume vividly brings alive each author’s personality and work, ingeniously bridging the gap between reader and writer.

ISBN: 9780143416296
Author: Sunil Sethi
Published by: Penguin Books India
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Empires Apart: America and Russia from the Vikings to Iraq

Author, business executive and public servant Brian Landers

has an MBA from London Business School. Educated in the UK and US, he has lived in Europe, North America and South America. Having forsaken academia to become a political adviser in the City of London——where he was first introduced to the CIA——he went on to a career in British, American and Swedish multinationals. His directorships have included Penguin Books and Waterstone’s in the UK, Habitat in the UK and Spain, and MML, South Africa’s largest publisher. In addition he spent three years as a senior British civil servant, worked on charity programmes in various parts of the world including India, had spells with Pricewaterhouse consultancy, served as a trustee of the Royal Armouries and was inaugural deputy chairman of the Financial Ombudsman Service. He is currently the treasurer of the UK section of Amnesty International and a member of the board of the UK Audit Commission. He has written on subjects as varied as quangos, Europe and House of Commons committees.

The American road to Baghdad started when the first English settlers landed in Virginia determined to impose their values on everyone they encountered. Simultaneously, the first Russians crossed the Urals and the two empires that would dominate the twentieth century were born. Empires Apart covers the history of the Americans and Russians from the Vikings to the present day. It shows the two empires developed in parallel as they expanded to the Pacific and launched wars against the nations around them. They both developed an imperial ''ideology'' that was central to the way they perceived themselves.

Then, in the period between the American Civil War and the Spanish—American War, the American ideology changed and the lust for new territory to conquer largely disappeared. It is argued that what caused this change was the advent of Big Business which set out to conquer the world in a different way. Soon after, the ideology of the Russian Empire also changed with the advent of Communism. The key argument of this book is that these changes did not alter the core imperial values of either nation. Both nations have shown that they are still willing to use military force and clandestine intrigue to enforce imperial control.

To support these arguments, it is necessary to strip away many preconceptions of popular history and this book uses numerous anecdotes to illustrate events as they really happened. The most pervasive preconception is that America has never been an ''imperial'' power. By simultaneously recounting the histories of the two nations this preconception is decisively dissolved, demonstrating the true nature of America''s global ambitions.

For those interested in revisiting orthodox history, Empires Apart is the definitive companion to geopolitics and post-cold war political strategies.

ISBN: 9780143068310
Author: Brian Landers
Published by: Penguin Books India
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Danny Boyle: In His Own Words

Amy Raphael was born in London in 1967. She has worked on The Face, Elle and Esquire and now freelances for The Observer and The Telegraph. Her first book, Never Mind the Bollocks: Women Rewrite Rock, was published by Virago in 1995. She conducted the conversations and edited Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh, which was published in 2008.

Danny Boyle''s journey to Oscar night began in a working-class family in Lancashire in1956. After a career in the theatre - working for such esteemed companies as Joint Stock and the Royal Court - Boyle went to the BBC and produced dramas in Belfast such as Alan Clarke''s Elephant, as well as directing Mr Wroes Virgins.

Shallow Grave announced the arrival of a dynamic new talent to British cinema – a reputation that was confirmed with the blistering Trainspotting - the zeitgeist film of the 90s. The succeeding films - A Life Less Ordinary, The Beach, 28 Days Later, Sunshine and Slumdog Millionaire - established him as the leading director of his generation -one for whom the collaboration between director, producer and writer was of the essence.

The Danny Boyle who emerges from these interviews is frank, funny, charming and wholeheartedly inspiring.

Slumdog Millionaire was a huge international hit - the film won eight Academy Awards, the most for any film of 2008. It also won seven BAFTA Awards, five Critic’s Choice Awards and four Golden Globes. Danny Boyle has become a huge household name - his films have received both critical acclaim and massive commercial success.

ISBN: 9780571253869
Author: Amy Raphael
Published by: Penguin Books India
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India: A Portrait

Patrick French is a writer and historian, born in England in 1966. He is the author of Younghusband: The Last Great Imperial Adventurer, which won the Somerset Maugham Award and the Royal Society of Literature W.H. Heinemann Prize, Liberty or Death: India’s Journey to Independence and Division, which won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, Tibet, Tibet: A Personal History of a Lost Land and, most recently, The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Hawthornden Prize.

‘India is a macrocosm, and may be the world’s default setting for the future.’

The independence of India was a time of hope and uncertainty in equal measure. It was also a time of accelerated history, when every decision—whether considered or arbitrary—had a lasting effect on its vast and diverse populace. In the decades since, India has evolved into a globally prominent nation of enormous promise and achievement, great contradictions and conflict. In this landmark book, Patrick French, author of the acclaimed bestseller Liberty or Death: India’s Journey to Independence and Division, chronicles the epic change.

With his superb sense of history and political insight, and an eye for the extraordinary that is as keen as his understanding of the everyday, he builds a compelling narrative of the social and economic revolutions that are transforming India in fundamental ways. Beginning with an account of how the Union was conceived and put together—when India took ‘a gamble on democracy’—he examines the astonishing shift from rigid socialism to unbridled capitalism, the continuing empowerment of the Dalit and lower castes, the anxieties of secular India’s large Muslim minority and the rise of violence in the conduct of the State and among those it neglects or suppresses. Focusing on the most recent changes, he shows how extreme hunger and destitution persist even as millions are pulling themselves free of poverty, how nepotism has triumphed in politics and how sudden societal changes allow the deeply traditional and the startlingly unconventional to co-exist.

Along the way, French also paints revealing portraits of Nehru, Ambedkar, Indira and Sonia Gandhi, Mayawati, L.K. Advani and Manmohan Singh. And through his travels across India, he speaks to Maoist revolutionaries, mafia dons, chained quarry workers, technological innovators, cash-rich pimps and self-made billionaire entrepreneurs, trying to answer the central question of the book: ‘Why is India like it is today?’ The result is a richly detailed, wide-ranging and hugely rewarding portrait of modern India.

ISBN: 9780670085514
Author: Patrick French
Published by: Penguin Books India
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India Unlimited: A Corporate Journey

Sharmila Kantha is the author of Building India with Partnership: The Story of CII 1895-2005. Her other publications include two novels, Just the Facts, Madamji and A Break in the Circle.

A fascinating visual account of Indian enterprise and business, India Unlimited: A Corporate Journey traces the exciting evolution of Indian business from the time of the Indus Valley Civilization, focusing in particular on the transformations since the advent of liberalization.

British rule introduced new forms of entrepreneurship and intrepid Indian entrepreneurs established new companies, challenging British conglomerates. The mixed-economy model after Independence laid equal emphasis on public, private and small sectors. Corporate India seized the initiative to emerge as an essential partner in development. Family businesses, public sector enterprises, new entrepreneurs and small scale enterprises flourished across the country.

Economic reforms in 1991 led to a new phase in the growth of corporate India. Successfully restructuring to address the challenges of globalization, India Inc. pushed ahead in all sectors, becoming a powerhouse in the global economy. Economic growth has led to an explosion in the linkages of corporate India with rural India, with small entrepreneurs and with the world. Today, inclusive growth is a partnership between the government and corporate India. The Ministry of Corporate Affairs with its affiliated bodies plays a key role as facilitator, enabler and regulator.

Through enduring images and lucid prose, this book portrays the dynamism of the Indian corporate sector today and presents the multi-dimensional facets of Indian entrepreneurship.

ISBN: 9780670085101
Author: Kantha Sharmila
Published by: Penguin Books India
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