Kirjahaku

A book about building a home and a wild garden on the edge of a Himalayan forest, illuminated by the author's own watercolors. When acclaimed novelist Anuradha Roy and her husband stumble upon a derelict cottage in the hill station of Ranikhet, they decide it is where they will now live. Fresh from the neon-lit publishing offices of Delhi, Roy is initially bemused by the gentle pace of life in the mountains but then won over: spellbound by the landscape, taken to the heart of the rural community, and adopted by four mountain dogs and counting. As Roy tries to rebuild the cottage and create a garden, she encounters nature at its most fierce, beautiful, and vulnerable, and over twenty-five years bears witness to the destructive impact of global warming on the alpine ecosystem. What emerges is a tender and intimate portrait of her surroundings in which rugged nature, loveable dogs, and recalcitrant humans come together to captivating effect. Written with unsentimental clarity, humor, and poignancy, this is a story of profound transformations.

LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2015A stark and unflinching novel by a spellbinding storyteller, about religion, love and violence in the modern world.A train stops at a railway station. A young woman jumps off. She has wild hair, sloppy clothes, a distracted air. She looks Indian, yet she is somehow not. The sudden violence of what happens next leaves the other passengers gasping.The train terminates at Jarmuli, a temple town by the sea. Here, among pilgrims, priests and ashrams, three old women disembark only to encounter the girl once again. What is someone like her doing in this remote corner, which attracts only worshippers?Over the next five days, the old women live out their long-planned dream of a holiday together; their temple guide finds ecstasy in forbidden love; and the girl is joined by a photographer battling his own demons.The full force of the evil and violence beneath the serene surface of the town becomes evident when their lives overlap and collide. Unexpected connections are revealed between devotion and violence, friendship and fear, as Jarmuli is revealed as a place with a long, dark past that transforms all who encounter it.

"A writer of great subtlety and intelligence . . . a beautifully written and compelling story of how families fall apart and what remains of the aftermath" Kamila Shamsie, winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction 2018 "The book everyone is talking about for the summer" Lorraine Candy, Sunday TimesIn my childhood, I was known as the boy whose mother had run off with an Englishman" - so begins the story of Myshkin and his mother, Gayatri, who is driven to rebel against tradition and follow her artist's instinct for freedom.Freedom of a different kind is in the air across India. The fight against British rule is reaching a critical turn. The Nazis have come to power in Germany. At this point of crisis, two strangers arrive in Gayatri's town, opening up for her the vision of other possible lives. What took Myshkin's mother from India to Dutch-held Bali in the 1930s, ripping a knife through his comfortingly familiar environment? Excavating the roots of the world in which he was abandoned, Myshkin comes to understand the connections between anguish at home and a war-torn universe overtaken by patriotism. Anuradha Roy's enthralling novel is a powerful parable for our times, telling the story of men and women trapped in a dangerous era uncannily similar to the present. Impassioned, elegiac, and gripping, it brims with the same genius that has brought Roy's earlier fiction international renown."One of India's greatest living authors" - O, The Oprah Magazine"Roy's writing is a joy" - Financial Times

In a remote town in the Himalaya, Maya tries to put behind her a time of great sorrow. By day she teaches in a school and at night she types up drafts of a magnum opus by her landlord, a relic of princely India known to all as Diwan Sahib. Her bond with this eccentric, and her friendship with a peasant girl, Charu, give her the sense that she might be able to forge a new existence away from the devastation of her past. As Maya finds out, no place is remote enough or small enough. The world she has come to love, where people are connected with nature, is endangered by the town's new administration. The impending elections are hijacked by powerful outsiders who divide people and threaten the future of her school. Charu begins to behave strangely, and soon Maya understands that a new boy in the neighbourhood may be responsible. When Diwan Sahib's nephew arrives to set up his trekking company on their estate, she is drawn to him despite herself, and finally she is forced to confront bitter and terrible truths. A many-layered and powerful narrative, by turns poetic, elegiac and comic, by the author of An Atlas of Impossible Longing.

"This is why we read fiction at all" raves the Washington Post: Family life meets historical romance in this critically acclaimed, "gorgeous, sweeping novel" (Ms Magazine) about two people who find each other when abandoned by everyone else, marking the signal American debut of an award-winning writer who richly deserves her international acclaim. On the outskirts of a small town in Bengal, a family lives in solitude in their vast new house. Here, lives intertwine and unravel. A widower struggles with his love for an unmarried cousin. Bakul, a motherless daughter, runs wild with Mukunda, an orphan of unknown caste adopted by the family. Confined in a room at the top of the house, a matriarch goes slowly mad; her husband searches for its cause as he shapes and reshapes his garden. As Mukunda and Bakul grow, their intense closeness matures into something else, and Mukunda is banished to Calcutta. He prospers in the turbulent years after Partition, but his thoughts stay with his home, with Bakul, with all that he has lost--and he knows that he must return.

From the widely acclaimed author of An Atlas of Impossible Longing, a powerful and triumphantly beautiful novel set in contemporary India, about a young woman forging a new life in the foothills of the Himalayas. LONGLISTED FOR THE 2011 MAN ASIAN LITERARY PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR THE HINDU LITERARY PRIZE FOR BEST FICTION 2011 With her debut novel, An Atlas of Impossible Longing, Anuradha Roy's exquisite storytelling instantly won readers' hearts around the world, and the novel was named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post and The Seattle Times. Now, Roy has returned with another masterpiece that is already earning international prize attention, an evocative and deeply moving tale of a young woman making a new life for herself amid the foothills of the Himalaya. Desperate to leave a private tragedy behind, Maya abandons herself to the rhythms of the little village, where people coexist peacefully with nature. But all is not as it seems, and she soon learns that no refuge is remote enough to keep out the modern world. When power-hungry politicians threaten her beloved mountain community, Maya finds herself caught between the life she left behind and the new home she is determined to protect. Elegiac, witty, and profound by turns, and with a tender love story at its core, The Folded Earth brims with the same genius and love of language that made An Atlas of Impossible Longing an international success and confirms Anuradha Roy as a major literary talent.

Long-listed for the Man Booker Prize, a novel about violence, love, and religion in modern India On a train bound for the seaside town of Jarmuli, known for its temples, three elderly women meet a young documentary filmmaker named Nomi, whose braided hair, tattoos, and foreign air set her apart. At a brief stop en route, the women witness a sudden assault on Nomi that leaves her stranded as the train pulls away. Later in Jarmuli, among pilgrims, priests, and ashrams, the women disembark only to find that Nomi has managed to arrive on her own. What is someone like her, clearly not a worshipper, doing in this remote place? Over the next five days, the women live out their long-planned dream of a holiday together; their temple guide pursues a forbidden love; and Nomi is joined by a photographer to scout locations for a documentary. As their lives overlap and collide, Nomi's past comes into focus, and the serene surface of the town is punctured by violence and abuse as Jarmuli is revealed as a place with a long, dark history that transforms all who encounter it. A haunting, vibrant novel that was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and short-listed for the Hindu Literary Prize, Anuradha Roy's Sleeping on Jupiter is a brilliantly told story of contemporary India from an internationally acclaimed writer.

Beginning in 1907 with the founding of a factory in Songarh, a small provincial town where narrow attitudes prevail, the story is of three generations of an Indian family, brilliantly told, in which a sensitive and intelligent foundling boy orphan who is casteless and without religion and Bakul, the motherless granddaughter of the house, grow up together. The boy, Mukunda, spends his time as a servant in the house or reading the books of Mrs Barnum, an Anglo-Englishwoman whose life was saved long ago by Bakul's grandmother, by now demented by loneliness. Mrs Barnum gives Mukunda the run of her house, but as he and Bakul grow, they become aware that their intense closeness is becoming something else, and Bakul's father is warned to separate them. He banishes Mukunda to a school in Calcutta. The many strands of this intensely fashioned narrative converge when Mukunda, by now a successful businessman, returns to Songarh years after he has been exiled from the only home he knew, to resolve the family's destiny.

LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2015 AND WINNER OF THE 2016 DSC PRIZE FOR SOUTH ASIAN LITERATUREA stark and unflinching novel by a spellbinding storyteller, about religion, love and violence in the modern world.A train stops at a railway station. A young woman jumps off. She has wild hair, sloppy clothes, a distracted air. She looks Indian, yet she is somehow not. The sudden violence of what happens next leaves the other passengers gasping.The train terminates at Jarmuli, a temple town by the sea. Here, among pilgrims, priests and ashrams, three old women disembark only to encounter the girl once again. What is someone like her doing in this remote corner, which attracts only worshippers?Over the next five days, the old women live out their long-planned dream of a holiday together; their temple guide finds ecstasy in forbidden love; and the girl is joined by a photographer battling his own demons.The full force of the evil and violence beneath the serene surface of the town becomes evident when their lives overlap and collide. Unexpected connections are revealed between devotion and violence, friendship and fear, as Jarmuli is revealed as a place with a long, dark past that transforms all who encounter it.

Moving its protagonists between India and Britain, The Earthspinner shows the many ways in which the East encounters the West, fanaticism wars tirelessly against reason, and the individual's creative desires struggle against a populace's basic instinct for destruction.

From the Man Booker Prize-nominated author of Sleeping on Jupiter and "one of India's greatest living authors" (O, The Oprah Magazine), a poignant and sweeping novel set in India during World War II and the present day about a son's quest to uncover the truth about his mother. In my childhood, I was known as the boy whose mother had run off with an Englishman. The man was in fact German, but in small-town India in those days, all white foreigners were largely thought of as British. So begins the "gracefully wrought" (Kirkus Reviews) story of Myshkin and his mother, Gayatri, who rebels against tradition to follow her artist's instinct for freedom. Freedom of a different kind is in the air across India. The fight against British rule is reaching a critical turn. The Nazis have come to power in Germany. At this point of crisis, two strangers arrive in Gayatri's town, opening up to her the vision of other possible lives. What took Myshkin's mother from India and Dutch-held Bali in the 1930s, ripping a knife through his comfortingly familiar universe? Excavating the roots of the world in which he was abandoned, Myshkin comes to understand the connections between the anguish at home and a war-torn universe overtaken by patriotism. Evocative and moving, "this mesmerizing exploration of the darker consequences of freedom, love, and loyalty is an astonishing display of Roy's literary prowess" (Publishers Weekly).

Rethinking Human-Animal Relationship engages with animal studies, a growing interdisciplinary field that reveals the deep human unreason and moral schizophrenia regarding their animal 'others'. This book focuses on the links of the unrelenting exploitation of animals throughout history to the domination of humans over other humans: women, lower classes, colonized people and other marginalized categories that are more or less animalized by oppressors. Facilitated by scientific insights into physical and emotional continuity between humans and non-humans as well as by the opening up of a theoretical space by postmodernism, postcolonialism, feminism and other such critical modes of discourse, animal studies emphasizes the human failure to look beyond themselves due to cultural blinders. It emerges in the exploration of shifts in thought in this book that ultimately, this leads to a posthumanistic view, asserting that rather than championing the rights of certain select subjects from a safe ontological distance, one should, fundamentally question the very human schema of knowing them.