Farzana's Spite

Farzana's Spite
Author: Felix Graves
Publisher: Felix Graves
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2024-05-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

Life is about as good as it gets for an anxious and depressed bastard stripped of any social benefits of her caste. Farzana has a cushy job, a wonderful best friend, and a mother and younger brother who love her to bits. Then the faerie who abandoned her mother before she was born—the father she always hoped to meet—returns, brutally murders the royal family, and seizes the crown for himself. That comfortable life? Shattered. Slowly but inevitably, both the country and Farzana’s life are dragged into a terrifying and lethal storm of chaos. If someone doesn’t step up soon to set things right, there won’t be much left worth saving. Farzana’s Spite is a queer dark fantasy featuring a diverse cast doing their best to stay alive during a traumatic and tumultuous period. A blend of tragedy, romance, and mystery, this story was written for anyone ever made to believe they were broken beyond repair, and who needs a story to kill that thought once and for all.

Farzana

Farzana
Author: Julia Keay
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2014-09-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 0857735691

Amongst the riches of nineteenth century India, as the British fought their way across Mughal territory, an orphaned streetgirl ends up at court with the ear of the Emperor. That girl was Farzana, and she would become a courtesan, a leader of armies, a treasured defender of the last Mughal emperor and the head of one of the most legendary courts in history. In this beautifully written book, the author's last, Julia Keay weaves a story which spans the Indian continent and the end of a golden era in Indian history, the story of a nobody who became a teenage seductress and died one of the richest and most prominent women of her age. Farzana rode into battle atop a stallion, though only 4 1/2 feet tall, and led an army which defended a sickly Mughal Empire. She dabbled in witchcraft while gaining favour with the Pope, and died a favourite of the British Raj. Farzana is an evocative and moving depiction of one of the most remarkable, and least-known, historical lives of the nineteenth century.

The Fourth Passenger

The Fourth Passenger
Author: Mini Nair
Publisher: Momentum
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2012-02-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1743340214

Set in Mumbai during the Hindu-Muslim conflict of the early 1990s, The Fourth Passenger is the story of four women raised with traditional Indian values, whose partnership give them the temerity to stand up against religious extremism. Having reached their thirties and disillusioned with their lives and husbands, their decision to open an urban food stand is mingled with their memories of a distant past when two of them loved the same man. But, in order to establish their fledgling business, they must contend with individual temperament, extortionists, ruthless competitors, and most importantly, the prevailing religious intolerance.

The Postcolonial World

The Postcolonial World
Author: Jyotsna G. Singh
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 772
Release: 2016-10-04
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1315297671

The Postcolonial World presents an overview of the field and extends critical debate in exciting new directions. It provides an important and timely reappraisal of postcolonialism as an aesthetic, political, and historical movement, and of postcolonial studies as a multidisciplinary, transcultural field. Essays map the terrain of the postcolonial as a global phenomenon at the intersection of several disciplinary inquiries. Framed by an introductory chapter and a concluding essay, the eight sections examine: Affective, Postcolonial Histories Postcolonial Desires Religious Imaginings Postcolonial Geographies and Spatial Practices Human Rights and Postcolonial Conflicts Postcolonial Cultures and Digital Humanities Ecocritical Inquiries in Postcolonial Studies Postcolonialism versus Neoliberalism The Postcolonial World looks afresh at re-emerging conditions of postcoloniality in the twenty-first century and draws on a wide range of representational strategies, cultural practices, material forms, and affective affiliations. The volume is an essential reading for scholars and students of postcolonialism.

Sister Seen, Sister Heard

Sister Seen, Sister Heard
Author: Kimia Eslah
Publisher: Fernwood Publishing
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2022-03-15T00:00:00Z
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1773635425

Farah’s ready to move out of her parent’s house. It takes an hour to get to campus, and she has no freedom to be herself. Maiheen and Mostafa, first-generation Iranian immigrants in Toronto, find their younger daughter’s “Canadian” ways disappointing and embarrassing, and they wonder why Farah can’t be like her older sister Farzana — though Farah knows things about Farzana that her parents don’t. They begrudgingly agree to let Farah move, and she begins to explore her exciting new life as an independent university student. But when Farah gets assaulted on campus, everything changes. This beautiful coming-of-age story will be familiar to every immigrant in the diaspora who has struggled to find a way between cultures, every youth who has rebelled against their parents and every woman who has faced the world alone.

Reflections

Reflections
Author: Jahed Rahman
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 164
Release: 2022-03-27
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1669814718

This is a fiction based on the settings and traditions generally of the Noakhali civil district of Bangladesh. Those were commonly akin to the greater Muslim Bengal of the pre-1947 (partition of India) period and mostly relevant even now with innate changes. Russel Rabbani was born in that milieu in a well-to-do family of the semi-urban locale of Noakhali. While growing up, he systematically opposed tradition-laden social systems and strived for rapid changes. As he grew up, he learned through his own life experiences that radical changes are not always workable and good, mostly causing irritation and confusion, disturbing social equilibrium. The likely impact on family and personal life is often appalling. In the process of pursuing life, his sweeping zeal yielded to unrelenting but gradual changes, with himself being a beneficiary of that. He also learned while growing up that even an ordinary person like his Sanskrit teacher, Bashu Dev Sir, can be a source of wisdom and knowledge, that every element of any surrounding can provide joy and happiness, and that even the most depressed setting can provide relaxation if one intends to have it. For Raniya, a widow, it was her second marriage with Russel. With educational attainment up to high school, she exhibited immense capability to grasp changes and evolving requirements, both at national and international locales. Her single greatest achievement was the ability to shape and articulate conjugal conversations in helping create a conducive family environment. Other support characters like Afzal (the elder brother of Russel), Fatima Bhabi (sister-in-law and the wife of Afzal), and Parul (the wife of his younger brother Asif) played their due support roles, and so was done by Farzana (Raniya’s Bhabi). Friends like Farhan and Mukith played their roles in positively influencing Russel’s emotional paradigm at even mature later life. After retiring from professional life in a multinational financial institution, Russel and Raniya settled in Chicago, having a stint of few years in Vancouver initially. It was a day of incessant snowfall in late March of 2021, akin to the famous bitter cold of Chicago. That overcast skies didn’t have any marked impact on Russel’s positive mindset of the day. Without lamenting and complaining, Russel decided to travel back to his life. That long spell of contemplation was found to be refreshing and rewarding in stress management. That art of thinking had been rated as smooth. To Russel, and the ongoing life setting of human beings, “reflection,” a continuous process, is a valued therapy for living as long as care and caution are exercised. He happily enjoyed that sort of summation while enjoying kichuri (the Bangladeshi food preparation of rice and lentil) in that snow-laden night with Raniya.