The Sari of Surya Vilas

The Sari of Surya Vilas
Author: Vayu Naidu
Publisher:
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2017-08-09
Genre: Chennai (India)
ISBN: 9781525257056

"In 1909, Allarmelu is nine years old and living a privileged, sheltered existence in Surya Vilas, her family home in the rich, lush environs of Madras in colonial South India. When her mother dies, Allarmelu's world is turned upside down. On the cusp of puberty and surrounded now by spinster aunts and men, she must find her own way. When she discovers the theft of her mother's pomegranate-coloured wedding sari, a precious heirloom passed from mother to daughter, Allarmelu vows to track it down. But tracing the sari is fraught and exposes her to new dangers among hidden mistresses, exotic Russian dancers, and incendiary family secrets. A mysterious diary unleashes an epic tale that flashes back to nineteenth-century India and the tortured provenance of the sari itself - sari looms are set alight, weavers murdered, and marginalised communities silenced and oppressed. But the weavers nevertheless leave their indelible mark on history, in woven secrets that will only be revealed many years later. The Sari of Surya Vilas is a poignant story of a woman finding her voice against a backdrop of family secrets, betrayals and promises, symbolic of India's struggle for Independence. It's a narrative every bit as vivid, complex and breathtaking as the fabled sari itself."

Our Mothers Ourselves

Our Mothers Ourselves
Author: Cathy Hull
Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2022-03-25
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1398449865

In a world shaken by the great upheavals of World War and the collapse of Empire, six women from different corners of the world transcend the constraints of their different backgrounds. Their physical and emotional migrations open the way to personal journeys which redefine them and enable their daughters to live lives of greater personal freedom and fulfillment. This book tells the stories of our mothers, six ordinary women who undertook extraordinary journeys. It is a tribute and an expression of love.

The Sari of Surya Vilas (Dyslexic Edition)

The Sari of Surya Vilas (Dyslexic Edition)
Author: Vayu Naidu
Publisher:
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2017
Genre: Family secrets
ISBN: 9781525257667

In 1909, Allarmelu is nine years old and living a privileged, sheltered existence in Surya Vilas, her family home in the rich, lush environs of Madras in colonial South India. When her mother dies, Allarmelu's world is turned upside down. On the cusp of puberty and surrounded now by spinster aunts and men, she must find her own way. When she discovers the theft of her mother's pomegranate-coloured wedding sari, a precious heirloom passed from mother to daughter, Allarmelu vows to track it down. But tracing the sari is fraught and exposes her to new dangers among hidden mistresses, exotic Russian dancers, and incendiary family secrets. A mysterious diary unleashes an epic tale that flashes back to nineteenth-century India and the tortured provenance of the sari itself -- sari looms are set alight, weavers murdered, and marginalised communities silenced and oppressed. But the weavers nevertheless leave their indelible mark on history, in woven secrets that will only be revealed many years later. The Sari of Surya Vilas is a poignant story of a woman finding her voice against a backdrop of family secrets, betrayals and promises, symbolic of India's struggle for Independence. It's a narrative every bit as vivid, complex and breathtaking as the fabled sari itself.

Sita's Ascent

Sita's Ascent
Author: Vayu Naidu
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 159
Release: 2012-12-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 8184757719

Sita has been sent to Valmiki's ashram, at Rama's command never to return. This extraordinary novel is her story---she who, as much as Rama, is the heart of Ramayana, one of the greatest living epics. It is also the story of Lakshmana, crushed by guilt on Sita's abduction; of Soorpanakka, shocked at Ravana's being struck by love, alien to the rakshasas' code; and of Rama's turmoil when confronted by public gossip about Sita, his beloved wife. Through the remembrances of these and other characters, Sita comes alive as a figure of womanhood. Inspired by myriad age-old and culturally diverse retellings, Vayu Naidu creates a rich, deeply moving and original work of fiction, Sita’s Ascent illuminates the physical and emotive landscape of a woman in exile, who crosses the desert of loss and ascends the abyss of abandonment with the power of love that transforms the narrators and the listeners.

Self Portrait in Green

Self Portrait in Green
Author: Marie NDiaye
Publisher: Influx Press
Total Pages: 81
Release: 2021-02-25
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1910312908

'NDiaye is a hypnotic storyteller with an unflinching understanding of the rock-bottom reality of most people's life.' New York Times ' One of France's most exciting prose stylists.' The Guardian. Obsessed by her encounters with the mysterious green women, and haunted by the Garonne River, a nameless narrator seeks them out in La Roele, Paris, Marseille, and Ouagadougou. Each encounter reveals different aspects of the women; real or imagined, dead or alive, seductive or suicidal, driving the narrator deeper into her obsession, in this unsettling exploration of identity, memory and paranoia. Self Portrait in Green is the multi-prize winning, Marie NDiaye's brilliant subversion of the memoir. Written in diary entries, with lyrical prose and dreamlike imagery, we start with and return to the river, which mirrors the narrative by posing more questions than it answers.

Forgotten Masters

Forgotten Masters
Author: William Dalrymple
Publisher: Philip Wilson Publishers
Total Pages: 42
Release: 2020-01-28
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1781301018

As the East India Company extended its sway across India in the late eighteenth century, many remarkable artworks were commissioned by Company officials from Indian painters who had previously worked for the Mughals. Published to coincide with the first UK exhibition of these masterworks at The Wallace Collection, this book celebrates the work of a series of extraordinary Indian artists, each with their own style and tastes and agency, all of whom worked for British patrons between the 1770s and the bloody end of the Mughal rule in 1857. Edited by writer and historian William Dalrymple, these hybrid paintings explore both the beauty of the Indian natural world and the social realities of the time in one hundred masterpieces, often of astonishing brilliance and originality. They shed light on a forgotten moment in Anglo-Indian history during which Indian artists responded to European influences while keeping intact their own artistic visions and styles. These artists represent the last phase of Indian artistic genius before the onset of the twin assaults - photography and the influence of western colonial art schools - ended an unbroken tradition of painting going back two thousand years. As these masterworks show, the greatest of these painters deserve to be remembered as among the most remarkable Indian artists of all time.

Home Reading Service

Home Reading Service
Author: Fabio Morábito
Publisher: Other Press, LLC
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2021-11-16
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1635420733

In this poignant novel, a man guilty of a minor offense finds purpose unexpectedly by way of his punishment—reading to others. After an accident—or “the misfortune,” as his cancer-ridden father’s caretaker, Celeste, calls it—Eduardo is sentenced to a year of community service reading to the elderly and disabled. Stripped of his driver’s license and feeling impotent as he nears thirty-five, he leads a dull, lonely life, chatting occasionally with the waitresses of a local restaurant or walking the streets of Cuernavaca. Once a quiet town known for its lush gardens and swimming pools, the “City of Eternal Spring” is now plagued by robberies, kidnappings, and the other myriad forms of violence bred by drug trafficking. At first, Eduardo seems unable to connect. He movingly reads the words of Dostoyevsky, Henry James, Daphne du Maurier, and more, but doesn’t truly understand them. His eccentric listeners—including two brothers, one mute, who moves his lips while the other acts as ventriloquist; deaf parents raising children they don’t know are hearing; and a beautiful, wheelchair-bound mezzo soprano—sense his detachment. Then Eduardo comes across a poem his father had copied by the Mexican poet Isabel Fraire, and it affects him as no literature has before. Through these fascinating characters, like the practical, quick-witted Celeste, who intuitively grasps poetry even though she never learned to read, Fabio Morábito shows how art can help us rediscover meaning in a corrupt, unequal society.

Forgotten Journey

Forgotten Journey
Author: Silvina Ocampo
Publisher: City Lights Books
Total Pages: 125
Release: 2019-10-22
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0872868028

"The world is ready for her blend of insane Angela Carter with the originality of Clarice Lispector."—Mariana Enriquez, LitHub Delicately crafted, intensely visual, deeply personal stories explore the nature of memory, family ties, and the difficult imbalances of love. "Both her debut story collection, Forgotten Journey, and her only novel, The Promise, are strikingly 20th-century texts, written in a high-modernist mode rarely found in contemporary fiction."—Lily Meyer, NPR "Silvina Ocampo is one of our best writers. Her stories have no equal in our literature."––Jorge Luis Borges "I don't know of another writer who better captures the magic inside everyday rituals, the forbidden or hidden face that our mirrors don't show us."—Italo Calvino "These two newly translated books could make her a rediscovery on par with Clarice Lispector. . . . there has never been another voice like hers."—John Freeman, Executive Editor, LitHub " . . . it is for the precise and terrible beauty of her sentences that this book should be read.A masterpiece of midcentury modernist literature triumphantly translated into our times."—Publishers Weekly * Starred Review "Ocampo is beyond great—she is necessary."—Hernan Diaz, author of In the Distance and Associate Director of the Hispanic Institute at Columbia University "Like William Blake, Ocampo's first voice was that of a visual artist; in her writing she retains the will to unveil immaterial so that we might at least look at it if not touch it."—Helen Oyeyemi, author of Gingerbread "Ocampo is a legend of Argentinian literature, and this collection of her short stories brings some of her most recondite and mysterious works to the English-speaking world. . . . This collection is an ideal introduction to a beguiling body of work."—Publishers Weekly This collection of 28 short stories, first published in 1937 and now in English translation for the first time, introduced readers to one of Argentina's most original and iconic authors. With this, her fiction debut, poet Silvina Ocampo initiated a personal, idiosyncratic exploration of the politics of memory, a theme to which she would return again and again over the course of her unconventional life and productive career. Praise for Forgotten Journey: "Ocampo is one of those rare writers who seems to write fiction almost offhandedly, but to still somehow do more in four or five pages than most writers do in twenty. Before you know it, the seemingly mundane has bared its surreal teeth and has you cornered."—Brian Evenson, author of Song for the Unraveling of the World: Stories "The Southern Cone queen of the short-story, Ocampo displays all her mastery in Forgotten Journey. After finishing the book, you only want more."—Gabriela Alemán, author of Poso Wells "Silvina Ocampo's fiction is wondrous, heart-piercing, and fiercely strange. Her fabulism is as charming as Borges’s. Her restless sense of invention foregrounds the brilliant feminist work of writers like Clarice Lispector and Samanta Schweblin. It’s thrilling to have work of this magnitude finally translated into English, head spinning and thrilling."—Alyson Hagy, author of Scribe