New books on the shelves

A memoir of five years in captivity, a multi-layered exploration of identity in mythology, and much more.

Exiles

Jane Harper

Macmillan

Rs.750

Kim Gillespie disappears from a busy festival on a warm spring night, leaving behind her baby in the pram. As federal investigator Aaron Falk looks into the case, long-held secrets and resentments begin to come to the fore, secrets that show that Kim’s family and friends are not as close as they seem.

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The Past is Never Dead

Ujjal Dosanjh

Speaking Tiger

Rs.499

In 1952, Kalu escaped Banjhan Kalan in Punjab for Bedford in the UK, hoping to find a life of dignity that he had been denied because of his caste. But Kalu’s fellow expatriates had brought caste along when they came to the UK, and he is forced to adhere to its degrading rules. Determined not to bend, Kalu fights back.

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Lost to the World: A Memoir of Faith, Family and Five Years in Terrorist Captivity

Shahbaz Taseer

Penguin

Rs. 599

This is the true story of Pakistani businessman Shahbaz Taseer’s abduction at gunpoint by Taliban-affiliated terrorists, his five years in captivity, and his astonishing escape.

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Labouring Lives: Industry and Informality in New India

Archana Aggarwal

LeftWord Books

Rs. 275

Combining first-hand accounts from workers in the automobile and readymade garment industries of Delhi, with an examination of policy and law, this book forcefully argues for a shift away from the mainstream view where workers are and markets are the sole determinant of employment, wages and working conditions.

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Belles-Lettres: Writings of Hijab Imtiaz Ali

Edited and translated by Sascha A. Akhtar

Oxford University Press

Rs. 895

Hijab Imtiaz Ali (1908–1999) was the first female Muslim pilot and one of Pakistan’s most accomplished writers. This translation of her work Adab-e-Zareen (first published in 1936) contains 47 short prose-poems that reveal why she was at the forefront of Urdu modernist literature.

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Women, Androgynes and Other Mythical Beasts

Wendy Doniger

Speaking Tiger

Rs. 699

Wendy Doniger undertakes, in her inimitable delightful way, a splendid and multi-layered exploration of gender and sexual identities in Hindu, Buddhist and Tantric mythologies.

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