New Releases- September 2021
11 min read
A comprehensive list of New Releases from Asia – this list includes some soon-to-release and some already released titles.
Sisterhood of Swans by Selma Carvalho
- ISBN : 978-9354470318
- Publisher : Speaking Tiger
- Price: INR 499/-
About the Book
Anna-Marie Souza lives in Horton, a suburb on the hem of London, a far cry from the city of Bombay from which her parents had arrived one cold December day in 1989, two Goans in search of a new life. Born in this land of their dreams, raised in a broken home, Anna-Marie has grown up into a state of constant and indefinable yearning. She belongs to the sisterhood of swans seeking to pair for life, curving their necks to entwine with the perfect mate. Only, she has realized, her species is fated to disappointment. Her disastrous choice in men is fuelled not just by a chaotic childhood but by a loss of sexual agency as she embarks on a series of doomed relationships.
.
Set against a cast of intriguing female characters—Anna-Marie’s Indian-hating Indian mother; her best mate, Sujata, haunted by thoughts of suicide; and Jassie, the sharp-tongued beautician at Bollywood Style Salon—is an ensemble of men who are serial philanderers or, worse still, token brown Conservative party members. In this shaky world, Anna-Marie navigates through the pain of a troubled coming of age, while trying to find her place as a second-generation Indian immigrant.
About the Author
Selma Carvalho is a British-Asian writer whose work explores themes of migration, memory and belonging. She is the author of three non-fiction books documenting the Goan presence in colonial East Africa. She led the Oral Histories of British-Goans Project (2011-2014) funded by the UK Heritage Lottery Fund. Her short fiction, in English and in Portuguese translation, has been published in journals like Litro and Lighthouse and anthologies published by Comma Press and Kingston University Press. She is also the editor of two volumes of The Brave New World of Goan Writing & Art (2018 and 2020).
Her work has been shortlisted for several literary prizes, notably the London Short Story Prize, the Dinesh Allirajah Prize and the New Asian Writing Prize. She is the winner of the Leicester Writes Prize 2018 and her collection of short stories was a finalist for the prestigious SI Leeds Literary Prize 2018. Sisterhood of Swans is her debut novel and was shortlisted for the Mslexia Novella Prize 2018 in the UK. Selma lives in London.
Art Cinema and India’s Forgotten Futures: Film and History in the Postcolony by Rochona Majumdar
- ISBN-13 : 978-0231205412
- Publisher : Columbia University Press
- Price: INR 699/-
About the Book
The project of Indian art cinema began in the years following independence in 1947, at once evoking the global reach of the term “art film” and speaking to the aspirations of the new nation-state. In this pioneering book, Rochona Majumdar examines key works of Indian art cinema to demonstrate how film emerged as a mode of doing history and that, in so doing, it anticipated some of the most influential insights of postcolonial thought. Majumdar details how filmmakers as well as a host of film societies and publications sought to foster a new cinematic culture for the new nation, fueled by enthusiasm for a future of progress and development. Good films would help make good citizens: art cinema would not only earn global prestige but also shape discerning individuals capable of exercising aesthetic and political judgment.
During the 1960s, however, Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, and Ritwik Ghatak―the leading figures of Indian art cinema―became disillusioned with the belief that film was integral to national development. Instead, Majumdar contends, their works captured the unresolvable contradictions of the postcolonial present, which pointed toward possible, yet unrealized futures. Analyzing the films of Ray, Sen, and Ghatak, and working through previously unexplored archives of film society publications, Majumdar offers a radical reinterpretation of Indian film history. Art Cinema and India’s Forgotten Futures offers sweeping new insights into film’s relationship with the postcolonial condition and its role in decolonial imaginations of the future.
About the Author
Rochona Majumdar is an associate professor in the Departments of South Asian Languages and Civilizations and Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago. She is the author of Marriage and Modernity: Family Values in Colonial Bengal (2009) and Writing Postcolonial History (2010).
Active Parenting: How to Raise Children with Boundless Potential
- ISBN : 978-9390327188
- Publisher : HarperCollins India (19 September 2021)
- Price: INR 299/-
About the Book
What do you want your child to be?
There is no one way to raise a child. Each child is unique and can vary in so many ways in abilities and behaviour from others in their group. Ramgopal Vallath, indebted to his own parents for an upbringing that has helped him overcome great challenges and difficulties, set out to meet numerous parents to work out some common guidelines that could help groom a child. This book is the result. As with his previous bestselling book, From Ouch to Oops, this too is bound to reach out and move its readers, and leave lessons of lasting use in what is one of the most important tasks a parent undertakes: raising a child to be a healthy, resilient, positive adult.
About the Author
Ramgopal Vallath is an IITian, a tech company co-founder, a much sought-after motivational speaker and the author of the best-selling autobiography From Ouch to Oops. He has inspired over 50,000 children with his talks and his life story is a chapter in one of the eighth-class textbooks for CBSE students.
What do you want to be when you grow up? by Jerry Pinto (Author), Ashok Rajagopalan (Illustrator)
- ISBN : 978-9354470936
- Publisher : Talking Cub
- Price: INR 250/-
About the Book
What do you want to be when you grow up? Will you drive a taxi? Dance the ballet? Cure a disease? Or become an Olympic archer? Jerry Pinto answers the question, asked of every child, hilariously and delightfully: children will do anything they want to, thank you. Anything at all—bake cakes or grow cabbages, become bankers or drive an oil tanker.
.
Ashok Rajagopalan’s vibrant and mischievous illustrations bring to life a world of possibilities that is open to every person.
Beastly Tales from Here and There by Vikram Seth
About the Book
Since they were first published in 1992,Vikram Seth’s glorious animal fables in verse have delighted young and old alike. Familiar characters in a magical new form—like the tortoise who outran the hare and the monkey who outwitted the greedy crocodile—take their place beside a freshly minted gallery of brilliantly quirky, comical creatures. Of the ten fables told here, two come from India, two from China, two from Greece, two from the Ukraine and two, the author tells us, directly ‘from the land of Gup’. Witty, enchanting and timeless, Beastly Tales from Here and There is a classic; a
modern Aesop’s Fables.
About the Author
One of the most celebrated writers of our time, Vikram Seth is the author of three novels—including A Suitable Boy and The Golden Gate (a novel in verse) that are widely regarded as modern classics—and two works of non-fiction. He has also written seven books of poetry, which include an opera libretto and a book of other libretti. He divides his time between the UK and India.
The Beauty Paradigm: Gender Discourse in Indian Advertising by Jaishri Jethwane
- ISBN : 978-9354791659
- Publisher : SAGE Publications Pvt. Ltd
- Price: INR 550/-
About the Book
Fair skin sells the cream
Trendy women sell the scooter
Dashing men sell the car
Seductive gestures can sell almost anything
If media only mirrors reality, is advertising then guilty of misogyny, voyeurism and objectification of women?
In an attempt to look at Indian ads across various brand categories with a gender lens based on societal and sociological perspectives, The Beauty Paradigm: Gender Discourse in Indian Advertising deconstructs the quintessential Indian woman that the advertising industry depicts across the spectrum. Drawing insights from a seminal research study and Erving Goffman’s classic book ‘Gender Advertisements’, this book traces the journey of a few decades to map trends and patterns in Indian advertising and presents the perspectives of the creative teams and top managements across Indian and global agencies.
About the Author
Jaishri Jethwaney, with over three decades of experience in industry and academia, is currently a Visiting Fellow at the ISID, a national policy think tank under the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR). She is at present also the Project Director for a major ICSSR Research Study. Dr Jethwaney was formerly working with IIMC as Professor and Programme Director (Advertising & PR). Author of many books on advertising, PR, corporate communication and social sector communication, Dr Jethwaney is on the Board of Studies of many universities and is engaged in many national– international research and consultancy projects.
Two Figures in the Car and Other Stories by Wan Phing Lim
- ISBN-13 : 978-9814954143
- Publisher : Penguin Book
- Release Date: 28 September 2021
About the Book
Two figures sit in a car, waiting to commit a crime. A young girl steals her grandmother’s jade bracelet. A Malay man collects the blonde hair of a British teenager he is transfixed with, and a young woman feeds human blood to a frangipani tree. There’s right and wrong in this world. Or is there? This collection of fourteen stories explores the grey and amoral lives of ordinary – and not so ordinary – Malaysians and Singaporeans looking to carve their place in the world. Shifting between the dark hills of Penang island to the lonely coasts of Singapore and the cramped corners of Kuala Lumpur and Manchester, Two Figures in a Car is coloured with petty crimes, small ambitions and fantastical delusions.\
About the Author
Wan Phing Lim was born to Malaysian parents in 1986 in Butterworth, Penang. Her short stories have appeared in Catapult (USA), Ricepaper Magazine (Canada), Lucent Dreaming (UK), Kyoto Journal (Japan) and anthologies by Monsoon Books (UK), Ethos Books (Singapore), Math Paper Press (Singapore) and Fixi Novo (Malaysia). Her story ‘Snake Bridge Temple’ was selected for Kitaab’s Best Asian Short Stories 2017 and Buku Fixi’s New Malaysian Writing 2017.
Swimming Against the Tide: True Story of Para Swimmer Madhavi Latha
- ISBN : 978-9391370527
- Publisher : SAGE Publications Pvt. Ltd
- Price: INR 595/-
About the Book
Swimming Against the Tide is an inspirational story about an ordinary woman with extraordinary grit who set out to create a fair and inclusive world for the persons with disability.
When she was seven months old, a massive polio attack left Madhavi paralyzed below the shoulder. But her parents refused to leave her to her fate. With their most powerful wealth―patience and love―they gave Madhavi the wings to set out and conquer the world on her own terms.
Triumphing over a near-death situation with hydrotherapy, she eventually became a national champion in para swimming. She then started a movement called ‘Yes, We Too Can!!!’ and co-opted other athletes with disabilities to realize their dreams through access to sports.
Banker, public speaker and National Para Swimming Champion with 30 medals for swimming at the state and national level, co-founder of the Paralympic Swimming Association of Tamil Nadu, the Wheelchair Basketball Federation of India and more, behind this stellar list of accolades is the story of a young girl from a sleepy little village who dared to dream and challenged her circumstances, determined to surge through ‘disability’, emerging a winner and becoming an inspiration to many.
About the Author
Madhavi Latha Prathigudupu is an Associate Vice President in a MNC Bank Group, a former national Para Swimming Champion, the Founder General Secretary of the Paralympic Swimming Association of Tamil Nadu and the Founder President of the Wheelchair Basketball Federation of India. She founded the ‘YES WE TOO CAN’ movement to encourage persons with disabilities to participate in sports.
She is a TEDx speaker. She is also a toastmaster and worked as President for the Toastmasters Club in her organization. She led 15-member team of Indian Wheelchair Basketball administrators and coaches to USA on a Sports Visitor Program.
Madhavi Latha has spoken at various prestigious platforms like the LBSNAA, Mussoorie, Indian Red Cross Society, National Association for the Blind, Times of India Global Sports Business Show 2017, IIT Madras, IIM, Indore, Tedx events and several corporate events. She has served as a panelist for events organized by the British Deputy High Commission, Madras Chamber of Commerce Women′s Day celebrations, India CSR Summit, Australian Consul General for South India, Disability Inclusive Roundtable etc. Her efforts and achievements have been covered widely by the print and electronic media.
She was also part of the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna and Arjuna awards selection committee in 2017.
The Magic of Madagascar by Abhay K
About the Book
In very simple verses that believe their complex fluidity, Abhay K. blends both the sensibility of nature and the ordinariness of urban life with the magic of the lyrical.- Johary Ravaloson.
Here is a poet who casts blessings our way while also paving the road we travel, in language as durable as stone. Michael McClintock
About the Author
Abhay K. is the author of ten poetry collections and editor of The Bloomsbury Book of Great Indian Love Poems, CAPITALS and New Brazilian Poems. His Earth Anthem has been translated into over 120 languages. He received the SAARC Literary Award 2013.
Borderless- A Novel by Namrata Poddar
- Publication Date: March 1, 2022
About the Book
Dia Mittal is an airline call center agent in Mumbai searching for an easier life. As her search takes her to the United States, Dia’s checkered relationship with the American Dream dialogues with the experiences and perspectives of a global South Asian community across the class spectrum–call center agents, travel agents, immigrant maids, fashion designers, blue- and white-collar workers in the hospitality industry, junior and senior artists in Bollywood, hustling single mothers, academics, tourists in the Third World, refugees displaced by military superpowers, Marwari merchants and trade caravans of the Silk Road, among others. What connects the novel’s web of brown border-crossing characters is their quest for belonging and negotiation of power struggles, mediated by race, class, gender, nationality, age, or place. With its fragmented form, staccato rhythm, repetition, and play with English language, Border Less questions the “mainstream” Western novel and its assumptions of good storytelling.
Border Less was a finalist for The Feminist Press’s Louise Meriwether First Book Prize. Chapters from the novel won the Short Story Contest organized by 14th International Conference on the Short Story in English, judged by Bharati Mukherjee and Clark Blaise; the New Asian Writing Prize; and appeared in The Best Asian Short Stories anthology. The opening chapter, in a slightly different form, was published in The Kenyon Review.
About the Author
Namrata Poddar writes fiction and nonfiction, serves as Interviews Editor for Kweli, and teaches literature as well as creative writing at UCLA. Her work has appeared in several publications including Poets & Writers, Literary Hub, Longreads, The Kenyon Review, VIDA Review, and Electric Literature. She holds a PhD in French literature from the University of Pennsylvania, an MFA in fiction from Bennington College, and a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in Transnational Cultures from UCLA. Find her on Twitter, @poddar_namrata, and on Instagram, @writerpoddar
About Author
