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The Best Asian Speculative Fiction 2018

The Best Asian Short Stories 2018

Editors: Dr Debotri Dhar & Zafar Anjum (Series Editor)
Format: Paperback (Ebook not available yet)
Imprint: Kitaab
Published: 2018
Subject: Fiction/Short Stories
ISBN: 9789811187216
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This is the second volume in the series, The Best Asian Short Stories anthology. The volume contains well-crafted stories with innovative characters, gripping plots, diverse voices from 24 writers in 13 countries, including Singapore.  These contain three stories by Singaporean writers Vanessa Ng, Greg Tan and Miggs Bravo Dutt.

The Best Asian Short Stories 2017

Editors: Monideepa Sahu & Zafar Anjum (Series Editor)
Format: Paperback (Ebook not available yet)
Imprint: Kitaab
Published: 2017
Subject: Fiction/Short Stories
Price: SGD$20/Rs. 390 (free shipping within India)
ISBN: 978-981-11-4970-2
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32 writers. 11 countries. One anthology of its kind in Asia.

The stories in this anthology by Asia’s best known and well-respected contemporary writers and promising new voices, offer fresh insights into the experience of being Asian. They transcend borders and social and political divisions within which they arise. While drawing us into the lives of people and the places where they come from, they raise uneasy questions and probe ambiguities.

Explore Asia through these tales of the profound, the absurd, the chilling, and of moments of epiphany or catharsis. Women probe their own identities through gaps between social blinkers and shackles. A young Syrian mother flees from war-ravaged Aleppo into a more fearsome hell. The cataclysmic Partition of India and its aftershocks; life and death in a no-man’s land between two countries; ethnic groups forced into exile; are all part of the wider Asian experience.

Life flows on in the pauses between cataclysms, bringing hope. Fragile dreams spread rainbow wings through the struggle to succeed socially, earn a living, produce an heir, and try to grasp at fleeting joys and love. These symphonies of style and emotions sweep across Asia – from Jordan and Syria to Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Japan and Korea. Crafted with love, they continue to resonate after the last page.

As editor Moniddepa Sahu says, these stories come ‘from the heart of Asia, not from the Western perspective trying to make sense of the quaint and the exotic. The home-grown Asian identity runs as a strong undercurrent, with no need to explain and offer apologetic footnotes.’

The following are the contributing authors to the anthology:

1. POILE SENGUPTA, INDIA 2. FARAH GHUZNAVI, BANGLADESH 3. USHA K R, INDIA 4. ROCHELLE POTKAR, INDIA 5. SHOMA CHATTERJI, INDIA 6. JYOTHI VINOD, INDIA 7. YU MEI BALASINGAMCHOW, SINGAPORE 8. LOH GUAN LIANG, SINGAPORE 9. HISHAM BUSTANI, JORDAN 10. CLARA CHOW, SINGAPORE 11. SHASHI DESHPANDE, INDIA 12. SHIRANI RAJAPAKSE, SRI LANKA 13. SONIAH KAMAL, PAKISTAN/USA 14 PARK CHAN-SOON, KOREA 15. SUZANNE KAMATA ,JAPAN 16. JEREMY TIANG, SINGAPORE 17. SUBRATA SENGUPTA, INDIA 18. SHIKHANDIN, INDIA 19. FRANCIS PAOLO QUINA, THE PHILIPPINES 20. MOINUL AHSAN SABER, BANGLADESH 21. GEETANJALI SHREE, INDIA 22. AMIR DARWISH, SYRIA 23. SRINJAY CHAKRAVARTI, INDIA 24. WAN PHING LIM, MALAYSIA 25. N THIERRY, SINGAPORE 26. FAROUK GULSARA, MALAYSIA 27. SARITHA RAO RAYACHOTI, INDIA 28. GEETA KOTHARI, INDIA/USA 29. O THIAM CHIN, SINGAPORE 30. ILAKSHEE BHUYAN NATH, INDIA 31. MITHRAN SOMASUNDRUM, THAILAND 32. SIDDHARTHA GIGOO, INDIA 33. MURLI MELWANI, INDIA/USA

The Librarian

Author: Kavitha Rao
Format: Paperback (Ebook not available yet)
Imprint: Kitaab
Published: 2017
Subject: Fiction/Novel
Price: SGD$18/Rs. 290 (free shipping within India)
ISBN: 978-981-11-4365-6
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Ever since she could read, Vidya Patel realized that she preferred books to humans. Her family disapproves, but Vidya meanders through life with her nose in a book. When she is ten, she visits the Macmillan, a struggling heritage library in Mumbai. It is in the Macmillan that Vidya truly, finally, feels whole. Vidya befriends Shekhar Raghavan, the brilliant, eccentric librarian, who becomes her mentor. As soon as she is old enough, she joins the library as junior librarian, and throws herself into keeping the Macmillan going, with consequences she could never have foreseen. She also learns the destructive power of obsession, and what it does to people. Will Vidya be able to save the Macmillan? And at what cost?

“The Librarian” is a dark, powerful novel that will appeal to everyone who has ever loved a book, or found happiness in a library.

About the author

Kavitha Rao is a journalist and author based in Bangalore, India. She writes on current affairs, the arts, health and the environment for a number of international magazines including the Guardian, the New York Times, Quartz, NPR, Mint and several others. Her first book, “Everything You Wanted to Know About Freelance Journalism (but didn’t know whom to ask)” . a guide to breaking into freelance journalism, was published by Westland in 2014.

“The Librarian” is her first novel, inspired by a news story she did on a struggling heritage library. When Kavitha is not writing, she is usually reading. She enjoys literary fiction, historical fiction, and detective novels.

Lockie and Lakshmi

Cultural Medallion winner Isa Kamari’s new novella, Tweet, is a high-quality work of imaginative fiction that marries traditional storytelling with a modern theme. The novel is set in Singapore’s bird park, an international tourist destination and an iconic bird sanctuary. Isa Kamari, through a dialogue between a Singaporean grandfather and his grandchild, ponders over the stress and demands of our modern human existence. Through the grandchild’s innocent questions, the author exposes us to the frailties of our modern life. Intermixed in the narrative is the famous fable of Simurg, the legendary bird, that some of the birds of the bird park are deliriously desirous of meeting. They embark upon a journey that brings them face-to-face with a reality that they had not imagined even in their dreams. In his first ever English language work, Isa Kamari shows us a new facet of his storytelling abilities, which is part philosophical and part imaginative.

About the author 

Isa Kamari has written in Malay, 9 novels, 2 collections of poetry, a collection of short stories, a book of essays on Singapore Malay poetry, a collection of theatre scripts and lyrics of 2 song albums. His novels have been translated into English, Turkish, Urdu, Indonesian and Mandarin. His collections of essays and selected poems have been translated into English. Isa was conferred the S.E.A Write Award in 2006, Singapore Cultural Medallion in 2007 and the Anugerah Tun Seri Lanang in 2009.

Horizon Afar and Other Tamil Short Stories

Author: Jayanthi Sankar
Translator: P. Muralidharan
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Kitaab International Pte ltd
Language: Englsih
ISBN No: 9789811116179
Genre: Fiction

Horizon Afar is a collection of Tamil short stories written by Jayanthi Sankar and translator into English by P. Muralidharan.

This collection of short stories traverse beyond the contemporary life of Singapore on a quest to answer the eternal question, “What made life on this earth mechanical and devoid of meaning?” Presented here is a peek into the other side of modern life, opening new windows to the life and culture of various ethnicities of South East Asia.

Jayanthi Sankar is popular in the mainland just as amongst the writers of the diaspora. Her presence is totally absent in the stories themselves. The human side of Singapore, its students, the life of migrant workers and their aspirations to acquire resident status, interracial origins, lives of sex workers, cohabiting youth and many more such lucid narrations motivated me to translate them for English readers. The short story, “A Few Pages from Yuka Wong’s Diary”, on century-old cultural and political issues of China and Japan, is a unique work by any author of Indian origin.

About the author:

Jayanthi Sankar has been creatively active for the past twenty-one years in short stories, novels, translation, transcreations and essays. Several of her books have been awarded by renowned organisations. Born and brought up in India, she has lived in Singapore since 1990. After Loss and Laws, Horizon Afar is the second collection of her Tamil short stories that have been translated into English.

Her website at www.jeyanthisankar.com gives a glimpse of her writing journey.

About the translator:

P. Muralidharan writes with the pseudonym Sathyanandhan. He lives in Chennai, India, and continues his creative quest as a poet, a critic and a novelist in the Tamil literary arts. His ability to write creatively in all genres like short story, poems, columns, novel and criticism on a variety of subjects has made him stand out in the Modern Tamil literature for more than a decade. His works have been published in literary magazines like Kanaiyazhi. Thinnai.com has been a consistent platform for his works. Besides a collection of poetry Veliye veedu, his novels Purshartham and Vigraham have been published in print. Two of his novels Bodhi Maram and Mulveli were published as a series during 2012 and 2013 in Thinnai. His works on Ramayana and Zen, published in Thinnai during 2011 have gained him a wider readership recently. He writes weekly columns in pathivukal.com. All of his works are republished in his blog at https://sathyanandhan.com.

To buy: Horizon Afar 

Dreamagination

Author: Rishav Gupta
Language: English
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Kitaab International
Genre: Skill Building & Learning
ISBN: 9789811116865, 9811116865
Edition: 1, 2016
Pages: 24 

“This is a big wish come true! You must dream and when the dream becomes bigger, bigger and bigger it comes true. I want to encourage everyone around the world to write because it helps people to communicate and you can express your heart full of stories.You need dreamagination to live.”

Rishav had a dream. He wanted a ‘real’ book. With a feeling of intent, he expressed this to his mother at the tender age of three! It then became his mother’s resolution to make his dream come true. However, she did not chase his dream but made him responsible for it. As we know, the process is far more important than the product.

This book will take you along a child’s journey from doodling, to drawing and then consolidating ideas. It will teach you how to plan possibilities in writing.This book is not only to entertain the readers but also to inspire young writers to chase their dreams without fear.

About the author

Rishav is 8 years old and he is in Grade 2 in Chatsworth International School, Singapore.

Nameless Lanes

Author: Syed Sarwar Hussain
Format: Paperback (Ebook not available yet)
Imprint: Kitaab
Published: 2016
Subject: Fiction (Short Stories)
Price: SGD$20/Rs. 295 (free shipping within India/Singapore)
ISBN: 9789810989552

Nameless Lanes is a collection of stories carefully and lovingly translated from Urdu. It includes the finest works of some of the best Indian writers of Urdu short stories in the twentieth century. All of them have passed away now, but their works live to reflect, each in its own inimitable way, the society in which they were created. The stories alternate between the inner world of the protagonists’ painful nostalgia, excessive psychopathological narcissism, spiritual subterfuge, the crisis of identity, and the outer existential realities of a society, ridden with class hatred, violence, destruction of human dignity, and in a constantly menacing flux of unpredictable circumstances, plunging the characters into the appalling dilemma of existence.   Hussain’s translation is more than the rendering of a text from one language to another; it is the introduction into English of a completely different society and an array of human experiences exceedingly strange – a sobering manifestation of the vagaries and vicissitudes of life through which the characters in the stories struggle to survive.

About the author

Syed Sarwar Hussain teaches English at the College of Languages and Translation, King Saud University in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He has also published four books that include ‘Ideology and the Poetry of Stephen Spender’ (1988), ‘Despairing Voices’ (2011), ‘Ashes in the Fire’ (2012), and ‘The Eastern Brew’ (2013).

Conceived by CIO Academy Asia and published by Kitaab, “INSPIRE Beyond SG50” collects behind-the-scene stories of CIOs from a wide range of private and public sector organisations in the Asia-Pacific region. It captures their insights, perspectives and real experiences through seven core themes: Integrity, New (Innovation), Strategy, People, Implementation, Relationship and Excellence.   

Rooh Se Rooh Tak

Published in 2016 by Simurg, an imprint of Kitaab International Pte. Ltd Rooh se Rooh tak, a collection of poems by Candy de Launey explores dimensions of love and fury, sadness and joy and quiet truths about the variety of human emotions … where soul and body and emotion and consciousness are never separate but a part of the great mystery of life, a riddle whose answer perhaps is love … or perhaps not … with all its fears, longings, expressions and suppressions … dying to take the risk of discovering her own core self …

The 25 Poems are all in English, and only one is in Hindi of which 6 are musical recitations which have been composed beautifully by Anand Dhamelia and Vijutash Angurana and available on Sound cloud.

About the author
Candy de Launey began writing at the age of 6. Candy holds a Master’s in Business Administration and has studied Psychotherapy & Counselling. She is currently studying Masters in Counselling and hopes to complete her Doctorate research in the areas of: The natural path to Happiness and application of neuroscience in Marketing. Candy is a Leadership & Executive Coach, and a Marketing & Strategic business Consultant by profession with over 23 years of an illustrious career globally. She hails from Bangalore and currently resides in Singapore.

In Rooh se Rooh tak…she bares her soul to give us a glimpse into the musings of the dawn, dusk and nights of Love, longing, silence, beauty…fragrant with the notes of Indian classical tones and western hues which catch the breath and wake up the senses.

Transit for Beginners

Author: Rheea Mukherjee
Format: Paperback (Ebook not available yet)
Imprint: Kitaab
Published: 2016
Subject: Fiction (Short Stories)
Price: SGD$20/Rs. 295 (free shipping within India/Singapore)
ISBN:  9789810982133

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The blurring of truth and the ready acceptance of lies as two strangers meet in Changi International Airport. A teenager living with her disabled mother discovers her own sexuality and ambition in the unlikeliest way. A girl tells us of her first love, and why it will never see a future. The neglected housewife of an artist dishes out more than just delicious food to feel loved. A man battles against his own moral code and his hunger for life. Just a few of the stories that reexamine lives in South East Asia and allow bizarre urban hallucinations to float into the most mundane moments.

‘Rheea Mukherjee takes her own characters by surprise. The choices they make lead to the most extreme of outcomes, forcing them to scrutinize their own lives ruthlessly. Desires surface, flaws become starker, and human instincts are aroused from dormancy. The reader is left breathless, and strangely satisfied at the lack of easy closure and convenient solutions.’ – Arunava Sinha

‘A stunning collection…evocative, nuanced, and assured’ – Prajwal Parajuly

About the author

Rheea Mukherjee received her MFA in creative writing from California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Her work has been published in Scroll.in, Southern Humanities Review, Cleaver Magazine, CHA: An Asian Literary Magazine, QLRS, The Bombay Literary  Magazine, A Gathering of Tribes, Everyday Fiction, Bengal Lights, and Out Of Print Magazine. Her collection of short stories, Transit for Beginners is her first book published by Kitaab International . She co-founded Bangalore Writers Workshop in 2012 and presently co-runs Write Leela Write, a Design and Content Laboratory in Bangalore.

Ganga Jamuna

Author: Sunita Lad Bhamray
Format: Paperback (Ebook not available yet)
Imprint: Kitaab
Published: 2016
Subject: Fiction (Novel)
Price: S$18/Rs. 295 (free shipping within India/Singapore)
ISBN:  9789810989569

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Ganga Jamuna is the tale of Abani, an enchanting woman from Nepal. Blessed with remarkable tenacity, Abani tries to tackle every predicament with a silent resolve.

When she is faced with a medical situation that seems insurmountable, Singapore, the hallmark of modern medicine, comes to the rescue, and she finds herself travelling across borders seeking solutions. This journey proves to be a fulfilling experience and a turning point in more ways than one, as she discovers new allies in strangers.

Just when everything seems to be finally going right, another bout of misfortune strikes. Holding onto mere filaments of hope, Abani chances upon answers in the elements of nature, which enable her to carry on and make her stronger than before.

About the author

Sunita Lad Bhamray is an author and educator based in Singapore. After a long rewarding career in teaching, she now enjoys her time devoted to writing. Ganga Jamuna is Sunita’s third book. Her first book, Triumphs on the Turf, was about horse racing in India. It was followed by Grandma Lim’s Persimmons, a storybook for children.

Halfway up a Hill: Stories from Hong Kong

Author: T A Morton
Format: Paperback (Ebook not available yet)
Imprint: Kitaab
Published: 2016
Subject: Fiction (Short Stories)
Price: S$20/Rs. 295 (free shipping within India/Singapore)
ISBN:  9789810984953
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In Halfway up a Hill, an array of characters from the eight distinctive short stories converge and interact in and around a busy Soho coffee shop in Hong Kong. In the air-conditioned confines of an unassuming coffee shop halfway up (or down, depending on your point of view) a steep Hong Kong hillside, a multitude of lives entwine, unravel and spin off, together and apart, all watched over and influenced by forces the people involved only vaguely apprehend—as well as observed by the benign spirits that occupy the shop bathroom. The collection of intriguing stories told in Halfway Up A Hill both stimulate and beguile, like a sip of hot coffee on a cold day.

About the author

T.A. Morton has worked as journalist and editor for Longman Pearson in Hong Kong. Returning to Europe she now resides in Copenhagen where she works as a freelance editor. She lives with her husband and daughter and is the proud godmother to a commercial ship, Tracey Kosan. Currently she is working towards her masters in Literature, and also on her third novel.

Loss and Laws and Other Tamil Short Stories 

Author: Jayanthi Sankar & Usha Nagasamy (translator)
Format: Paperback (Ebook not available yet)
Imprint: Kitaab
Published: 2015
Subject: Fiction (Short stories)
Price: S$15/Rs. 199 (free shipping within India/Singapore)
ISBN:  9789810958336

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Loss and Laws and other Tamil Short Stories, a collection of Tamil short stories of Jayanthi Sankar and translated by Usha Nagasamy, is based on the observations and experiences of the author’s 26 years of life spent in fast-changing Singapore. The author has been writing for 20 years and has been hailed as a rapidly rising star with a very unique yet universal appeal in the Tamil literary space. There are 17 short stories in this collection–all chosen from the 99 short stories written by the author over a period of 17 years. Each one of the short stories differs so much from the other in theme, mature storytelling as well as format that it can create interest and inquisitiveness in any reader.

About the authors

Born and brought up in India, Jayanthi Sankar has been living in Singapore since 1990. She has been creatively active for the past twenty years in short stories, novels, transcreations and essays. Her short story ‘Read Singapore’ was widely recognized in the literary circles. She is writing more in English in the recent years. Having written primarily in Tamil, her short story collections have been short-listed three times for Singapore Literature Prize.

Usha Nagasamy, a Further Education college lecturer, has been doing a lot of interpreting and translating for the local Tamil community over the past decade. In 2009, she began translating the Tamil short stories of her elder sister who is a renowned Tamil writer from Singapore. She lives in Greater London.

Kafka in Ayodhya and Other Short Stories

Author: Zafar Anjum
Format: Paperback (Ebook not available yet)
Imprint: Kitaab
Published: 2015
Subject: Fiction (Short Stories)
Price: S$15/Rs. 295 (free shipping within India/Singapore)
ISBN: 9789810972769

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“From Kafka and Faulkner to Babri Masjid and Bollywood, the myriad strands of contemporary South Asian life are twisted and turned into memorable stories — ironic or indignant, sad or touching — by Zafar Anjum in Kafka in Ayodhya and Other Stories.”                         – Tabish Khair

“An impoverished couple is plagued by rats in their hut. A young husband struggles with erectile dysfunction. A writer is trapped in his own book by the character he created. And a young Palestinian girl grieves for her brother killed by the Israeli soldiers. This is a collection of heart wrenching stories and fantasy told in simple bold strokes.” – Suchen Christine Lim

“Zafar Anjum’s Kafka in Ayodhya is the storyteller’s storybook. And what better guide than the famous existentialist to take you by the hand? The sojourner will discover the complex-bizarre in the conversations, the places, the atmosphere, the routine, and above all, the people. These are Kafkaesque characters flung into occasions where an absurdist sensibility seems opportune and knocking. You’ll encounter the archetypes, the questing, and the transformations. ‘Stories are found things,’ says one story, its wisdom line echoing through this splendid suite of story gems. The reader will relish the excavation of each tale’s sublime moments — these moments awaiting an unearthing, ‘like fossils in the ground’.” – Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé

About the author

Zafar Anjum is a Singapore-based journalist, writer and entrepreneur. For eight years, he was the online editor of Computerworld Singapore, Computerworld Malaysia, CIO Asia and MIS Asia. He is the author of six fiction and non-fiction titles, including the best-selling The Resurgence of Satyam (Random House India, 2012), and Startup Capitals: Discovering the Global Hotspots of Innovation (Random House India, December 2014). He is the director of a publishing startup, Kitaab.org,  and co-founder of startupcapitals.com.

Going Home in the Rain and Other Stories

 

Author: Monideepa Sahu
Format: Paperback (Ebook not available yet)
Imprint: Kitaab
Published: 2016
Subject: Fiction (Short Stories)
Price: S$15/Rs. 295 (free shipping within India/Singapore)
ISBN:  978-981-09-3405-7

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‘A classic story teller’
SHASHI DESHPANDE

“Monideepa Sahu constructs her stories on strong, clear lines, building character, detail and mood, giving in the end, a glimpse of life.”
USHA KR

In this collection of short stories, strangers waiting at a bus stop take off on a magical journey.  Going home in the rain can mean taking unlikely detours.  A mother and son’s tour through a royal city becomes a journey of rediscovering each other. A lovely young mother crosses into the twilight zone beyond sweetness and light. Food becomes an instrument of torture in ‘Breakfast.’ Everyday situations and people reveal extraordinary facets. These radiant images range from warm and humane to poignant and chilling. They reveal the whimsy and playfulness, the raw edges, the heartbreak, and all things in-between that comprise the human condition.

About the author

Monideepa Sahu is a former banker, who had a wonderful time writing her fantasy adventure novel for young people, Riddle of the Seventh Stone. She has also authored Rabindranath Tagore: The Renaissance Man. Her short fiction has been widely anthologized in India and abroad. She writes opinion pieces and feature stories on literature, art and culture forDeccan Herald and other reputed publications. She lives in Bangalore, India, with her extended family of people, a vintage PC, and countless arthropods. Connect with her at www.monideepa.blogspot.in.

The Girl who Ran Away in a Washing Machine and Other Stories
Author: Anu Kumar
Format: Paperback (Ebook not available yet)
Imprint: Kitaab
Published: August 2015
Subject: Fiction
Price: US$14.95/Rs. 495 (free shipping within India/Singapore)
ISBN: 978-981-09-3407-1

Anu Kumar‘s stories cover a wide terrain, in time and place.  Some are set in India and others in anonymous and mysterious worlds set in the past and the future.  Some stories have much of the old and changing India in them,  where a woman runs away in a washing machine,  and a wife finds strange succour in a godman and his promises.  In ‘Preparing for the Riots’ a young boy notices how his childish rivalries with a neighbouring group of boys have in them seeds of an abiding deeper hatred.  ‘The Right Reason’ takes on  farmer suicides that are just a matter of numbers for government officials,  one of whom features again in the story, ‘Tale of a Corpse’ where a farmer’s protest turns him into an object of devotion.   ‘The Curator’ mingles present with the past, where a man encounters another looking for a statue of a fabled dancer.  ‘The Time Jonathan Went Away’ and ‘Summer in the City’ are set in cities of the future, where science has all the answers yet  strange unexpected events still occur.  A lover leaves suddenly and a cat’s moods seem  suddenly too prophetic, and people disappear in a strange manner whether they are on a roller-coaster in a theme park or simply taking the elevator to the highest floor.

In these stories, Anu Kumar has experimented with form,  voice and style, hoping to explore the possibilities of the short story.  Some of her favourite writers in this genre have been Alice Munro, Mavis Gallant,  Haruki Murakami and Nirmal Verma.

About Anu Kumar
Anu Kumar has lived in India and Singapore and presently lives in Maryland in the US. She has written for older readers and also for children. The Girl who Ran Away in a Washing Machine and Other Stories is her second collection of short stories after In Search of a Raja and Other Stories (2002). She is presently in the MFA programme in writing at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, US. Her website is anukumar.org.

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Adventure Stories of Great Writers
Author: Dr. Usha Bande
Format: Paperback (Ebook not available yet)
Imprint: Kitaab
Published: August 2015
Subject: Fiction
Price: US$14.95/Rs. 495 (free shipping within India/Singapore)
ISBN:  978-981-09-3405-7

The idea of this book germinated when Dr. Usha Bande was reading the biographies of authors like Hemingway, Melville and R. L. Stevenson to teach a course. The thrill of adventures of these writers inspired her to read more such biographies, take out some exciting episodes from their lives and rewrite them for young readers. The result is a collection of real life stories that teach us how to survive and even enjoy life’s harrowing moments. These twenty stories of seventeen young dare-devils portray their uncanny adventures, their will to survive and surmount difficulties but more than that these acquaint us with their writing skills. These young people came back home and penned down what they had experienced – brush with death, an unexpected helping hand, the thrill of being alive. They are litterateurs and their writings have earned them laurels.

About Usha Bande

Dr. Usha Bande is an academic and critic by profession but a creative and journalistic writer by vocation. Usha Bande did her Ph.D. from Himachal Pradesh University, Shimla and post-doctoral research from University of Florida, Gainesville (USA). She is a prolific bilingual writer in English and Hindi. She has translated Marathi stories into Hindi and English. She has more than a dozen books to her credit; some of them are Violence in Media and Society; Culture, Nature and Literature, Ecology and Folk Traditions in Himachal Pradesh, a Coffee Table book entitled Forts and Palaces of Himachal Pradeshand Writing Resistance: A Comparative Study of Women Novelists.

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The Gourd Seller and Other Stories
Author: Abha Iyengar
Format: Paperback (Ebook not available yet)
Imprint: Kitaab
Published: August 2015
Subject: Fiction
Price: US$14.95/Rs. 295 (free shipping within India/Singapore)
ISBN: 978-981-09-3401-9

In this collection of short stories, Abha Iyengar brings us stories that are sometimes whimsical, but often serious and tragic, with undercurrents of sex and violence running through. Her stories explore the fragmented lives of those who are a part of the urban landscape and others who migrate from rural landscapes to join them and add to the fragments. The stories speak of women’s lives and their ideas of what constitutes self. Her tales are said to have the tone of fables, a certain visceral rawness, a rather poetic turn of prose, and mostly, ‘defy any easy genre classification.’

About Abha Iyengar

Abha Iyengar is an internationally published author, poet and British Council certified Creative Writing Facilitator. Her work has appeared in several anthologies, magazines and literary journals, both in print and online. She is a Kota Press Poetry Anthology contest winner. Her story, ‘The High Stool’ was nominated for the Story South Million Writers Award. She has won several literary contests. She is a member of The Poetry Society of India and Writing in India. She has contributed to popular anthologies like ‘The Simple Touch of Fate’, ‘Knit Lit Too’, ‘Chicken Soup for the Soul’ and The Indo-Austalian Anthology of Short Fiction. Her work has appeared in literary journals like Gowanus Books, Tattoo Highway,Tryst3, Bewildering Stories, Enlightened Practice, The Asian Writer, Door Knobs and Body Paint, Citizen 32, Arabesques Review among others.

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Urdu Poetry—An Introduction
by Anees Ayesha and Zafar Anjum

ISBN: 9789810780555
Format: Paperback (Ebook not available yet)
Imprint: Kitaab
Published: November 2013
Subject: Non-fiction/poetry
Price: US$18

Urdu, which started as a lingua franca of the masses during the Mughal era in India, is one of the most popular languages of South Asia, and is widely used in Bollywood films.  There are between 60 and 70 million native speakers of Urdu in the world today.  Sadly, the new generation is losing access to this language due to a variety of reasons. Despite this deprivation, they often display a passion for the poetry of this beautiful language. This book is an attempt to present before them a small slice of Urdu’s best heritage in an easy to comprehend style.

Authors

The book was originally penned by Anees Ayesha, 75 who has taught Urdu language and literature in Hyderabad for over 50 years and is an avid promoter of the learning of Urdu among the new generations. She works closely with the Mehfil-i-Khawateen (A women writer’s collective) and Dabistan-i-Jaleeli (Set up to celebrate the works of Ali Ahmed Jaleeli), two organisations that are deeply involved in promoting the Urdu language and appreciation of its contribution to literature and culture in the sub continent.

Zafar Anjum, the translator  of the book, is a writer and journalist and his most recent works include a work of non-fiction, The Resurgence of Satyam (Random House India, 2012), and a collection of short stories, The Singapore Decalogue: Episodes in the Life of a Foreign Talent (Red Wheelbarrow Books, Singapore, 2012).

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