Search results for ""Author Anuradha Roy""

Beginning in 1907 with the founding of a factory in Songarh, a small provincial town where narrow attitudes prevail, the story is of three generations of an Indian family, brilliantly told, in which a sensitive and intelligent foundling boy orphan who is casteless and without religion and Bakul, the motherless granddaughter of the house, grow up together. The boy, Mukunda, spends his time as a servant in the house or reading the books of Mrs Barnum, an Anglo-Englishwoman whose life was saved long ago by Bakul's grandmother, by now demented by loneliness. Mrs Barnum gives Mukunda the run of her house, but as he and Bakul grow, they become aware that their intense closeness is becoming something else, and Bakul's father is warned to separate them. He banishes Mukunda to a school in Calcutta. The many strands of this intensely fashioned narrative converge when Mukunda, by now a successful businessman, returns to Songarh years after he has been exiled from the only home he knew, to resolve the family's destiny.

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'A writer of great subtlety and intelligence, who understands that emotional power comes from the steady accretion of detail' Kamila Shamsie, Guardian'She writes elegantly and intelligently whatever the subject matter' Francesca Angelini, The Times'A compulsively readable novel' Manil Suri, New York Times'A horse was in flames. It roamed beneath the ocean breathing fire . . . 'When he wakes up, Elango knows his life has changed. His dream will consume him until he gives it shape. The potter must create a terracotta horse whose beauty will be reason enough for its existence. Yet he cannot pin down from where it has galloped into his mind – the Mahabharata, or Trojan legend, or his anonymous potter-ancestors. Nor can he say where it belongs – in a temple compound, within a hotel lobby, or with Zohra, whom he despairs of ever marrying.The astral, indefinable force driving Elango towards forbidden love and creation has unleashed other currents. A neighbourhood girl begins her bewildering journey into adulthood, developing a complicated relationship with him. A lost dog adopts him, taking over his heart. Meanwhile, his community is driven by inflammatory passions of a different kind. Here, people, animals, and even the gods live on a knife's edge and the consequences of daring to dream against the tide are cataclysmic.Moving between India and England, The Earthspinner reflects the many ways in which the East encounters the West. It breathes new life into ancient myths, giving allegorical shape to the war of fanaticism against reason and the imagination.An intricate, wrenching novel about the changed ways of loving and living in the modern world.

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'A writer of great subtlety and intelligence, who understands that emotional power comes from the steady accretion of detail' Kamila Shamsie, Guardian'She writes elegantly and intelligently whatever the subject matter' Francesca Angelini, The Times'A compulsively readable novel' Manil Suri, New York Times'A horse was in flames. It roamed beneath the ocean breathing fire . . . 'When he wakes up, Elango knows his life has changed. His dream will consume him until he gives it shape. The potter must create a terracotta horse whose beauty will be reason enough for its existence. Yet he cannot pin down from where it has galloped into his mind – the Mahabharata, or Trojan legend, or his anonymous potter-ancestors. Nor can he say where it belongs – in a temple compound, within a hotel lobby, or with Zohra, whom he despairs of ever marrying.The astral, indefinable force driving Elango towards forbidden love and creation has unleashed other currents. A neighbourhood girl begins her bewildering journey into adulthood, developing a complicated relationship with him. A lost dog adopts him, taking over his heart. Meanwhile, his community is driven by inflammatory passions of a different kind. Here, people, animals, and even the gods live on a knife's edge and the consequences of daring to dream against the tide are cataclysmic.Moving between India and England, The Earthspinner reflects the many ways in which the East encounters the West. It breathes new life into ancient myths, giving allegorical shape to the war of fanaticism against reason and the imagination. It is an intricate, wrenching novel about the changed ways of loving and living in the modern world.

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In a remote town in the Himalaya, Maya tries to put behind her a time of great sorrow. By day she teaches in a school and at night she types up drafts of a magnum opus by her landlord, a relic of princely India known to all as Diwan Sahib. Her bond with this eccentric, and her friendship with a peasant girl, Charu, give her the sense that she might be able to forge a new existence away from the devastation of her past. As Maya finds out, no place is remote enough or small enough. The world she has come to love, where people are connected with nature, is endangered by the town's new administration. The impending elections are hijacked by powerful outsiders who divide people and threaten the future of her school. Charu begins to behave strangely, and soon Maya understands that a new boy in the neighbourhood may be responsible. When Diwan Sahib's nephew arrives to set up his trekking company on their estate, she is drawn to him despite herself, and finally she is forced to confront bitter and terrible truths. A many-layered and powerful narrative, by turns poetic, elegiac and comic, by the author of An Atlas of Impossible Longing.

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"A writer of great subtlety and intelligence . . . a beautifully written and compelling story of how families fall apart and what remains of the aftermath" Kamila Shamsie, winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction 2018 "The book everyone is talking about for the summer" Lorraine Candy, Sunday TimesIn my childhood, I was known as the boy whose mother had run off with an Englishman" - so begins the story of Myshkin and his mother, Gayatri, who is driven to rebel against tradition and follow her artist's instinct for freedom.Freedom of a different kind is in the air across India. The fight against British rule is reaching a critical turn. The Nazis have come to power in Germany. At this point of crisis, two strangers arrive in Gayatri's town, opening up for her the vision of other possible lives. What took Myshkin's mother from India to Dutch-held Bali in the 1930s, ripping a knife through his comfortingly familiar environment? Excavating the roots of the world in which he was abandoned, Myshkin comes to understand the connections between anguish at home and a war-torn universe overtaken by patriotism. Anuradha Roy's enthralling novel is a powerful parable for our times, telling the story of men and women trapped in a dangerous era uncannily similar to the present. Impassioned, elegiac, and gripping, it brims with the same genius that has brought Roy's earlier fiction international renown."One of India's greatest living authors" - O, The Oprah Magazine"Roy's writing is a joy" - Financial Times

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LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2015 AND WINNER OF THE 2016 DSC PRIZE FOR SOUTH ASIAN LITERATUREA stark and unflinching novel by a spellbinding storyteller, about religion, love and violence in the modern world.A train stops at a railway station. A young woman jumps off. She has wild hair, sloppy clothes, a distracted air. She looks Indian, yet she is somehow not. The sudden violence of what happens next leaves the other passengers gasping.The train terminates at Jarmuli, a temple town by the sea. Here, among pilgrims, priests and ashrams, three old women disembark only to encounter the girl once again. What is someone like her doing in this remote corner, which attracts only worshippers?Over the next five days, the old women live out their long-planned dream of a holiday together; their temple guide finds ecstasy in forbidden love; and the girl is joined by a photographer battling his own demons.The full force of the evil and violence beneath the serene surface of the town becomes evident when their lives overlap and collide. Unexpected connections are revealed between devotion and violence, friendship and fear, as Jarmuli is revealed as a place with a long, dark past that transforms all who encounter it.

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A festival of Indian folk rituals and costumes bursting with colour, captured by renowned photographer Charles Fréger, the creator of a distinctive and powerful new genre of portrait photography. Internationally renowned photographer Charles Fréger continues to explore global traditions and cultures, by celebrating the powerful visual aspects of Indian folk culture and religious ritual. India is the home to a myriad of local traditions, legends and religions, each with their own festivals, rites and rituals. Celebrations burst with vivid colours and often wildly exuberant costumes, some representing gods and goddesses, others legendary heroes from Sanskrit epics such as the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. In Charles Fréger’s photographs, those who honour local cultural traditions are represented in single or group portraits, represented against carefully chosen landscapes and backdrops, from the heart of festivals and celebrations. Fréger’s unmistakable style of portraiture allows us to admire the complexity of their adornments – masks and headdresses, costumes and body paint – and to consider the abundance of imagination that expresses India’s countless stories and characters, both human and divine. This spectacular gathering of warrior figures, deities, musicians, tigers, mahouts, epic characters and their avatars is accompanied by texts setting the huge variety of eclectic costumes in context, and describing the local festivals and rituals. This compelling sequence of new portraits will enthral those with an interest in folk traditions, as well as the followers of this internationally acclaimed photographer.

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