| Oxford Recommends |
|
| |
|
|
Victoria & Abdul
by Shrabani Basu
The tall handsome Abdul Karim was just twenty-four when he arrived in England from Agra to wait at tables during Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. An assistant clerk at Agra Central Jail, he suddenly found himself a personal attendant to the Empress of India herself. Within a year, he was established as a powerful figure at court, becoming the queen’s teacher, or Munshi, and instructing her in Urdu and Indian affairs. Devastated by the death of John Brown, her Scottish gillie, the queen had at last found his replacement.
Read more...
|
| |
|
|
Chicken Soup for the Indian Romantic Soul
by Raksha Bharadia,Jack Canfield,Mark Victor Hansen
In a confused and uncertain world, it is love that guides us to our comfort zones, creating joy and making life worth living. Which is why everyone loves a love story.Chicken Soup for the Indian Romantic Soul reaches out to touch your heart with real-life accounts of how that magic state of things cameoften unbiddeninto the lives of so many lovers, holding out hope to everyone that romance will, sooner or later, strike the most prosaic of people.
|
Read more...
|
| |
|
|
Museum of Innocence
by Orhan Pamuk
“It was the happiest moment of my life, though I didn’t know it.” So begins the new novel, his first since winning the Nobel Prize, from the universally acclaimed author of Snow and My Name Is Red.
It is 1975, a perfect spring in Istanbul. Kemal, scion of one of the city’s wealthiest families, is about to become engaged to Sibel, daughter of another prominent family, when he encounters Füsun, a beautiful shopgirl and a distant relation. Once the long-lost cousins violate the code of virginity, a rift begins to open between Kemal and the world of the Westernized Istanbul bourgeosie—a world, as he lovingly describes it, with opulent parties and clubs, society gossip, restaurant rituals, picnics, and mansions on the Bosphorus, infused with the melancholy of decay—until finally he breaks off his engagement to Sibel. But his resolve comes too late.
Read more...
|
| |
|
|
OPEN: An Auotobiography
by Andre Agassi
He is one of the most beloved athletes in history and one of the most gifted men ever to step onto a tennis court – but from early childhood Andre Agassi hated the game. Coaxed to swing a racket while still in the crib, forced to hit hundreds of balls a day while still in primary school, Agassi resented the constant pressure even as he drove himself to become a prodigy, an inner conflict that would define him. Now, in his beautiful, haunting autobiography, Agassi tells the story of a life framed by such conflicts, a life balanced precariously between self-destruction and perfectionism.
Read more...
|
| |
|
|
The Palace of Illusions
by Chitra Banerji Divakaruni
A reimagining of the world-famous Indian epic, the Mahabharat--told from the point of view of the wife of an amazing woman. Relevant to today's war-torn world, "The Palace of Illusions" takes us back to a time that is half history, half myth, and wholly magical. Narrated by Panchaali, the wife of the legendary Pandavas brothers in the Mahabharat, the novel gives us a new interpretation of this ancient tale.
The novel traces the princess Panchaali's life, beginning with her birth in fire
Read more...
|
| |
|
|
Mother Pious Lady
by Santosh Desai
A new India is visibly emerging from within the folds of its many pasts. This new India needs to be seen with new eyes, free from the baggage of yesterdays characterizations. This is exactly what Santosh Desai, one of Indias best-known social commentators, does in this warm, affectionate and deliciously witty look at the changing urban Indian middle class.
Read more...
|
| |
|
|
Becoming Indian
by Pawan K Verma
‘Those who have never been colonized can never really know what it does to the psyche of a people. Those who have been are often not fully aware of—or are unwilling to accept—the degree to which they have been compromised.’
Till just a few decades ago, much of the world was carved into empires. By the mid twentieth century independent countries had emerged from these, but even after years of political liberation, cultural freedom has eluded formerly colonized nations like India. In this important book, Pavan Varma, best-selling author of the seminal works The Great Indian Middle Class and Being Indian, looks at the consequences of Empire on the Indian psyche.
Read more...
|
| |
|
|
Wolf Hall
by Hilary Mantel
Winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2009, Wolf Hall is set in the 1520s and tells the story of Thomas Cromwell's rise to prominence in the Tudor court. Hilary Mantel has been praised by critics for writing ‘a rich, absorbingly readable historical novel; she has made a significant shift in the way any of her readers interested in English history will henceforward think about Thomas Cromwell.'
James Naughtie, comments ‘Hilary Mantel has given us a thoroughly modern novel set in the 16th century. Wolf Hall has a vast narrative sweep that gleams on every page with luminous and mesmerising detail.
Read more...
|
| |
|
|
The Scientific Indian
by A.P.J.Abdul Kalam
Nuclear capability, self-sufficiency in food production, an array of indigenous satellites and missiles, an unmanned Moon mission—India’s achievements in the scientific domain in recent years have been spectacular. But, according to the country’s best-known scientist A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and his close associate Y.S. Rajan, we’ve only just begun. In a century that many experts predict may belong to India, the realization of the vision of a better future for everyone will require a keen understanding of our needs and this can only be achieved by tailoring our research and innovations to the goal of national development.
Read more...
|
| |
|
|
The Difficulty of Being Good
by Gurcharan Das
In his new book, Gurcharan Das turns to the Mahabharata in order to answer the question, ‘why be good?’, and discovers that the epic’s world of moral haziness and uncertainty is closer to our experience as ordinary human beings than the narrow and rigid positions that define most debatein this fundamentalist age of moral certainty.
The Mahabharata is obsessed with the elusive notion of dharma—in essence, doing the right thing. When a hero falters, the action stops and everyone weighs in with a different and often contradictory take on dharma. The epic’s characters are flawed, but their incoherent experiences throw light on our familiar dilemmas.
Read more...
|
|
|
 |
|
