A collection of inventive and surprising short stories from one of India's most prominent countercultural writers. In this wildly inventive collection of Nabarun Bhattacharya's stories we meet characters such as a trigger-happy cop in an authoritarian police state, a man who holds on to a piece of rope from a deadly noose, a retired revolutionary thrilled by delusions of grandeur, and people working for a corporation that arranges lavish suicides for a price. Ranging from scathing satires of society to surreal investigations of violence and love, these stories are also a window onto the political and social climate in Bengal, tracing both pan-Indian developments like the 1975 Emergency and local ones like militant-leftist Naxalism and the decades-long Communist reign in the state. Expertly translated from the Bengali, Hawa Hawa and Other Stories is a journey through the mind of one of the most daring countercultural writers of India, one with particular resonance in these chaotic times.

The moving memoir of one brave woman who, along with her daughters, has kept 90,000 of her fellow citizens safe, healthy, and educated for over 20 years in Somalia. Dr. Hawa Abdi, "the Mother Teresa of Somalia" and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, is the founder of a massive camp for internally displaced people located a few miles from war-torn Mogadishu, Somalia. Since 1991, when the Somali government collapsed, famine struck, and aid groups fled, she has dedicated herself to providing help for people whose lives have been shattered by violence and poverty. She turned her 1300 acres of farmland into a camp that has numbered up to 90,000 displaced people, ignoring the clan lines that have often served to divide the country. She inspired her daughters, Deqo and Amina, to become doctors. Together, they have saved tens of thousands of lives in her hospital, while providing an education to hundreds of displaced children. In 2010, Dr. Abdi was kidnapped by radical insurgents, who also destroyed much of her hospital, simply because she was a woman. She, along with media pressure, convinced the rebels to let her go, and she demanded and received a written apology. Dr. Abdi's story of incomprehensible bravery and perseverance will inspire readers everywhere.

AIN HAWANI, zaman solonya ternoktah pada usia remaja. Hanya kerana silap perhitungan, timbul prasangka buruk, menyebabkan dia dan Adam Mukhriz terjerat. Rayuannya tidak dipedulikan. Lelaki itu pula diam membisu, seolah-olah benar apa yang berlaku. Akhirnya, ijab kabul antara mereka terlafaz dalam paksa dan tanpa rela. Sayangnya, hubungan suami isteri ini hanya tertulis di atas kertas sahaja. Ain yang kecewa, pergi jauh mencari harga diri. Adam yang ditinggalkan, menghitung hari-hari nan sepi. Setiap saat rindunya terus melimpah. Namun Ain tidak pernah berpaling melihat cinta yang mekar di hatinya. Ah... Adam pasrah! Semua itu salahnya kerana tidak berani memaknakan kata-kata. Setelah lapan tahun pergi dan menanti, Ain dan Adam dipertemukan di depan pintu Majidilharam. Bagi Adam, kebetulan ini memang didoakan sekian lama. Ain pula terus membenci dan menganggap ikatan mereka sudah terputus. Hanya lafaz Adam yang ditunggu.

BollySwar is a decade-wise compendium of information about the music of Hindi films. Volume 6 chronicles the Hindi film music of the decade between 1981 and 1990. This volume catalogues more than 1000 films and 7000 songs, involving more than 1000 music directors, lyricists and singers. An overview of the decade highlights the key artists of the decade - music directors, lyricists and singers - and discusses the emerging trends in Hindi film music. A yearly review provides listings of the year's top artists and songs and describes the key milestones of the year in Hindi film music. The bulk of the book provides the song listing of every Hindi film album released in the decade. Basic information about each film's cast and crew is provided and detailed music credits are provided. Where available, music credits go beyond information regarding music directors, lyricists and singers, and include the names of assistants, arrangers, recordists, etc. Where applicable, music related awards are listed. Interesting trivia is listed for most films. This includes information about artist debuts, plagiarised or sampled songs, controversies and stories behind the making of the film and its music. This book is primarily meant as a quick reference for people looking for information related to a Hindi film or a song, but readers can also browse through the book to get an overview of the events that shaped Bollywood music in the decade. Given that Hindi films are a reflection of the Indian society, the reader can also glean insights about the country's socio-political and cultural environment from the book.

What would happen if we could stroll through the revolutionary history of the 20th century and, without any fear of the possible responses, ask the main protagonists - from Lenin to Che Guevara, from Alexandra Kollontai to Ulrike Meinhof - seemingly naïve questions about love? Although all important political and social changes of the 20th century included heated debates on the role of love, it seems that in the 21st century of new technologies of the self (Grindr, Tinder, online dating, etc.) we are faced with a hyperinflation of sex, not love. By going back to the sexual revolution of the October Revolution and its subsequent repression, to Che's dilemma between love and revolutionary commitment and to the period of '68 (from communes to terrorism) and its commodification in late capitalism, the Croatian philosopher Srecko Horvat gives a possible answer to the question of why it is that the most radical revolutionaries like Lenin or Che were scared of the radicality of love. What is so radical about a seemingly conservative notion of love and why is it anything but conservative? This short book is a modest contribution to the current upheavals around the world - from Tahrir to Taksim, from Occupy Wall Street to Hong Kong, from Athens to Sarajevo - in which the question of love is curiously, surprisingly, absent.

A heart-wrenching novel explores how several generations of one Palestinian family cope with the loss of their land after the 1948 creation of Israel and their subsequent life in Palestine, which is often marred by war and violence. A first novel. Reprint. Reading-group guide included.