Poet, novelist, painter and musician, Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) is the grand master of Bengali culture. Written during the 1890s, the stories in this selection brilliantly recreate vivid images of Bengali life and landscapes in their depiction of peasantry and gentry, casteism, corrupt officialdom and dehumanizing poverty. Yet Tagore is first and foremost India's supreme Romantic poet, and in these stories he can be seen reaching beyond mere documentary realism towards his own profoundly original vision.

"A powerful portrait of the oppressed and the forms of oppression that occur in India."—Theodore Riccardi, Jr., Columbia University

Dhaka may be one of the most densely populated cities in the world - noisy, grid-locked, short on public amenities, and blighted with sprawling slums - but, as these stories show, it is also one of the most colourful and chaotically joyful places you could possibly call home. Slum kids and film stars, day-dreaming rich boys, gangsters and former freedom fighters all rub shoulders in these streets, often with Dhaka's famous rickshaws ferrying them to and fro across cultural, economic and ethnic divides. Just like Dhaka itself, these stories thrive on the rich interplay between folk culture and high art; they both cherish and lampoon the city's great tradition of political protest, and they pay tribute to a nation that was borne out of a love of language, one language in particular, Bangla (from which all these stories have been translated).

Lifelines is an enthralling collection of stories that traces the journeys of individuals as they re-shape their destinies in a world where the old ways are being challenged as never before, even in the traditionalist heartlands of South Asia. A successful architect suddenly finds herself the reluctant guardian of two children. A New York cabbie ponders his previous incarnation as an investment banker. A mother-in-law and daughter-in-law maintain an uneasy truce based on a delusion. A postgraduate student encounters a mystery from his past in a foreign land. A young woman discovers an unlikely cure for self-consciousness. Clear-eyed children observe adult hypocrisies. And romance is found in all the wrong places. Lifelines portrays the trials and triumphs of men, women and children who face unexpected challenges, and discover that the decisions they make can have unimaginable consequences. Published by Zubaan.