Hop On To A Superfragilistic Story-Tour That Will Take You Far And Wide To Places You Have Never Been And People You Have Never Seen. Meet Chicken Mama, The Spiky-Haired Medicine Woman Who Can Move Time Backwards; Mokel-Embe-Embe, The World S Last Dinosaur, About To Be Captured By British Explorers; Spooky95768939123, The Ghost In Danger Of Becoming Extinct; And Manto The Degree Master, Equally Expert At Calligraphy And Chumpy . . . Salute Freedom Fighter Shankarrao And His Defiant Chappal-Throwing; And Tag Along With Old Das Babu To Bombay S Hanging Gardens, Arabia And The Yucky-Mucky Footpath; And Find Out If Asha And Dhiren Are Ever Able To Fool The Very Clever Chachaji . . There S Never A Dull Moment In This Selection Of Unusual Stories.

Oblivion and Other Stories is an anthology of twenty short stories by Gopinath Mohanty, the doyen of Oriya (now Odia) literature. The stories, written across a half-century (1935-1988), sample his oeuvre of writings and the variety of his themes-from 'Dã' (mid-1930s) to 'Oblivion' (1951) to 'The Upper Crust' (1967) to 'Lustre' (1971) and 'Festival Day' (1985). They capture the forgotten others, the banality of marginal living on life's edge-of the poor, the tribals and ordinary people-invisible in the feudal landscape of Orissa in the twentieth century. Originally written in Oriya by the Padma Bhushan awardee, these have now been translated for the first time into English and recreate the social life of mid-twentieth century India. The embellished past in the stories is not one of nostalgia but a full-toned portrait of society. Marginalization is the running thread: dispossession, disenfranchisement, class/caste social exclusivity and lack of education.

Premchand Is India . . . If You Haven T Read Premchand, You Have Missed Out On A Lot The Hindu Considered One Of The Greatest Fiction Writers In Hindi, Munshi Premchand (1880 1936) Wrote Over Three Hundred Short Stories, A Dozen Novels And Two Plays Over A Prolific Career Spanning Three Decades. Though Best Known For His Stories Exposing The Horrors Of Poverty And Social Injustice, He Wrote On A Variety Of Themes With Equal Facility Romance, Satire, Social Dramas, Nationalist Tales, And Yarns Steeped In Folklore. The Co-Wife And Other Stories Brings Together Twenty Classic Tales Of Premchand Which Provide A Glimpse Of The Author S Extraordinary Range And Diversity. While Some Cast A Harrowing Look At Poverty, Reflecting Premchand S Sympathy With The Underdog, Others Expose Human Foibles Without Being Judgmental And Tackle Gender Politics In A Humorous And Ironic Manner. This Collection Also Includes An Imaginative Foray Into Historical Fiction, A Nostalgic Look At Childhood, A Comic Exploration Of The Theme Of Women S Autonomy, And Stories That Reveal The Writer S Profound Empathy With Animals. Ruth Vanita S Sensitive Translation Captures The Power And Beauty Of Premchand S Language, Conveying The Nuances Of The Original And Bringing To Life The Author S Inherent Humanism.

It all began with the fall of a meteorite and the crater it made. In its centre was a red notebook, sticking out of the ground—the first (or was it really the last?) of Professor Shonku’s diaries. Professor Trilokeshwar Shonku, eccentric genius and scientist, disappeared without a trace after he shot off into space in a rocket from his backyard in Giridih, accompanied by his loyal but not-toointelligent servant Prahlad, his cat Newton, and Bidhushekhar, his robot with an attitude. What has become of the professor? Has he decided to stay on in Mars, his original destination? Or has he found his way to some other planet and is living there with strange companions? His last diary tells an incredible story . . . Other diaries unearthed from his abandoned laboratory reveal stranger and even more exciting adventures involving a ferocious sadhu, a revengeful mummy and a mad scientist in Norway who turns famous men into six-inch statues. Exciting, imaginative and funny, the stories in this collection capture the sheer magic of Ray’s lucid language, elegant style, graphic descriptions and absurd humour. The indomitable Professor Shonku has returned, to win himself over a whole new band of followers!

The stories in Dolls’ Wedding, by the finest short-story writer in modern Telugu, are nuanced, hard-hitting and marked by the total absence of sentimentality. A tightly constructed plot relies on a minimalist portrayal of characters—among them beggars, peasants, widows, children and the upwardly mobile middle class—whose pragmatism drives them to break convention and fight for their survival. The aged auditor’s young wife in ‘Got to Go to Eluru’ seduces an adolescent boy in order to produce a son who will protect her status when she is widowed; in ‘Firewood’, a peasant girl overcomes fear and speaks out when she is falsely accused of theft. A realist devoid of ideologies, Chaso was deeply interested in the actual life and the inner world of people around him. These luminous translations bring Chaso to a new audience.