"In this personal and passionate account, activist and researcher Sahba Husain documents her deeply engaged and empathetic involvement with the politicised terrain of Kashmir. As she meets people that she speaks with and, more importantly, listens to, she begins to question her own 'Indian' identity. Recognizing the anger, despair and helplessness of a people caught in conflict and violence, Husain forms deep friendships during her time working in the state. It is these relationships that form the backdrop of this book, in which Husain focuses on certain key areas: the health of a people, militancy and its changing meanings for local people and the state, impunity and the search for justice, migration and the longing for homes left behind, and women's activism in the faultlines of nation-state and community. A book of surprising beauty in its engagement with human relationships, of love for a land and a people and of hope for a future free of violence, Love, Loss, and Longing in Kashmir is a compelling and necessary read." --Publisher's description.

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Man Booker Prize: An “extraordinary” novel “lit by a moral intelligence at once fierce and tender” (The New York Times Book Review). In a crumbling, isolated house at the foot of Mount Kanchenjunga in the Himalayas, an embittered old judge wants only to retire in peace. But his life is upended when his sixteen-year-old orphaned granddaughter, Sai, arrives on his doorstep. The judge’s chatty cook watches over the girl, but his thoughts are mostly with his son, Biju, hopscotching from one miserable New York restaurant job to another, trying to stay a step ahead of the INS. When a Nepalese insurgency threatens Sai’s new-sprung romance with her tutor, the household descends into chaos. The cook witnesses India’s hierarchy being overturned and discarded. The judge revisits his past and his role in Sai and Biju’s intertwining lives. In a grasping world of colliding interests and conflicting desires, every moment holds out the possibility for hope or betrayal. Published to extraordinary acclaim, The Inheritance of Loss heralds Kiran Desai as one of our most insightful novelists. She illuminates the pain of exile and the ambiguities of postcolonialism with a tapestry of colorful characters and “uncannily beautiful” prose (O: The Oprah Magazine). “A book about tradition and modernity, the past and the future—and about the surprising ways both amusing and sorrowful, in which they all connect.” —The Independent

“Remarkable . . . Vijay traces the fault lines of history, love, and obligation running through a fractured family and country.” —Anthony Marra, New York Times–bestselling author Winner of the 2019 JCB Prize for Literature Gorgeously tactile and sweeping in historical and socio-political scope, Pushcart Prize–winner Madhuri Vijay’s The Far Field follows a complicated flaneuse across the Indian subcontinent as she reckons with her past, her desires, and the tumultuous present. In the wake of her mother’s death, Shalini, a privileged and restless young woman from Bangalore, sets out for a remote Himalayan village in the troubled northern region of Kashmir. Certain that the loss of her mother is somehow connected to the decade-old disappearance of Bashir Ahmed, a charming Kashmiri salesman who frequented her childhood home, she is determined to confront him. But upon her arrival, Shalini is brought face to face with Kashmir’s politics, as well as the tangled history of the local family that takes her in. And when life in the village turns volatile and old hatreds threaten to erupt into violence, Shalini finds herself forced to make a series of choices that could hold dangerous repercussions for the very people she has come to love. With rare acumen and evocative prose, in The Far Field Madhuri Vijay masterfully examines Indian politics, class prejudice, and sexuality through the lens of an outsider, offering a profound meditation on grief, guilt, and the limits of compassion. “A chance to glimpse the lives of distant people captured in prose gorgeous enough to make them indelible—and honest enough to make them real.” —The Washington Post “A singular story of mother and daughter.” —Entertainment Weekly

In this personal and passionate account, activist and researcher Sahba Husain documents her deeply engaged and empathetic involvement with the politicised terrain of Kashmir. As she meets people that she speaks with and, more importantly, listens to, she begins to question her own ‘Indian’ identity. Recognizing the anger, despair and helplessness of a people caught in conflict and violence, Husain forms deep friendships during her time working in the state. It is these relationships that form the backdrop of this book, in which Husain focuses on certain key areas: the health of a people, militancy and its changing meanings for local people and the state, impunity and the search for justice, migration and the longing for homes left behind, and women’s activism in the faultlines of nation-state and community. A book of surprising beauty in its engagement with human relationships, of love for a land and a people and of hope for a future free of violence, Love, Loss, and Longing in Kashmir is a compelling and necessary read. PUBLISHER’S NOTE: As this book goes to press, there is news of the abrogation, by the Indian government, of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution that grants special status to the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Major changes that affect the lives of people in Kashmir are being put in place. Currently, there is a heavy presence of the armed forces, curfew is in place, telephone and internet lines have been suspended, people are in fear and there is huge bewilderment, confusion, anger. No one knows what the future will hold. This book, the result of long years of engagement with Kashmir, ends on a note of hope. It is our hope and belief too that whatever the future holds, it is the people of Kashmir who will shape it for their state and their world.

The politics of mourning -- The politics of democracy -- The killable Kashmiri body -- The politics of visibility -- Enforced disappearance of the other kind -- Militarizing humanitarianism -- Retelling and remembering -- Obliteration and transmutation.

`With delicately drawn characters, Shahnaz Bashir tells the heartbreaking story of one woman?s battle for life, dignity and justice.? ? Mirza Waheed, author of The Collaborator `The night is tired now, the old moon, hanging in the dark sky, is tired too? It is the 1990s, and Kashmir?s long war has begun to claim its first victims. Among them are Ghulam Rasool Joo, Haleema?s father, and her teenage son Imran, who is picked up by the authorities only to disappear into the void of Kashmir?s missing people. The Half Mother is the story of Haleema ? a mother and a daughter yesterday, a `half mother? and an orphan today; tormented by not knowing whether Imran is dead or alive, torn apart by her own lonely existence. While she battles for answers and seeks out torture camps, jails and morgues for any signs of Imran, Kashmir burns in a war that will haunt it for years to come. Heart-wrenching, deeply troubling and written in lyrical prose, The Half Mother marks the debut of a bold new voice from Kashmir.'