Published in March of 1899, Muhammad Hadi Ruswa’s famous novel, Umrao Jaan Ada created a sensation when it came out, with its candid account of the life of Umrao Jaan, a semi-fictional, possibly real, Lucknow courtesan. Subsequent translations and films based on the book have further extended its fame. What is less known, however, is that a month after he wrote Umrao Jaan Ada, Ruswa penned a short text, a novella entitled Junun-e-Intezar (‘The Madness of Waiting,’ April 1899) in which Umrao avenges herself on her creator, Ruswa, by narrating the story of his life. Blurring the lines between truth and fiction, narrator and character, this clever narrative strategy gives the courtesan a speaking voice. Although there has been much interest in the original novel, this paratext has been completely forgotten; something this volume attempts to redress through a critical introduction which rethinks Umrao Jaan Ada and the Urdu literary milieu of late-nineteenth century Lucknow. This book contains both the Urdu text and its translation for the bilingual reader. Published by Zubaan.

“A haunting and harrowing indictment . . . [a] significant achievement.” —The New York Times Book Review L.A. Times Book Prize Finalist * New York Times Book Review Paperback Row * Time Best New Books July 2020 Waiting for an Echo is a riveting, rarely seen glimpse into American jails and prisons. It is also a damning account of policies that have criminalized mental illness, shifting large numbers of people who belong in therapeutic settings into punitive ones. Dr. Christine Montross has spent her career treating the most severely ill psychiatric patients. This expertise—the mind in crisis—has enabled her to reckon with the human stories behind mass incarceration. A father attempting to weigh the impossible calculus of a plea bargain. A bright young woman whose life is derailed by addiction. Boys in a juvenile detention facility who, desperate for human connection, invent a way to communicate with one another from cell to cell. Overextended doctors and correctional officers who strive to provide care and security in environments riddled with danger. Our methods of incarceration take away not only freedom but also selfhood and soundness of mind. In a nation where 95 percent of all inmates are released from prison and return to our communities, this is a practice that punishes us all.

An “exhilirating” novel of domestic terrorism in the gritty streets of 1980s New York from the National Book Award–finalist and author of Straight Cut (The New Yorker). As a staff photographer at Bellevue hospital in Manhattan, Clarence Dmitri Larkin is exposed to the fraying underbelly of New York City. Drawn in by the stories of the sick, the lost, and the insane, Larkin’s own dark impulses lead him through the streets of Brooklyn’s shadowy warehouse district. Increasingly isolated from the world around him, Larkin falls in with a disturbed cell of outcasts. Their ringleader, empowered by confused visions of grandeur and revolution, launches an outlandish scheme to plant an atomic bomb in the catacombs under Times Square. Narrated with unsettling plausibility, Bell’s debut novel demonstrates the remarkable literary skill celebrated in his later novels, such as Soldier’s Joy and The Year of Silence. With “real brilliance . . . full of fire . . . Bell provides promise: promise of his own talent and promise that young American writers are not all retreating from ‘big’ subjects” (The New York Times). “Every sentence [Bell] writes is a joy. His power is exhilarating.” —The New Yorker

Describes the power that can be imposed, and the misery that is caused, especially for the poor, by the simple act of waiting. This title also describes a variety of different situations, including waiting for national identity cards, for welfare agencies, and the endless waiting for relocation from the slums.

Waiting

Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller AARP The Magazine – Recommended Summer Reading CNN – A Most Anticipated Book of August Bustle – A Most Anticipated Book of August Chief Inspector Armand Gamache returns to Three Pines in #1 New York Times bestseller Louise Penny's latest spellbinding novel You’re a coward. Time and again, as the New Year approaches, that charge is leveled against Armand Gamache. It starts innocently enough. While the residents of the Québec village of Three Pines take advantage of the deep snow to ski and toboggan, to drink hot chocolate in the bistro and share meals together, the Chief Inspector finds his holiday with his family interrupted by a simple request. He’s asked to provide security for what promises to be a non-event. A visiting Professor of Statistics will be giving a lecture at the nearby university. While he is perplexed as to why the head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec would be assigned this task, it sounds easy enough. That is until Gamache starts looking into Professor Abigail Robinson and discovers an agenda so repulsive he begs the university to cancel the lecture. They refuse, citing academic freedom, and accuse Gamache of censorship and intellectual cowardice. Before long, Professor Robinson’s views start seeping into conversations. Spreading and infecting. So that truth and fact, reality and delusion are so confused it’s near impossible to tell them apart. Discussions become debates, debates become arguments, which turn into fights. As sides are declared, a madness takes hold. Abigail Robinson promises that, if they follow her, ça va bien aller. All will be well. But not, Gamache and his team know, for everyone. When a murder is committed it falls to Armand Gamache, his second-in-command Jean-Guy Beauvoir, and their team to investigate the crime as well as this extraordinary popular delusion. And the madness of crowds.

When madness stalks the streets of London, no one is safe...