He Fixed The Match, She Fixed Him !

                                      By : Shikha Kumar

No, it's not a Cricket Match that the author talks about. 

It's about a matrimony match that Kunal *who is from Mumbai* & Shreya *who is from Delhi* find themselves entangled in, a vicious circle of tit-for-tat , playing dangerous games to settle personal scores.

Shreya eventually manages to change Kunal's evil attitude towards her, by enduring his hatred.  
As the author rightly mentions,"Revenge is a two edged Sword"
kunal finally falls in love with Shreya, and both of them overcome initial hiccups that successful relationships often go through.  

The book initially feels sad & depressing to read but eventually as pages turn & the main characters start to rise in Love, the story becomes interesting & humorous to read. 

Caravans

Indian Merchants on the Silk Road
By: Scott C. Levi

The great adventure of the Multani merchants on the Silk Road to ancient Asia

Caravans tells the fascinating story of tens of thousands of intrepid merchants who risked everything to travel great distances and spend years of their lives pursuing their fortunes in foreign lands.

From the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, these merchants lived as ‘guests’ in cities and villages across Afghanistan, Central Asia, Iran and Russia. Scott C. Levi examines the sophisticated techniques they used to convert a modest amount of merchandise into vast portfolios of trade and moneylending ventures. At precisely the same historical moment that the rising European trade in the Indian Ocean usurped the overland ‘Silk Road’ trade, the Multani merchants began making their way to Central Asia, linking the early modern Indian and Central Asian economies closer together than ever before.

This elegantly written, meticulously researched book brings a forgotten chapter of India’s business history to life. Caravans is the seventh volume in The Story of Indian Business series edited by Gurcharan Das.

Scott C. Levi is Associate Professor of Central Asian History at Ohio State University. 

And Home Was Kariakoo: Memoir of an Indian African

By: M.G. Vassanji

M.G. Vassanji was born in East Africa and, like many East African Indians of his generation, he emigrated to the West. But Africa remained his primal home—the land whose colours and smells most beckoned to him, the land in which his family roots went deepest. 

In And Home Was Kariakoo, he travels to this homeland to draw a vivid portrait of East Africa today and tells the story of the Gujarati Indians of that region for whom Africa is both home and not home.  Entwined through Vassanji’s accounts is the story of his own childhood in Dar es Salaam.  Part memoir, part travelogue, part history, And Home Was Kariakoo is an insightful, thoughtful, deeply moving meditation on the Indians of East Africa and what it means to call a place one’s home. 

M.G. Vassanji is the author of ten books. The Gunny Sack won the Commonwealth Prize, The Book of Secrets and The In-Between World of Vikram Lall each won the Giller Prize, while the memoir A Place Within: Rediscovering India won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-fiction. 

The Eye Still Seeks: Pakistani Contemporary Art

By: Salima Hashmi

A superb art book of one of the most arresting art movements in the world today.

Pakistan’s contemporary art scene is arguably the most exciting in South Asia. Well-known curator, artist and teacher Salima Hashmi gives us a superb overview in this lavishly designed book, which includes interviews with artists such as Rashid Rana and pieces by writers like Kamila Shamsie and Mohsin Hamid.

Salima Hashmi is a well-known artist and dean at the School of Visual Arts and Design at the Beaconhouse National University, Lahore. 

What Will You Give for This Beauty

By: Ali Akbar Natiq

Translated by: Ali Madeeh Hashmi

Qaim Deen sneaks across the Sutlej, into India, to steal cattle—braving cobras, wild boars and the border patrol—and gives generously of his earnings to those in need. Young Nauman’s forbidden love for Nuzhat leads him to seek refuge in a holy place, at terrible cost to his family. Maulvi Abdur Rahman and his neighbour’s bull terrier engage in a hilarious and unrelenting battle of wits. Could Kareeman’s beauty, which hits the village like a storm, be the salvation of Ghafoora the Dimwit?

Possessed of dark irony and a searing moral vision, Ali Akbar Natiq is a storyteller of exceptional talent and manifest power. He renders the robust rhythms of the Punjab countryside, with its undercurrent of violence and poverty, through feuds and feasts, hunts and marriages, mobs and floods, elopements and gossip. Acrobats, holy men, thieves, peasants, landowners, masons and courtesans populate the stories of his virtuoso debut collection What Will You Give for This Beauty?

About the Author

Ali Akbar Natiq began working as a mason, specializing in domes and minarets, to contribute to the family income while he read widely in Urdu and Arabic. Acclaimed as one of the brightest stars in Pakistan’s literary firmament, Natiq has published two volumes of poetry and one collection of short stories.

Ali Madeeh Hashmi is a psychiatrist, writer and translator. He has written about the lives and works of Faiz, Ghalib, Iqbal and Manto. 

Me, My Fiancée and #I Fu*!ed Up

By: Arya Babbar

We all want to be loyal but is love meant to last? 

All Rushabh Shah, a nice Gujarati boy, has done in his life is love his girlfriend and listen to her. So there is not an iota of doubt in his mind when he proposes. Both the families are overjoyed and soon the preparations for the wedding begin.

But then from nowhere doubts begin to creep in and he meets the love of his life—or so he thinks! Panicking, he embarks on a mission to find out whom he truly loves.

Question is, is there such a thing as true love?

This comedy of errors set against the backdrop of the great Indian wedding is unputdownable!

Aarya Babbar is an Indian actor who has worked in several Hindi/Punjabi films & was a participant in recent Big Boss 8 season.  

REGRET

By: Ikramullah

Translated by Faruq Hassan and Muhammad Umar Memon

Deeply moving and elegantly wrought, these two novellas skillfully evoke the long shadow cast by the violence of Partition through poignant tales of families and friendships sundered by the carnage of 1947.

Ikramullah is a renowned Urdu novelist and short-story writer.

Faruq Hassan was an Urdu poet, critic and translator.

Muhammad Umar Memon is an eminent critic, short-story writer and translator.

An Unfinished Agenda

My Life in the Pharmaceutical Industry
By: K. Anji Reddy

An insider’s look at the burgeoning pharma industry in India

From his birth in a village in Andhra to his founding and running Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, now one of India’s largest pharmaceutical enterprises, Dr K. Anji Reddy’s journey makes for an inspiring story. 

That story is told rivetingly in his own words in his memoir, An Unfinished Agenda. This book also takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of the science of medicine over the last hundred years and reminds us of the stark challenges that remain.

Dr K. Anji Reddy was one of the leading figures of India’s pharmaceutical industry. He passed away in 2013.

A Mirrored Life

Subtitle: The Rumi Novel

Author: RabisankarBal
Translator: Arunava Sinha

On his way from Tangiers to China, the medieval Moorish traveller Ibn Battuta arrives in Konya, Turkey where the legendary dervish Rumi had lived, danced and died. More than half a century may have passed since his death, but his poetry remains alive, inscribed in every stone and tree and pathway. Rumi’s followers entrust Ibn Battuta with a manuscript of his life stories to spread word of the mystic on his travels. As Battuta reads and recites these tales, his listeners discover their own lives reflected in these stories—fate has bound them, and perhaps you, to Rumi.

A Mirrored Life reaffirms the magical powers of storytelling, making us find Rumi in each of our hearts.

About the Author 

Rabisankar Bal is a Bangla novelist and short-story writer, and has published over fifteen novels, five short-story collections, one volume of poetry and one volume of literary essays. Born in 1962, he has been writing for thirty years. His novel Dozakhnama, acclaimed by the late doyen of Bengali literature Sunil Gangopadhyay as the finest novel of 2010, won the West Bengal government’s Bankimchandra Smriti Puraskar.

About the Translator 

Arunava Sinha translates contemporary and classic Bengali fiction into English. He has seventeen published translations to his name. 

Restart: The Last Chance for the Indian Economy

                                                    By : Mihir S. Sharma

Good times have been promised to India – but we need to make bold changes first. Unless the change is real, enthusiasm about the economy will vanish.

In Restart, Mihir S. Sharma shows what can and must change in India’s policies, its administration and even its attitudes. The answers he provides are not obvious, and require courage. Nor are they all comforting or conventional. Yet they could, in less time than you can imagine, unleash the creativity of a billion hopeful Indians.

About the author:

Mihir S. Sharma was born in Delhi, and grew up in Chandigarh, in Mumbai, in Jamshedpur and in Kolkata. He was trained as an economist and a political scientist before dropping ignobly out of academia. Like many others unable to concentrate on any one thing long enough to write a dissertation, he drifted from one thing to another till he found the closest thing to paid unemployment in a capitalist society: journalism. He now writes and edits opinion for the Business Standard newspaper in New Delhi.

WHEN I WAS 25

 By : SHAILI CHOPRA

Prominent leaders from different spheres share secrets of what they did at 25 and how that transformed their leadership horizon

When I Was 25 is a book about leaders when they were 25. The youth will immediately be drawn to it as they’d relate to that period of life much better. It includes careers graphs and how these successful personalities reached their current success from when they were 25. The list of people who have been profiled include Adi Godrej, KP Singh, Rajdeep Sardesai, Dimple Kapadia,P Chidambaram, Shashi Tharoor,Indra Noori,Zia Mody to name a few.

 The book is different than others on profiles of prominent leaders as it addresses the youth directly and imparts valuable lessons on how to get to the top—as opposed to simply tell the stories of people already at the top.

 About the author

Shaili Chopra is one of India’s top television editor-presenters. She hosts her own video blog TheShailiChopraREPORT. She has been the Senior Editor and Lead Anchor at ET NOW, the Economic Times Business News Channel and earlier with NDTV.

Shaili anchored the 9 pm primetime slots and conducted the big exclusive interviews of people like Warren Buffett, George Soros, Finance Minister P Chidambaram, PepsiCo’s boss Indra Nooyi, Microsoft’s head Steve Ballmer and many more.

In 2012, Shaili received India’s biggest journalism honour The Ramnath Goenka Award for best in business journalism. She also won the News Television Award for the Best Reporter in India in 2007 and later in 2008, her business-golf show Business on Course, won the Best Show Award. She also won the Media Foundation Best Business Anchor Award for 2010 and in the same year the Federation of Indian Industry gave her the Young Women’s Achiever Award for contribution to media. 

She was awarded the Young Indian Leader fellowship by the Spanish Government in April 2013.

Shaili’s previous book THE BIG CONNECT published by Random House India earlier this year garnered rave reviews and coverage across media in the country. This is her second book with Random House India.

Before Time

                                                              By : Xunaira J

Part I of : The Time Trilogy

The story is based in Pakistan.

The story is about Onaiza - who wants to be an author. 
While her father supports her choice, her mother wishes to see her become a doctor one day.

She is pictured as someone who has very low self esteem & thinks of herself as a loser.

The story in mostly conversations between her & Impassioned aka Asher over Internet Relay Chat Network.

They share & discuss everything under the Sun, including their personal lives, happiness & despair alike. 

While both Onaiza & Asher carry the baggage of their past, Onaiza is ready to move on while Asher is reluctant to do so.

Onaiza eventually develops feelings for Asher, but will she be able to bring Asher back to present so they can have a future together? Maybe the next part of the book will answer this question. 

After reading the book, long conversations that Onaiza & Asher share between them, described in bold, gets monotonous & irritating to read. 
It seems like a private conversation screen shot put directly in the book. 
While it might be fun to read the same on a mobile phone, reading about it in a book feels odd.

We wish Xunaira best of luck, for her upcoming titles.

Undying Affinity

                                                                 By : Sara Naveed

Meaning of the word Affinity :
A natural liking for & understanding of someone or something

The story is majorly set in Pakistan.
It is basically about two individuals Ahmar & Zarish.
Ahmar is a professor at a Business Management University where Zarish is a student.

Both Ahmar & Zarish discover Love in each other, but due to old family enmity, they struggle to be together.

Haroon is a childhood friend of Zarish who falls in love with her, which makes Ahmar & Zarish' love story  complicated.
To add to it, Amber who happened to be Ahmar's love interest at one point in time, comes back into their lives which gives a new & unexpected twist to the story.

 It's a 400 pages book , which feels long b'cos the average size of a book these days in around 300 pages.

Also, part of the book feels like a scene from the movie "Jab We Met"

We found some typo's in the book, which we have brought to the notice of the Author.
This is her first book.

If you like romantic novels, then you should read this book & feel the joy + pain, that Ahmar & Zarish go through ..