NEW BOOKS
4 titles
(forthcoming) |
stories and memoir Offering a rich account of women's lives in twentieth century Kerala, these stories and the accompanying autobiographical fragments give invaluable insights into the little documented social reform movements in the south of India. Lalithambika Antherjanam's stories throb with the tormented reality of Namboodiri illam or households: unbearable social restriction, rigid sexual mores, lives ruled by the maintenance of ritual purity, the extreme oppression of widows. Gita Krishnankutty's selections include the disturbing early story 'The Admission of Guilt' ('Kuttassammatham') where the accused woman gives an account of her trial and ostracism on charges of sexual misdemeanour, the classic 'The Goddess of Revenge' ("Praticaradevata'), stories that reflect the pratice of fictin in mid-century Kerala and the passionately felt accounts of the trauma of Partition in Bengal and Punjab. The introduction places Lalithambika Antherjanam in the cultural history of modern Kerala. demy octavo paperback 200pp July 1998 cover design: Proiti Roy ISBN 81-85604-11-8 Rs 140 US rights sold; rest available |
'. . . simultaneously a work of great cultural
interest . . . a courageous exploration of women's rights . . . of poignant
literary merit.'
~~~ Sara Suleri Goodyear
Professor of English, Yale University By Lalithambika Antherjanam (1909-1985)
Translated and with an introduction by Gita Krishnankutty
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photographic imaging in contemporary India Elaborating new theoretical perspectives on visual hegemony, this book addresses the political processes of the photographic image. How does photography invoke an epistemology that subtly determines the scope and limit of what can be understood, said or done with images? Srivatsan uses gender, caste and class to serve as frames of reference for this very original and stimulating analysis. He takes into consideration a range of visual material: handpainted cinema hoardings, the modernism of Henri Cartier-Bresson, a poster of Dr B.R. Ambedkar, photographs in police records and the visual politics of advertising, news photography and the new India projected in the world of tourism. demy octavo hardback 250pp December 1999 cover design: Sharbani Das Gupta ISBN 81-85604-09-6 Rs 450 All rights available |
'This book will provoke and stimulate much debate among
scholars working on contemporary visual cultures in India.'
~~~ Arjun Appadorai
professor of anthropology, University of Chicago
~~~ Ashish Rajadhyaksha
Centre for Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore
~~~ Partha Chatterjee
Centre for Study of Social Sciences Calcutta By R. Srivatsan An independent scholar, a practising photographer and an engineering professional.His theoretical writing has appeared in Economic and Political Weekly and Public Culture. |
stories by Kamal Desai This translation provides access to the major works of a leading Marathi writer. The stories embody a witty and subtly felt understanding of the tensions and cross-currents of an indigeneous modernity even as they deconstruct it. Kamal Desai's fiction is focused on the micro levels of inner life where experience is held together by the compelling and never predictable struggle for selfhood. Nearly always, subtle and ongoing antagonisms structure and threaten Kamal Desai's imagined communities. Before she can tear down the walls of the temple of the Dark Sun (Kala Surya) the protagonist must extricate herself from its tenacious and pervasive hold on her inner life. In the much acclaimed Woman Wearing a Hat (Hat Ghalnari Bai), a woman asserts her right to a Promethean venture in the face of crippling opposition. In this process the inadequacy of patriarchal constructs becomes apparent to her. demy octavo paperback 200pp Nov 1999 cover design: Sharbani Das Gupta ISBN 81-85604-07-X Rs 140 All rights available |
'Moving within this text that seems like entering
a Dali painting, one is shaken awake—to the fact that everything can be
perceived in different ways, that the given is not the only way of looking
at things.'
~~~ New Quest
'Kamal Desai's work comes to us in this exceptionally fine
translation by Sukhmani Roy. It leaves no room for doubt that if Desai's
name has been unknown to us, the disadvantage has been entirely ours.'
~~~ Indian Review of Books
By Kamal Desai
Translated by Sukhmani Roy
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The Seedling
This is an early, astonishingly radical and feminist novel in Bengali (Nabankur) from a long neglected writer. The story is set in the forties, a period of intense political activity and devastating famines. Possessing a clearly autobiographical quality, it depicts the turbulent, always questioning childhood and adolescence of Chhobi, who is in revolt against all oppression, and especially against the male-ordered destiny prescribed by the traditionalists or the left wing progressives. demy octavo paperback approx 280pp September 2000 cover design: ISBN 81-85604-06-1 Rs 250 All rights available |
By Sulekha Sanyal
Born in 1928 in an impoverished family that had once been indigo planters, she became a communist while a student, but her unconventional ideas rarely met with the party's approval. At thirty four she died of leukemia, leaving a number of short stories and novels, characterized by their passion and subtlety. Translated by Gouranga P. Chattopadhyay
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