Random House has just published the first two translations in their new Classics series, both from the Bengali: one is Bankim's Durgeshnandini, which is widely considered the first novel written in an Indian language. The other is called "Three Women" and is a collection of three Tagore novellas.
I haven't finished the Tagore yet but Durgeshnandini is interesting and absorbing for a number of reasons. I loved Alice Albinia's 'Empires of the Indus,' which came out a couple of years ago, both here and in the UK. Albinia treks up the Indus from mouth to source, exploring geography, history and community over each region she covers. She's a superb writer and the book deserved, I think, more international attention than it got. I get the feeling this book keeps cropping up on Silk discussions but since it hasn't in this thread, I bring it up again. Also there are reprints of four RK Narayan novels in the new Penguin Modern Classics editions if you need to add/replace to your library. I'm not a big fan of the new Modern Classics cover designs, or the Pico Iyer series introduction that they've now appended to each, but they're shiny all the same. And they'd probably make good gifts for first-time Narayan readers. If you happen to be looking for frothy, frivolous novels I think Anuja Chauhan wrote two of the best ones to come out in India over the last couple of years, The Zoya Factor and Battle for Bittora: I kind of laughed helplessly through the latter, in particular. Pretty sure you're already down with Daniyal Mueenuddin and Gyan Prakash and whoever else came out in the US simultaneously. On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 9:42 AM, Suresh Ramasubramanian <sur...@hserus.net>wrote: > Suresh Ramasubramanian [05/01/11 19:59 -0800]: > > Samanth is silklist material and udhay's been trying to entice him over >> for >> quite some time. Samanth being maxed out on email already, will probably >> take time to do that. >> > > amazon threw this out as a suggested link for following fish > > doesnt seem too bad > > > http://www.amazon.com/As-Was-Written-Sujatha-Hampton/dp/0312584121/ref=pd_sim_sbs_b_1 > > -- roswitha.blogspot.com | roswitha.tumblr.com
