After the success of These Hills Called Home and Once Upon a Life, Temsula Ao returns to her beloved Nagaland to bring readers the beautifully crafted story of Aosenla, a woman who is coming to terms with herself. The novel opens on a typical summer afternoon that soon turns into another oppressive evening. Aosenla sits listening to her children playing nearby and is seized by a great lethargy. As she casts a watchful gaze over the house she has called home for so many years, Aosenla wonders how an inanimate structure like a house can exercise such power over a human being.

Looking down at a wedding invitation in her hands, Aosenla begins to recall her own wedding many years ago, initiating a deep and moving reflection on the life that others made for her and the life that she eventually created for herself.

In the third of the Foxy Four adventures, Charu, Padma, Jahan and Mandy are at it again: solving mysteries, breaking the rules, dodging eagle-eyed gatekeepers, careening around in Aunt Razia’s car, and driving their school principal crazy!

Travel with our four feisty friends to a crumbling old haveli in Bhopal; to the Kalakshetra dance school in Chennai; pandal-hopping at Durga Puja; and crime-busting in the gullies of Old Delhi.

Each story is narrated by one of the girls. Mandy, the fashionista babe, reveals a surprising brain beneath that perfect hair. Padma may be a computer geek, but she knows a thing or two about classical dance. Jahan seems like the cool-headed type, but even she gets the shivers in a haunted haveli. And then there’s Charu, who everyone knows, is just destined to be a writer...

_______

Perfect for young readers that enjoyed The Baby-Sitters Club series by Ann M. Martin and Nancy Drew books.

Set in the heady years preceding independence, this is the story of young Binapani growing up in a small Assamese town. Headstrong, stubborn and high-spirited, Binapani is confronted with a world full of confusing questions: why are girls not allowed to study? Why is the nationalist hero, Bullet Kaka hidden away in her grandmother’s shed? Why does Mahendra Barua’s family suffer such humiliation and indignity? Why is the rich Haitha Sarai feted and fawned upon? Why is his daughter tied up and starved in a dark room? Why is the Christian boy, Ratan, an outcaste? Her young mind grapples with countless questions and through it all is the abiding relationship she shares with her old grandmother, Jashodha. Married off to the rich Chaliha whom she has always hated, the ebullient young Bina turns inwards, seeking an inner strength and calm and makes her home ‘an abode of peace’. Arupa Kalita Patangia is one of Assam’s leading, award winning novelists. She has more than ten novels and short story collections to her credit including Mriganabhi (1987) and Millenniumar Sapon (2002). She teaches English at Tangla College, Assam. Ranjita Biswas has translated a number of well-known Bengali and Assamese novels into English.

 Be transported into dystopian cities and alternate universes.

Hang out with unicorns, cyborgs and pixies.

 Learn how to waltz in outer space.
Be amazed and beguiled by a fairy tale with an unexpected twist,
a futuristic take on a TV cooking show,
and a playscript with tentacles.

 In other words, get ready for a wild ride!

This collection of sci-fi and fantasy writing, including six graphic stories, showcases twenty of the most exciting writers and artists from India and Australia, in an all-female, all-star line-up!

Contributors include:

Samhita Arni, Kuzhali Manickavel, Manjula Padmanabhan, Vandana Singh, Payal Dhar, Anita Roy, Annie Zaidi, Penni Russon, Kate Constable, Isobelle Carmody, Justine Larbalestier, Alyssa Brugman, Kirsty Murray, Margo Lanagan, Priya Kuriyan, Prabha Mallya, Amruta Pail, Lily Mae Martin, Nicki Greenberg and Mandy Ord.

_______

A collection of speculative fiction for young adults. It is an excellent way to introduce young readers to a number of feminist world issues and its attendant intersections.

Patriarchy asserts men are superior to women

Feminism clarifies women and men are equal

Queerness questions what constitutes male and female

Queerness isn’t only modern, Western or sexual, says mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik. Take a close look at the vast written and oral traditions in Hinduism, some over two thousand years old, and you will find many overlooked tales, such as those of Shikhandi, who became a man to satisfy her wife; Mahadeva, who became a woman to deliver a devotee’s child; Chudala, who became a man to enlighten her husband; Samavan, who became the wife of his male friend, and many more . . .

Playful and touching—and sometimes disturbing—these stories, when compared with their Mesopotamian, Greek, Chinese and Biblical counterparts, reveal the unique Indian way of making sense of queerness.

First published in Marathi in 1966, this unique novella in free verse tells an age-old story: that of a woman’s deep desire to be a mother

Setting out life as a game in which the moves are predetermined, and yet where rules exist only to be twisted, perhaps negotiated, sometimes even changed, Anuradha Vaidya deftly engages the reader in a sort of play, suggesting a joining of the dots, a connecting of line endings that lead the reader deeper into the story.

As the story traces a relationship that begins with unquestioning love that, over time, transforms into tension and distance, the reader is encouraged to linger, or jump back and forth across stanzas and lines, to navigate, interpret, and savour the beauty of the expression, both in the turn of phrase and the coinage of new words.

The sheer beauty of the almost allegorical imagery of life as a game played on the worldly board by people who are actually pawns, marks every page of this poetic narrative.

This landmark collection on colonial history is now available in a brand new edition as part of the Zubaan Classics series to celebrate Zubaan's 10th anniversary.

This collection of essays stands at an unarticulated conjuncture within the feminist movement and women's studies that have emerged in India since the 1970s. The anthology attempts to explore the inter-relation of patriarchies with political economy, law, religion and culture and to suggest a different history of 'reform' movements, and of class and gender relations. The book seeks to uncover the dialectical relation of feminism and patriarchy both in the policies of the colonial State and the politics of anticolonial movements. The writers in this volume include scholars from various disciplines.

Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid taught literature at Indraprastha College for Women, Delhi University. Together they have edited a collection of essays entitled Women and Culture and have carried out extensive research on widow immolation in Rajasthan.

This collection of mind-expanding stories is now available in a brand new paperback edition as part of the Zubaan Classics series to celebrate Zubaan's 10th anniversary.

Already a name in the world of science fiction and fantasy writing, Vandana Singh presents her first collection of stories, bringing this unique imagination to a wider audience. In the title story, a woman tells her husband of her curious discovery: that she is inhabited by small alien creatures. In another, a young girl returning home through the streets of Delhi comes across a mysterious tetrahedron: is it a spaceship? Or a secret weapon? Each story in this fabulous collection opens up new vistas -- from outer space to the inner world -- and takes the reader on an incredible journey to both

"A most promising and original young writer" -- Ursula K. LeGuin, author of The Earthsea Trilogy

"I'm looking forward to the collection despite the fact that I haven't actually read that much of Singh's work, or perhaps because of that fact, because everything I've read has impressed me -- the past and future visions in 'Delhi', the intensity of 'Thirst', the feeling of escape at the end of 'The Tetrahedron'..." -- Niall Harrison, Vector (British Science Fiction Association)

"...attracts all the inadequate adjectives reviewers pull out when rendered nearly speechless: beautiful, evocative, mysterious, brilliant, stunning..." -- www.sfsite.com

"...the first writer of Indian origin to make a serious mark in the SF world, ... she writes with such a beguiling touch of the strange." -- Nilanjana Roy, Business Standard

"Singh says that speculative fiction has a 'unique, revolutionary potential'. If so, The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet is as enjoyable as a revolutionary text you're likely to find." -- Jess McCabe, The F Word.

Who is the 'Good Indian Girl?' What does she look like? How does she dress? Is she real -- or is she a myth? In this funny, wicked, touching, irreverent, poignant collection of stories, Annie Zaidi and Smriti Ravindra lift the veil (or sari pallu) on the lives and loves of girls who have been born or raised in the subcontinent. The niceties have to be observed, but the urge to subvert is often overwhelming. As they shimmy down drainpipes at midnight, or steal covert glances at the boys across the street, the real life incidents from which these stories are drawn will ring a bell with any woman who has negotiated the minefield of family love and romantic longing and desire that lies between childhood and womanhood.

After the success of her collection The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet, Vandana Singh returns to the short story in Ambiguity Machines. Her deep humanism interplays with her scientific background in stories that consider and celebrate this world and others, with characters who try to make sense of the people they meet, what they see, and the challenges they face. An eleventh century poet wakes to find he is an artificially intelligent companion on a starship. A woman of no account has the ability to look into the past. And in 'Requiem,' a major new novella, a woman goes to Alaska to try and make sense of her aunt’s disappearance.

Examining the revolutionary potential of speculative fiction, Singh dives deep into the vast strangeness of the universe without and within to explore the ways in which we move through space and time: together, yet always apart.

“A delicate touch and passionately humanist sensibilities sweep through this magnificent collection, which ranges from the near future of our world to eras far away in space and time.”
— Publishers Weekly

“Singh is laying the groundwork attempt to re-write the plots of Chosen Ones, dystopian governments, and self-actualizing hero tropes common to Western literature, where the quest for “the meaning of life” is often seeking a single endpoint, an origin. Singh’s characters wish only to know for the sake of knowing. Life isn’t defined by linear time, it is the richness of experience.”
— Aerogram

Vandana Singh was born and raised in New Delhi, and currently lives in the United States near Boston, where she professes physics and writes. Her short stories have appeared in numerous venues and several Best of Year anthologies, including the Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy. She is the author of the ALA Notable book Younguncle Comes to Town (Young Zubaan/Puffin India, 2004) and a previous short story collection, The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet and Other Stories (Zubaan/Penguin India, 2009).

The dark legacies of Partition have cast a long shadow on the lives of the people of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The borders that were drawn in 1947, and redrawn in 1971, divided not only nations and histories but also families and friends. The essays in this volume explore new ground in Partition research, looking into areas such as art, literature, mirgation, and notions of ‘foreignness’ and ‘belonging’. It brings focus to hitherto unaddressed areas of Partition, just as the northeast and Ladakh. Contributors include: Sanjb Baruah | Sarah Ghani | Vishwajyoti Ghosh | Sanjeev Jain | Sukeshi Kamra | Rita Kothari | Kavita Panjabi | Prajna Paramita Parasher | Tarun K. Saint | Alok Sarin | Amiya Sen | Jhuma Sen | Jyotirmaya Sharma | Siddiq Wahid | Andrew Whitehead

"I was the youngest in a family of five children. I sometimes felt I was an afterthought, and maybe Father and Mother didn't quite know what to do with me. Also, because I was a girl after four boys they never seemed to be sure whether to buy me girls' clothing or let me wear leftover boys' clothing."

Young Dielieno is five years old when she is sent off to live with her disciplinarian grandmother who wants her to grow up to be a good Naga wife and mother. According to Grandmother, girls didn't need an education, they didn't need love and affection or time to play or even a good piece of meat with their gravy! Naturally Dielieno hates her with a vengeance.

This is the evocative tale of a young girl growing up in a traditional society in India's Northeast, which is in the midst of tremendous change.

Easterine Iralu writes about a place and a people that she knows well and is a part of and brings to the storytelling a lyrical beauty which can on occasion chill the reader with its realistic portrayals of the spirits of the dead that inhabit the quiet hills and valleys of Nagaland.

Twelve short stories about everyday life and the political realities of Assam.

“My stories,” says the author, “are a lot about darkness but they are also about the small sparks of light that occasionally dispel the demons in our souls.”

In this collection, a doctor’s comfortable existence in a tea estate is rudely shattered by violent conflict, a daughter reflects on the failure of her parents’ inter-religious marriage, and children discover how shockingly little time it takes to go from joking to being thrown headlong into bloody carnage.

Sharp and eloquent, Uddipana Goswami’s stories bring into harsh focus how interwoven political violence is with everyday life.

"A wise and wonderful insight into modern motherhood"" - Farah Khan.

What do you call a feminist who is a mother? A femimom? A mominist? Or just a confused woman balancing the many roles in her life: working professional, mother, wife, daughter...

Meet Tara Mistri, stay-at-home mom and frustrated architect: a baker of biscuits and maker of bricks.
Inspired by and in total awe of the Salk Institute in California, Tara hankers to replicate its clean lines and perfect symmetry in her own life. But with two small children to look after, her set squares and scales are used for scraping plasticine out of the carpet and her career looks like it may remain on the backburner forever. Then, one day, she is offered a job and finds herself on the horns of a dilemma.

Goaded by her own personal demon — a nagging Yakshi who just won’t let her alone — Tara’s struggle to balance life and love, work and playdoh will have readers nodding in recognition, wincing in sympathy and laughing along with her.