A lone hunter, Vilie, sets out to find the river of his dreams: to wrest from its sleeping waters a stone that will give him untold power. It is a dangerous quest, for not only must he overcome unquiet spirits, vengeful sorceresses and daemons of the forest, there are men – armed with guns – on his trail.

Easterine Kire’s novel transports the reader to the remote mountains of Nagaland, a place alive with natural wonder and supernatural enchantment. As Vilie treks through the forest on the trail of his dream, we are also swept along in this powerful narrative and walk alongside him in a world where the spirits are every bit as real as men and women, and where danger – or salvation – lies at every turn.

Kire’s powerful narrative invites us into the lives and hearts of the people of Nagaland: the rituals and beliefs, their reverence for the land, their close-knit communities – the rhythms of a life lived in harmony with their natural surroundings. It is against this spellbinding backdrop that Kire tells the story of a solitary man driven by the mysterious pull of a dream, who must overcome weretigers and malignant widow-spirits in the search for his heart’s desire.

“...reminiscent of Marquez’s magic realism and Leslie Silko’s Native-American story-telling. At the end, though, this is a Naga story, unmistakably so, in its sense of place,
time, and oral traditions.”

​Paulus Pimomo, Central Washington University, USA

For more than ten years now Irom Sharmila, a young woman from Manipur, has been on hunger strike, demanding the removal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, a draconian law that allows the army unfettered powers in areas that are considered politically sensitive or disturbed. Taken into custody and released every twelve months by the State for attempting suicide (considered illegal in India) Sharmila is being force fed to keep her alive. Her unique battle for peace in her strife torn homeland, has become a powerful symbol for all those engaged in fighting for peace in the northeast of India. As she fulfils her chosen role in this movement, Sharmila sometimes longs for all those things that young women treasure  love, freedom, the sheer joy of living a free life, even simple things like being able to drink water, to brush her teeth. This small compilation of twelve of her poems in her native language Meiteilon and in English translation, provides a moving account of the underbelly of one woman's lone struggle for peace.

All proceeds from the sale of this book will go towards supporting Sharmila's campaign.

This study of Pandita Ramabai's life, one of India's earliest feminists, is now available in a brand new paperback edition as part of the Zubaan Classics series to celebrate Zubaan's 10th anniversary. (Now with a new Afterword)

This book outlines the reconstitution of patriarchies in nineteenth century Maharashtra through an exploration of the life, work and times of Pandita Ramabai, one of India's earliest feminists. It examines the manner in which the colonial state's new institutional structures, caste contestations, class formation and nationalism transformed and reorganized gender relations. It also explores the nature of the new agendas being set for women, how these were received by them and in what ways and to what extent their consent to these reconstructed patriarchies was produced.

Uma Chakravarti is a historian who has worked and written on issues of caste, labour and gender and is active in the democratic rights and women's movements. Among her published works are The Delhi Riots: Three Days in the Life of a Nation (co-authored) and Social Dimensions of Early Buddhism.

It has been ten years since Ram's return from fallen Lanka. Ayodhya is shining. Ayodhya is prosperous. But darkness lurks at the heart of the victrorious regime. A pointed question piques a young journalist's curiousity: What happened to Sita? Where is Ram's absent wife whose abduction triggered the war with Lanka?

And so begins the journalist's search for the missing queen. Soon her investigation attracts the notice of Ayodhya's all-powerful secret police and its mysterious head, the Washerman. Forced to flee Ayodhya, the journalist makes her way through a war-devastated Lanka in search of answers.

In this stylish speculative thriller, Samhita Arni skilfully combines her love for mythology with riveting storytelling.

"Pacy, gritty and very clever." -- Samit Basu

"Of late, a jungle of mythological retellings seems to have sprouted on Indian bookshelves. But this highly original take by Samhita Arni is a rare exception. A refreshing even radical revisiting brings new insights while providing a thrilling read." -- Ashok Banker

"Samhita Arni started telling stories from the Mahabharata, in an enchanting way, to her grandmother. And here she gets entangled at the same time in the Ramayana and today's world." --Roberto Calasso

Each story in this anthology testifies to women's many concerns, whether with a way of life, or with being caught inside the four walls of the home, or in a relationship with someone other than the husband, or being caught at the intersection of many forces within a situation of political violence and armed conflict. In one way or another the woman's body becomes a site upon which many battles take place: for control, for power, for progeny, but there is seldom a resolution in which the women remain a mere victim, or more acted upon the acting. Whether she is in the palaces of the gods, or caught in the body of snake, or speaking through the spirit of the countryside which witnessed her rape, the woman's voice is unique, singular and in each story, different. While this gives substance to the cliche that India is a country where many and varied realities exist simultaneously, it gives the lie to the cliche that all women speak with a sameness and a commonality of experience.

Contributors: Vandana Singh, Indira Goswami, Temsula Ao, Mridula Garg, Shama Futehally, Shashi Deshpande, Nayantara Sehgal, Mahasweta Devi, Anjana Appachana, Manjula Padmanabhan, C.S. Lakshmi (Ambai), Bulbul Sharma, Anita Agnihotri, Priya Sarukkai Chabria, Githa Hariharan, Chandrika B.

Urvashi Butalia is a publisher and writer. Co-founder of Kali for Women, India's best-known feminist publisher, and now Director of Zubaan, she is also author of the award winning oral history of Partition, The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India. Her other publications include Women and the Hindu Right (co-edited with Tanika Sarkar) and Speaking Peace: Women's Voices from Kashmir (edited).

The Blue-necked God (Nilakantha Braja), published in 1976, is one of Indira Goswami's early novels and the first time that a writer highlighted the exploitation and poverty of widows, dumped in a 'sacred' city to eke out their days in prayer by uncaring, callous families under the guise of religious sanction and tradition. It was a book that raised many eyebrows when it was first published for this amazing narrative combined fact and fiction, autobiography and reflection in a fascinating mix as she tried to depict the confusion and the mental agony she herself experienced after the death of her husband through her character Saudamini. The physical, emotional, financial deprivation faced by the young widow has been woven into a perceptive text that drew on the author's own research and experiences as she roamed the streets of Vrindavan and exposed, for the first time, the uglier side of the city and its traditions.

"Indira Goswami is one of the pre-eminent literary figures in India and a woman of remarkable courage and conviction... She has also been an important voice in championing women's causes, and has done much to highlight the plight of widows. [She] is one of those rare figures whose achievements as a writer are closely paralleled by their accomplishments as a social and political activist." -- Amitav Ghosh

"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.

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 Other Words brings you 14 of the most innovative and adventurous contemporary Indian women writers. The stories in this collection are remarkable not only for this richness of subject and style, but also for the confidence and poise of their writing. All the authors, except two, belong to the post-Independence generation. Their preoccupations range from an observation of the past through the lives of their ancestresses, to that of the present, sparkling, but exquisitely poignant vignette of growing up urban in the 80's. For some, fiction writing- and the short story in particular- is relatively new; each writer approaches the language in which she has chosen to write-English-and the art and craft of fiction writing, with a confidence and panache that is hard to match.

Set in mid-nineteenth century Assam when the forces of tradition were being challenged by new concepts of modernity, Swarnalata is the story of three women from very different social backgrounds, each caught in the whirlpool of change, each trying to chart her own course in life, heroically, silently. As the intertwined lives of Swarnalata, Tora and Lakhi unfold, the reader is taken on a fascinating journey into the social milieu of the times where issues like women's education and widow remarriage held centre stage. The plight of indentured labour, peasant resistance against colonial exploitation, the reformist initiatives of the Brahmo Samaj and the proselytizing efforts of the Christian missionaries are themes that run through the narrative. Considered one of the finest historical novels in Assamese, where real historical personages - such as Rabindranath Tagore - are presented side by side with fictional characters, Swarnalata provides a wonderful blend of history and fiction. Swarnalata was first published in Asomiya in 1991. It was awarded the Ishan Puraskar by the Bhartiya Bhasha Parishad in 1995 and translated into Bangla and Hindi under the 'Adaan-Pradaan' programme of the National Book Trust. The Asomiya original is now in its fouth edition and has received wide critical acclaim in the last 15 years.

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.

* WINNER OF THE 2011 ECONOMIST-CROSSWORD BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATION *

A brother and sister visit the unique crater-lake that their dead, estranged mother had written to them about in her letters. A middle-class employee's orderly life turns upside down when his employer holds back his cheque without an explanation. The employees of a forgotten outpost in a sun-baked town threaten mass suicide because they have no hope of survival.

Seventeen is a collection of short stories from among more than 100 of Anita Agnihotri's published short fiction. By turn intense, brittle, angry sad and torn apart in conflict, the stories bring out the different faces of human hardship and explore the India that is still largely unknown. Set in metros and villages, in small-town India and in international suburbia, the stories run the gamut of experiences both everyday and extraordinary. From deeply personal relationships against the backremove of turmoil to intensely social truths told through the unique life of individuals, each of these stories is a picture of human fragility. This is literary craftsmanship at its best.

The body as social and cultural text provides a rich site for creative experimentation in this collection of short stories by contemporary women writers of South Asia. In a world that tends to equate the body with biology, and femininity with the reproductive function, these writers from Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka interrogate these assumptions and reinscribe the body as a source of resistance and self-empowerment. Identity, history, myth, scientific experiment, social heirarchies, sexuality, nationalism, violence, ethics and ecology are interwoven issues for which the body in these stories becomes a powerful signifier. Together, these bodymaps chart a subversive female geography that startles with its boldly inclusive vision. 

Radha Chakravary teaches English at Gargi College, University of Delhi. She translates major Bengali writers such as Mahasweta Devi, Rabindranath Tagore and Bankimchandra into English. She was nominated for the Crossword Translation Award (2004) and received the Dr Radhakrishnan Memorial Award in 2006.

Contributors: Indira Goswami, Amrita Pritam, Bhuwan Dhungana, Ismat Chughtai, Mahasweta Devi, Ambai, Yashodhara Mishra, Kunzang Choden, Kathleen Jayawardene, Manjula Padmanabhan, Selina Hossain, Asha Kardaley, Easterine Iralu, Zaheda Hina and Kamala Das. The translators include Hina Nandrajog, Manjushree Thapa, Anjana Srivastava, Lakshmi Holmstrom, Mahasweta Baxipatra, Vijita Fernando, Keerti Ramachandra, Muhammad Umar Memon, V.C. Harris and C.K. Mohamed Ummer.