Showing results by narrator "Firdous Bamji" in All Categories

The Assassin's Song is the story of Karsan Dargawalla, who leaves India for a new life before attempting to come to terms with his heritage - and the father he left behind.

Best-selling and Booker Prize-winning author Salman Rushdie offers incisive, often humorous takes on literature, culture, and world events in this New York Times Notable Book. In these stimulating pieces, Rushdie addresses a variety of subjects, including the death of the novel, India, soccer, and the Rolling Stones.

The novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky, including the classic Crime and Punishment, secured the great Russian writer an exalted position in the literary pantheon of 20th-century authors. The Gambler stands as one of the literary genius’ most highly regarded shorter works.

The unforgettable story of a fatherless boy growing up in a household of outspoken women, The Wish Maker is also a tale of sacrifice, betrayal, and indestructible friendship. Zaki Shirazi and his female cousin Samar Api were raised to consider themselves "part of the same litter". Together they watched American television and memorized dialogue from Bollywood movies, attended dangerous protests, and formed secret friendships.

In the aftermath of the brutal violence that gripped western India in 2002, Karsan Dargawalla, heir to Pirbaag—the shrine of a medieval sufi—begins to tell the story of his family and the shrine now destroyed. His tale opens in the 1960s: young Karsan is next in line after his father to assume lordship of the Shrine of the Wanderer, and take his place as a representative of God. But he longs to be “just ordinary”—to play cricket and be part of the world he reads about in the newspapers. And when, to his amazement, he is accepted at Harvard, he can’t resist the opportunity.

In Dhaka, Bangladesh, a garment factory burns to the ground, claiming the lives of hundreds of workers. A bystander captures a heart-stopping image: a teenage girl lying in the dirt, her body broken by a multistorey fall, and over her mouth a mask of fabric bearing the label of one of America's largest retailers. A year later, in Washington, DC, Joshua Griswold, a disgraced former journalist, receives an anonymous summons from a corporate whistle-blower promising information that will fan the flames of a decades old controversy.

This fabulous, far-reaching book breathtakingly captures the tumult, ambition, hardship and serenity that mark modern India. Theroux's characters risk venturing far beyond its well-worn paths to discover woe or truth or peace. A holidaying middle-aged couple veer heedlessly from idyll to chaos. A buttoned-up Boston lawyer finds relief in Mumbai's reeking slums. A young woman befriends an elephant in Bangalore.