Showing results for "V" in Genre Fiction

In this incandescent novel, V.S. Naipaul takes us deeply into the life of one man, an Indian who, uprooted by the bloody tides of Third World history, has come to live in an isolated town at the bend of a great river in a newly independent African nation. Naipaul gives us the most convincing and disturbing vision yet of what happens in a place caught between the dangerously alluring modern world and its own tenacious past and traditions.

In this slyly funny and lavishly inventive novel, Nobel Prize winner V. S. Naipaul traces the unlikely career of Ganesh Ramsumair, a failed schoolteacher and impecunious village masseur who in time becomes a revered mystic, a thriving entrepreneur, and the most beloved politician in Trinidad. Witty, tender, filled with the sights, sounds, and smells of Trinidad's dusty Indian villages, The Mystic Masseur is Naipaul at his most expansive and evocative.

On a road trip through Africa, two English people - Bobby, a civil servant with a guilty appetite for African boys; and Linda, a supercilious "compound wife" - are driving back to their enclave after a stay in the capital. But in between lies the landscape of an unnamed country whose squalor and ethnic bloodletting suggest Idi Amin's Uganda. And the farther Naipaul's protagonists travel into it, the more they find themselves crossing the line that separates privileged outsiders from horrified victims.

The story of a writer's singular journey - from one place to another, from the British colony of Trinidad to the ancient countryside of England, and from one state of mind to another - is perhaps Naipaul's most autobiographical work. Yet it is also woven through with remarkable invention to make it a rich and complex novel.

Imagine a Britain stripped of democracy, a world of the not-too-distant future in which freedom has been surrendered willingly to a totalitarian regime which rose to power by exploiting the people's worst fears and most damning weaknesses.

In this sweeping, threaded narrative of the global phenomenon known as the Vampire Wars, mankind is unwittingly infected by a millennia-old bacteria unknowingly exhumed by a scientific expedition in Antarctica. Now, in some rare cases, a person’s so-called junk DNA becomes activated. Depending on their racial and ethnic heritage, they begin to manifest one of the many diverse forms of the "others" that are the true basis for the legends of supernatural creatures. These aren’t your usual vampires and werewolves - it goes much deeper than that.

"A stranger could drive through Miguel Street and just say 'Slum!' because he could see no more." But to its residents, this derelict corner of Trinidad's capital is a complete world, where everybody is quite different from everybody else. In this tender, funny early novel, V. S. Naipaul renders their lives (and the legends their neighbors construct around them) with Dickensian verve and Chekhovian compassion.

A House for Mr. Biswas, by Nobel and Booker Prize-winning author V. S. Naipaul, is a powerful novel about one man's struggle for identity and belonging. Born into poverty, then trapped in the shackles of charity and gratitude, Mr. Biswas longs for a house he can call his own. He loathes his wife and her wealthy family, upon whom he is dependent. Finding himself a mere accessory on their estate, his constant rebellion is motivated by the one thing that can symbolize his independence.

"പച്ചമനുഷ്യന്റെ പച്ചയായ ജീവിതം, അത് അനാര്‍ഭാടമായി, തെളിമയോടെ വിടരുന്നു. പക്ഷേ, ഈ ലാളിത്യത്തിനടിയില്‍...

Lasya ‘LJ’ Raghavan is a spectacularly single, unsuccessful playwright with an estranged family, crippling debt, and a dead-end job. When the family matriarch, Chandralekha Chakrapani, dies, LJ has to face the family that considers her an epic failure.... Especially her father, who has taken a vow of silence against her; her cousin sister, Ahalya, who blames LJ for destroying her marriage; and Bridezilla Kiki whose wedding has been cancelled.

ಶತ್ರುಗಳು ನನ್ನನ್ನು ಕೊಲ್ಲುತ್ತಾರೋ ಅಥವಾ ಹಿಂಸಿಸುತ್ತಾರೋ, ನಾನು ನನ್ನ ರಹಸ್ಯಗಳನ್ನು ಹೇಳುವುದಿಲ್ಲ ... ' ಅದು ಸಿಬಿಐ ಕಚೇರಿಯ...

Spanning continents and centuries and defying literary categories, A Way in the World tells intersecting stories whose protagonists include the disgraced and half-demented Sir Walter Raleigh, who seeks El Dorado in the New World; the 19th-century insurgent Francisco Miranda, who becomes entangled in his own fantasies and borrowed ideas; and the doomed Blair, a present-day Caribbean revolutionary stranded in East Africa.

The son of a Brahmin ascetic and his lower-caste wife, Willie Chandran grows up sensing the hollowness at the core of his father's self-denial and vowing to live more authentically. That search takes him to the immigrant and literary bohemias of 1950s London, to a facile and unsatisfying career as a writer, and at last to a decaying Portuguese colony in East Africa, where he finds a happiness he will then be compelled to betray.

സി.വി. രാമന്‍പിള്ളയുടെ 1891ല്‍ പ്രസിദ്ധീകരിച്ച ഒരു മലയാള നോവലാണ് മാര്‍ത്താണ്ഡവര്‍മ്മ. പരിണാമദിശയിലെത്തിയ രാമ്മവര്‍മ്മ മഹാരാജാവിന്റെ ഭരണകാലം മുതല്‍ മാര്‍ത്താണ്ഡവര്‍മ്മയുടെ സ്ഥാനാരോഹണം വരെയുള്ള വേണാടിന്റെ (തിരുവിതാംകൂര്‍) ചരിത്രം വിവരിക്കുന്ന ഒരു ഹിസ്‌റ്റൊറിക്കല്‍ റൊമാന്‍സ് ആയിട്ടാണ് പ്രസ്തുത കൃതി അവതരിപ്പിച്ചിരിക്കുന്നത്. ശീര്‍ഷകകഥാപാത്രത്തെ തിരുവിതാംകൂര്‍ രാജസ്ഥാനഭ്രഷ്ടനാക്കുന്നതിനുവേണ്ടിയുള്ള പത്മനാഭന്‍തമ്പിയുടെയും എട്ടുവീട്ടില്‍പിള്ളമാരുടെയും പദ്ധതികളില്‍ നിന്ന് രക്ഷിക്കാന്‍ ശ്രമിക്കുന്ന അനന്തപത്മനാഭന്‍, സുഭദ്ര, മാങ്കോയിക്കല്‍കുറുപ്പ് എന്നിവരെ ചുറ്റിപറ്റിയാണ് കഥ നീങ്ങുന്നത്.

Mrs. Jacob Klein has a husband, children, and a warm and comfortable home in California. No one - not even her family - knows how she came to be out West 13 years ago. Jacob, a kind and patient man, has promised not to ask. But if she were to tell her story, she would recount a tale of tragedy, mishaps, and unthinkable choices - yet also sacrifice, courage, and a powerful, unexpected love.

A stunning first novel full of empathy, marked by an astounding maturity of insight. Cumberland is both a place and a state of mind; it is a small-town story of longing and loss in the manner of David Adams Richards. It is an exploration of loneliness and the fear of loneliness in lives limited by circumstance. Cumberland is an industrial town located halfway between Ottawa and Montreal on the shore of the St. Lawrence River. It's facing the close of its factories and mills in the wake of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

In the lonely years following the death of her fiancé, Helen is unable to move on with her life. But life itself is moving on around her literally: The building of a dam is forcing her small town and her family home to relocate. But the construction project means more than the loss of a home. Helens brother, Robbie, who disappeared without a trace 15 years earlier, suddenly resurfaces. As he re-enters his sisters life, he reveals the secret of why he left in the first place: a secret that tore their family apart, and affected Helens life in more ways than she ever realized.

College hockey rivals turned lovers Jackson Reed and Killian Blackwell are about to face their toughest match yet: Christmas with both their families at the Reed mansion. Between sexual tension to melt the estate's ice sculptures, and a shared future that's anything but certain, this holiday season is bound to be unforgettable.

Please note: In S., J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst conceived of a multi-layered novel-within-a-novel that involves handwritten notes in the margins and physical objects slipped between the pages. Because an audio edition is unable to recreate those innately visual pieces and thus the full experience...

After a long, perilous journey, Hell Divers Xavier Rodriguez and Magnolia Katib discover the Metal Islands, a sunny, habitable zone where thousands of people live by fishing and farming. But this "paradise" is really a violent warrior society ruled by the cannibal King el Pulpo. For the first time in X's life, he is forced to lay down his arms and surrender.