Thaindian News

New Delhi, Sep 22 (IANS) Go through a pile of page-turners this weekend.

1. “The Shadow of the Buddha”; Written by Matteo Pistono; Published by Hay House; Priced at Rs.299

For a decade, the writer evaded Chinese security and smuggled out photos of prisons, secret documents and first-hand interviews of torture victims and other atrocities committed by the Chinese government. Yet, he had not initially gone to Tibet to fight for human rights - but as a Buddhist pilgrim.

After Pistono became a venerated student of a meditation reader in Tibet, he began to courier messages from the Dalai Lama to the monk. This is a vivid account of how Tibet’s rich spiritual past is slipping away, under repression.

2. “The World Beyond”; Written by Sangeeta Bhargava; Published by Rupa & Co; Priced at Rs.295

Lucknow, 1855. As tensions simmer in the heat of colonial India, a prince of Avadh and an English woman defy their societies’ prejudices to fall in love. But in a world where private happiness is at the mercy of wider events, even as Salim and Rachael are drawn closer together, their privileged lives are about to be torn apart.

Can Salim’s and Rachael’s love prove strong enough to rise above the devastation surrounding them - and survive together in the world beyond?

3. “Sphere of Influence: Writings on Cricket and its Discontents”; Written by Gideon Haigh; Published by Simon & Schuster; Priced at Rs.399

In the last four years, cricket has changed more than in the preceding three decades, revolutionalised by a racy new format, Twenty20 and a glamorous new competition, the Indian Premier League.

How did India come to run world cricket? How did clubs owned by billionaires and Bollywood stars begin to shove international competition aside? How did money unite layers and divide the administrators amid allegations of massive corruption.

4. “Gods Without Men”; Written by Hari Kunzru; Published by Penguin-India; Priced at Rs. 1,355

The year: 2008. In California desert, four-year-old autistic boy Raj Matharu disappears in the wilderness plunging his wealthy New York parents into panic. But the desert is inexplicable - and miraculous and Matharu’s fate is bound with that of others: debauched British rock star on the run from a failed relationship, a former member of an ET-worshipping cult, an Iraqi refugee and a black marine.

Their lives converge at an odd remote town near a rock formation - The Pinnacle. And a saga unveils.

5. “The Dancing Boy”; Written by Ishani Kar Purkayastha; Published by Harper Collins-India; Priced at Rs.399

In the sleepy by-lanes of 1980s’ Calcutta, a young boy spends hours in front of the mirror, draped in his mother’s saris, his face layered with make-up, as he dances and twirls around the room. Often, when he dances, he catches a glimpse of a face that is his and not quite his.

His mother is ashamed of her effeminate son; his friends tease him about his eccentricities; and Moyur grows up an unwitting outcast, misunderstood by all but his friend and neighbour, Jonali.

Sensitive and evocative, this promising debut novel tells the story of Moyur, the boy who never quite fits in, and that of his twin sister Moyna, who “died before she was born”.