Bread Cement Cactus

In this prize-winning exploration of the meaning of home, Annie Zaidi reflects on places, cultures and conflicts that shape identity.

"In this exploration of the meaning of home, Annie Zaidi reflects on the places in India from which she derives her sense of identity. She looks back on the now renamed city of her birth and the impossibility of belonging in the industrial township where she grew up. From her ancestral village, in a region notorious for its gangsters, to the mega-city where she now lives, Zaidi provides a nuanced perspective on forging a sense of belonging as a minority and a migrant in places where other communities consider you an outsider, and of the fragility of home left behind and changed beyond recognition. Zaidi is the 2019/ 2020 winner of the Nine Dots Prize for creative thinking that tackles contemporary social issues. "--

Annie Zaidi combines reportage with a personal narrative that goes into places we may know of but very rarely visit. However it is the stories of humble folk-tortured by hunger, discriminated against for reasons of caste, or gender-that linger.

A crime thriller with a brilliant twist you won't see coming! You can't outrun the past...

From Robin Sloan, the New York Times bestselling author of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, comes Sourdough, "a perfect parable for our times" (San Francisco Magazine): a delicious and funny novel about an overworked and under-socialized software engineer discovering a calling and a community as a baker. Named One of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Southern Living Lois Clary is a software engineer at General Dexterity, a San Francisco robotics company with world-changing ambitions. She codes all day and collapses at night, her human contact limited to the two brothers who run the neighborhood hole-in-the-wall from which she orders dinner every evening. Then, disaster! Visa issues. The brothers quickly close up shop. But they have one last delivery for Lois: their culture, the sourdough starter used to bake their bread. She must keep it alive, they tell her—feed it daily, play it music, and learn to bake with it. Lois is no baker, but she could use a roommate, even if it is a needy colony of microorganisms. Soon, not only is she eating her own homemade bread, she’s providing loaves to the General Dexterity cafeteria every day. Then the company chef urges her to take her product to the farmer’s market—and a whole new world opens up.

Preparations for King George the Third’s fiftieth birthday gala are in full swing in Lucknow. As poets and performers vie to be part of the show, Chapla Bai, a dazzling courtesan from Kashi, briefly enters this competitive world, and sweeps the poet Nafis Bai off her feet. An irresistible passion takes root, expanding and contracting like a wave of light. Over two summers, aided by Nafis’s friends, the poets Insha and Rangin, and Sharad, himself in love with a man, they exchange letters and verses, feeding each other the heady fruit of desire. When Chapla leaves for home, they part with the dream of building a life together. Can their relationship survive the distances? Narrated in the voice of Nafis, Memory of Light weaves an exquisite web of conversations, songs, reminiscences around a life-changing love.

"Superb. The best junior novel I've ever read about big-city life." — The New York Times. After another fight with Pop, 14-year-old Dave storms out of their apartment and nearly gets hit by a car. Kate, the local cat lady, comes to the rescue, and Dave returns home with an ally: Cat, the stray tom that becomes Dave's confidante and his key to new friendships and experiences. Cat inadvertently leads Dave to Tom, a troubled 19-year-old who needs help, and Mary, a shy girl who opens Dave's eyes and ears to music and theater. Even the Cat-related confrontations with Pop take on a new spirit, with less shouting and more understanding. It's Like This, Cat offers a vivid tour of New York City in the 1960s. From the genteel environs of Gramercy Park to a bohemian corner of Coney Island, the atmospheric journey is punctuated by stickball games, pastrami sandwiches, and a ride on the Staten Island Ferry. Recounted with humor, a remarkably realistic teenage voice, and Emil Weiss's pitch-perfect illustrations, this 1964 Newbery Award-winning tale recaptures the excitement and challenges of growing up in the big city.

In response to a recent surge of interest in Native American history, culture, and lore, Hippocrene brings you a concise and straightforward dictionary of the Navajo tongue. The dictionary is designed to aid Navajos learning English as well as English speakers interested in acquiring knowledge of Navajo. The largest of all the Native American tribes, the Navajo number about 125,000 and live mostly on reservations in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Over 9,000 entries; A detailed section on Navajo pronunciation; A comprehensive, modern vocabulary; Useful, everyday expressions.