Song Without End And Other Stories

In Connectivity a retired bureaucrat's telephone line is accidentally connected to that of a grieving man s, while a heart surgeon helps his patient across the great abyss in Song without End . The skilful grooming of a poet is described in A Lane in Lucknow, and a senile old nawab finds himself a stranger to an altered world in The Taste of Almonds . In Through the Looking Glass a man losing his sight finds he can get to the heart of all the books in his library by an inexplicable miracle, and in Play the roles an actor enacts are a source of important life lessons.

This book explores and re-evaluates Kipling’s connection with India, its people, culture, languages, and locales through his experiences and his writings. Kipling’s works attracted interest among a large section of the British public, stimulating curiosity in their far-off Indian Empire, and made many canonize him as an emblem of the ‘Raj’. This volume highlights the astonishing social and thematic range of his Indian writings as represented in The Jungle Books; Kim; his early verse; his Simla-based tales of Anglo-Indian intrigues and love affairs; his stories of the common Indian people; and his journalism. It brings together different theoretical and contextual readings of Kipling to examine how his experience of India influenced his creative work and conversely how his imperial loyalties conditioned his creative engagement with India. The 18 chapters here engage with the complexities and contradictions in his writings and analyse the historical and political contexts in which he wrote them, and the contexts in which we read him now. With well-known contributors from different parts of the world – including India, the UK, the USA, Canada, France, Japan, and New Zealand – this book will be of great interest not only to those interested in Kipling’s life and works but also to researchers and scholars of nineteenth-century literature, comparative studies, postcolonial and subaltern studies, colonial history, and cultural studies.

In ‘Connectivity’ a retired bureaucrat’s telephone line is accidentally connected to that of a grieving man’s; while a heart surgeon helps his patient across the great abyss in ‘Song without End’. The skilful grooming of a poet is described in ‘A Lane in Lucknow’; and a senile old nawab finds himself a stranger to an altered world in ‘The Taste of Almonds’. In ‘Through the Looking Glass’ a man losing his sight finds he can get to the heart of all the books in his library by an inexplicable miracle; and in ‘Play’ the roles an actor enacts are a source of important life lessons. Song without End and Other Stories is a collection of fifteen captivating short stories by Neelum Saran Gour that amuse and absorb by their lively engagement with people; places and ideas in an unforgettable way. Funny; humane and culturally vibrant; these tales portray characters who are challenged by life and who arrive at their own individual truths.

Today, Indian writing in English is a fi eld of study that cannot be overlooked. Whereas at the turn of the 20th century, writers from India who chose to write in English were either unheeded or underrated, with time the literary world has been forced to recognize and accept their contribution to the corpus of world literatures in English. Showcasing the burgeoning field of Indian English writing, this encyclopedia documents the poets, novelists, essayists, and dramatists of Indian origin since the pre-independence era and their dedicated works. Written by internationally recognized scholars, this comprehensive reference book explores the history and development of Indian writers, their major contributions, and the critical reception accorded to them. The Routledge Encyclopedia of Indian Writing in English will be a valuable resource to students, teachers, and academics navigating the vast area of contemporary world literature.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER More than ONE MILLION copies sold A TODAY Show Read with Jenna Book Club Pick A New York Times Notable Book, and Chosen by Oprah Daily, Time, NPR, The Washington Post, Bill Gates and Barack Obama as a Best Book of the Year “Wise and wildly entertaining . . . permeated with light, wit, youth.” —The New York Times Book Review “A classic that we will read for years to come.” —Jenna Bush Hager, Read with Jenna book club “Fantastic. Set in 1954, Towles uses the story of two brothers to show that our personal journeys are never as linear or predictable as we might hope.” —Bill Gates “A real joyride . . . elegantly constructed and compulsively readable.” —NPR The bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility and master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction returns with a stylish and propulsive novel set in 1950s America In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett's intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden's car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett's future, one that will take them all on a fateful journey in the opposite direction—to the City of New York. Spanning just ten days and told from multiple points of view, Towles's third novel will satisfy fans of his multi-layered literary styling while providing them an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters, and themes. “Once again, I was wowed by Towles’s writing—especially because The Lincoln Highway is so different from A Gentleman in Moscow in terms of setting, plot, and themes. Towles is not a one-trick pony. Like all the best storytellers, he has range. He takes inspiration from famous hero’s journeys, including The Iliad, The Odyssey, Hamlet, Huckleberry Finn, and Of Mice and Men. He seems to be saying that our personal journeys are never as linear or predictable as an interstate highway. But, he suggests, when something (or someone) tries to steer us off course, it is possible to take the wheel.” – Bill Gates

"A young woman on a cruise ship settles on an elderly German wearing bunny ears at a costume party as her first lover. A woman feels herself drawn through an old friend's house closer and closer to the room where he is sitting, and as she moves, she realizes that they are about to become lovers. In eight beautifully written stories Joan London explores the lives of women and of girls on the brink of womanhood. Her characters may, like the the woman traveling alone with three men, feel slightly out of place; or, like the older woman realizing that her daughter is a lesbian, begin to accept things they cannot fully understand. Each, in her own way, faces a crisis, and makes a decision to leap forward." -- Publisher's description.