The Second Floor

There is an ancient saying that when lovers fall out, a plane goes down. A Case of Exploding Mangoes is the story of one such plane. Why did a Hercules C130, the world’s sturdiest plane, carrying Pakistan’s military dictator General Zia ul Haq, go down on 17 August, 1988?

Teasing, provocative, and very funny, Mohammed Hanif’s debut novel takes one of the subcontinent’s enduring mysteries and out of it, spins a tale as rich and colourful as a beggar’s dream.

According to Mohsin Hamid, A Case of Exploding Mangoes, is “one of the most important Pakistani novels of recent times, unputdownable and darkly hilarious. Mohammed Hanif is a brave, gifted writer. He has taken territory in desperate need of satire - General Zia, the military, Pakistan at the time of the Soviet-Afghan war - and made it undeniably his own.”

Mohammed Hanif was born in Okara, Pakistan. He graduated from the Pakistan Air Force Academy as a Pilot Officer but subsequently left to pursue a career in journalism. He has worked for Newsline, India Today and The Washington Post. He has written plays for the stage and the critically acclaimed BBC drama, What Now, Now That We Are Dead? His feature film, The Long Night has been shown at film festivals around the world. He is a graduate of University of East Anglia’s creative writing programme and is currently head of BBC’s Urdu Service.

Price: Rs. 795

One of the longest rivers in the world, the Indus rises in Tibet, flows west across India, and south through Pakistan. For millennia it has been worshipped as a god; for centuries used as a tool of imperial expansion. Today it is the glue of Pakistan’s fractious union. Empires of the Indus follows the river upstream and back in time, on a voyage through two thousand miles of geography and five millennia of history, through a landscape where the past still resonates today.

Alice Albinia graduated from Cambridge University with a first in English Literature in 1999. She moved to Delhi, where she worked for the next two-and-a-half years as a journalist and editor. She edited and wrote for the Centre for Science & Environment, was Assistant Editor of Biblio: A Review of Books, India’s leading literary magazine, and worked as a part of the team that started Outlook Traveller, India’s best-selling travel magazine. It was during this time, as she travelled all over the country researching and writing newspaper articles and features, that she had the idea to write a history of the river Indus. In 2002, Alice moved back to London to take an MA in South Asian history at the School of Oriental and African Studies. She researched the religious and political history of the Indus region and wrote a dissertation on the British colonial imagination of the river. Empires of the Indus is Alice’s first book, for which she won the Royal Society of Literature / Jerwood Foundation Special Prize for Non-fiction Work in Progress.

Price: Rs. 995

A young couple from a small town in India, penniless but gloriously in love, move to the big city, where the man works feverishly on a novel, stopping only to feed his ceaseless desire for his beautiful wife. In time, the lovers abandon the city for an old house in the mist-shrouded Himalayas. While renovating their ramshackle new home, the young man unearths a chest full of diaries written by the previous owner. Thrust into another world and time, he slowly uncovers the dark secrets at the heart of her story.

Tarun J Tejpal is a journalist and publisher. In a 22-year career, he has been an editor with the India Today and The Indian Express groups, and the managing editor of Outlook, one of India’s premier newsmagazines. He has also written for several international publications, including The Paris Review, The Guardian, The Financial Times and Prospect. In March 2000, Tarun left Outlook to start Tehelka.com - a news-and-views magazine on the net that has broken ground with its sting investigations. In 2001, Asiaweek listed Tejpal as one of Asia’s 50 most powerful communicators, and Businessweek declared him among 50 leaders at the forefront of change in Asia.

Tehelka has garnered worldwide acclaim for its journalism, and is seen as one of the seminal websites of world media. After three years of gross victimisation by the Indian establishment, in January 2004 Tehelka relaunched itself as a national weekly paper, uniquely funded by the advance subscriptions of its supporters. The Tehelka weekly paper, a well-rounded paper with public interest as its core, is read by more than a hundred thousand people every week.

Price: Rs. 600

The Best of Tehelka: Volume 3 - Autographed Edition

This volume reflects another year of independent inquiry and reportage by the news weekly that has brought edge and flavor back to the profession. From the Mumbai underworld to the bar girls who were suddenly banished from the metropolis, it mingles the big and the small story, the national and the local, the elite and the populist. Alongside, it features the country’s most celebrated authors, poets, essayists and columnists, serving up a compelling catalogue of cinema, literature, art, and music.

A journal that highlights the best of Indian journalism, the best of TEHELKA - integrity, dissent, truth, and refined writing.

Price: 695

India-Pakistan: Designing a New Future
Special Issue of the TEHELKA Weekly News Magazine

Can suspicious neighbors make intimate conversation?

Featuring:

- Asif Ali Zardari
- Nawaz Sharif
- Jaswant Singh
- Imran Khan
- Prasoon Joshi
- Asad Durrani
- Kamila Shamsie
- Arshed Bhatti
- Sartaj Aziz
- Hasan Zaidi

Price: 50

Vox: Critical Conversations

Vox: Critical Conversations is a defiant chorus that narrates epics of suffering, tells tales of revolution and sings songs of victory. It presents the vocabulary of hope of the surging millions who demand what is rightfully theirs - a life of dignity and the freedom to pursue their dreams. The interviews and stories featured in it bring together some of the most inspired and eloquent protagonists of people’s movements, who champion human rights, chronicle inhuman wrongs and strategize a future that will brook neither hostility nor indifference.

From its inception, TEHELKA has adhered to a brief that underscores integrity, dissent, truth, in its reportage and analyses. This volume reflects its enduring commitment to a journalism that foregrounds the struggles of people denied their place in the light.

Price: 410