Books

*Winner of the 2023 PEN Translation Award*  An eerie, alienating, yet comic and profoundly sympathetic short story collection about Americans in America by one of Indonesia’s most prominent writers, now in an English translation for its fortieth anniversary, with a foreword by Intan Paramaditha. In these seven stories of People from Bloomington, our peculiar narrators find themselves in the most peculiar of circumstances and encounter the most peculiar of people. Set in Bloomington, Indiana, where the author lived as a graduate student in the 1970s, this is far from the idyllic portrait of small-town America. Rather, sectioned into apartment units and rented rooms, and gridded by long empty streets and distances traversable only by car, it’s a place where the solitary can all too easily remain solitary; where people can at once be obsessively curious about others, yet fail to form genuine connections with anyone. The characters feel their loneliness acutely and yet deliberately estrange others. Budi Darma paints a realist world portrayed through an absurdist frame, morbid and funny at the same time. For decades, Budi Darma has influenced and inspired many writers, artists, filmmakers, and readers in Indonesia, yet his stories transcend time and place. With People from Bloomington, Budi Darma draws us to a universality recognized by readers around the world—the cruelty of life and the difficulties that people face in relating to one another while negotiating their own identities. The stories are not about “strangeness” in the sense of culture, race, and nationality. Instead, they are a statement about how everyone, regardless of nationality or race, is strange, and subject to the same tortures, suspicions, yearnings, and peculiarities of the mind. Praise  “First published in Indonesia 40 years ago, this story collection from celebrated author Darma gets a second life—and an English translation—as a Penguin Classic. Across seven stories set in the gridded streets and rented rooms of Bloomington, Ind., Darma’s characters navigate their morbidly funny lives in this meditation on alienation, failed connection, and the universal strangeness of the human mind.” —The Millions

‘A returns from an obscure English university, armed with a degree that has no value, to her new home in outer Delhi, a home of feeble men --  her retired father and grandfather, to the dissolution of her parent’s marriage. As she embarks on an affair with a property developer and becomes entangled in a double murder, she confronts the anxieties of the crime, along with the anxieties of living in a hyper-modern city seething in inequality. Along the way, she navigates heartbreak and the strength to rebel through small acts of freedom.’

‘A splendid book … thoroughly fun and riveting’ S. Hussain Zaidi, bestselling author of R.A.W. Hitman Ten financial scandals that gave the world a run for its money – from ancient times to the twenty-first century. Crime stories have fascinated audiences all over the world for centuries. But as times have evolved, the spotlight on financial wrongdoing has further intensified. In Fraudster Tales: History’s Greatest Financial Criminals and Their Catastrophic Crimes, seasoned finance professional turned true crime writer Vijay Narayan Govind presents ten cases that have transformed the course of Indian and global economics. From Hegestratos, the Greek trickster from 300 BCE, to Haridas Mundhra, the first notable scam artist in independent India, readers are transported to the murky world of white-collar crimes. Along the way, we meet the criminally astute Natwarlal, whose infamous cons have become legendary, Charles Ponzi, a name that is now synonymous with get-rich-quick schemes, and witness Singaporean gambler Chia Teck Leng’s shocking banking frauds in the twenty-first century. Skilfully weaving together history, intrigue and morality, Fraudster Tales takes us on a thrilling journey through financial deceit, where the line between right and wrong is blurred and the consequences of greed are catastrophic.

Goa’s magnetism and its promise of a relaxed, almost bohemian lifestyle, have always attracted admirers and colonizers. Before the locals could make up their minds about such interlopers, Covid-19 brought hordes of them to town―Michelle Mendonça Bambawale was one of them. In June 2020, Michelle found herself moving to the 160-year-old house she had inherited in Siolim, a village in North Goa, with her human and canine family. Having never lived in Goa before, she couldn’t help but wonder if her Goan ancestry made her an insider or if she would forever remain an outsider. In this memoir, she confronts her complex relationship with her Goan Catholic heritage and explores themes of identity, culture, migration, stereotypes and labels. She also uncovers some of the uncanniest legends that pervade Siolim, including those of St. Anthony and the Snake, Sao Joao, and the statue of Beethoven. She also takes us back to Siolim and Goa in the 1970s and 1980s, where she spent her summer vacations without paved roads or electricity, pulling water from a well. Today, she dodges reeking septic tankers, earth movers and piling plastic garbage while walking her Labrador, Haruki. Becoming Goan is a heartfelt and charming story of Michelle's love for this land that her grandparents left her. She cares deeply about Goa's biodiversity and is distraught about the environmental impact of tourism, construction and mining. Her devotion to Mother Earth deepens as she learns more about her roots, steeped as they are in syncretic traditions.

A PACY NOVEL OF CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, SET IN BANGALORE The day begins innocently enough, a cool, breezy morning in Bangalore in the spring of 2007. For seventeen-year-old Shalini Gowda, it's a day for celebration--no more school, friends to go clubbing with, and her favourite adults coming over for dinner later at night. Life couldn't be better. Which is how her parents, Archana and Raju, feel too, in anticipation of a relaxed evening at home with old friends. Until the phone rings and they hear the panicked voice of Shalini's friend, Tabassum. Something has happened, would they rush to the club? Shalini needs them... A fast-paced novel that rushes you along on a tide of unpredictable emotions and action, Redemption speaks directly to our worst fears and anxieties.