WRITERS

Published in the 14th century, The Water Margin introduced the vernacular form and style which the others would adhere to. The novel is set in the Song dynasty and depicts a group of outlaws who eventually go on to serve the Emperor in battling foreign invaders. It was based on the real life story of the outlaw Song Jiang, who …

Leave me alone, novel of Chengdu (historically, Chengdu has been the center of China’s food culture, and is famous for its laid-back lifestyle), is an unflinching, darkly funny take on love and life in modern China. It’s the story of three young men, Chen Zhong, Li Liang and Big Head Wang and their tragi-comic struggles to make their way in Chengdu, …

His early work was written under various pseudonyms. He was born in a Spring day of 1813, to an affluent family in Copenhagen. Considered the original existentialist, Søren Kierkegaard developed his philosophical views in reaction to what he saw were empty values of Hegelianism and the Christian ethics of his time. Some of Kierkegaard’s key ideas, include the concept of …

Hong Ying is easily one of China’s best-known authors internationally. She was born in Chongqing on September day of 1962, towards the end of the Great Leap Forward. She began to write at eighteen, leaving home shortly afterwards to spend the next ten years moving around China, exploring her voice as a writer via poems and short stories. After brief …

This book is like having the best of good times with old friends, except that in this case, many of those friends are four-legged. A joyous romp through Paris and the south of France, meeting a host of characters with the footloose author leads to India, where she finally finds her dream-dog, an irresistible cocker spaniel named Joshua. With many …

A strange family, a pleasant story of a family “out of line”, in the throes of love, death and indissoluble family ties. Stories told with simplicity and tenderness. It all began when Babo was the first member of the Patel family to leave Madras, flying to London to further his education. Leafing through the pages of the novel, you find …

Strange is that this novel – with short chapters and an external point of view – tells the daily life of a married couple, but the main theme is not what you might have imagined. Everything revolves around the Indian cuisine, along with its ingredients. Lena and a “him”, have been married for fifteen years, even though she is not …

Samit Basu is the author of The Simoqin Prophecies, The Manticore’s Secret and The Unwaba Revelations, the three parts of The GameWorld Trilogy. Born 14 December 1979 in a Bengali Hindu family, Basu grew up in Calcutta. In 2007, Basu was declared one of India’s most promising ‘Emerging Indians’. Basu is a columnist, screenwriter, documentary filmmaker and freelance journalist writing …

Three sisters are living – over three summers – the transition from adolescence to maturity, a journey filled with love and expectations, disappointments and illusions. Protagonists of their stories, the characters are made of sky, land and sea: the brightness of the landscape and the red earth of Greece, together with the Athens shops and what birds draw in that …

From medieval to Renaissance time, the poets are maintained within two expressive strands: love in the service of a woman (chosen as the centerpiece of his poetic world), and love as a prison of the male heart. In Italy, it is with “Il Canzoniere” by Francesco Petrarca that is the transition between the two eras. Classical antiquity is again a …