In the eighteenth century, Justin Aloysius Trotter, or the Great Trotter, tumbles earthward to his death while surveying his vast lands and admiring his wealth from a hot air balloon. Two centuries later, the Seventh Trotter, Eugene Aloysius, narrates the epic story of a family at the fraying ends of its past glory. Laced with verses, advertisements, journal entries, elegies, quotations and learned interpolations, The Trotternama is the chronicle of seven generations of Trotters as they struggle to hold on to their shifting identities. They are Indian at lunch and British at dinner; eat curry with a dessert spoon and dessert with a teaspoon. Over the years, the expanding clan of Trotters produces soldiers, artists, poets, politicians-even a dhoti-wearing nationalist. As their excesses slowly turn to improvidence and the family chateaux is turned into a hotel, their increasing numbers and declining fortunes strain against a rapidly changing country. Allan Sealy's epic comedy of manners about Britain and India's motley offspring is as much a treat today as it was thirty years ago.

The Trotter - Nama Is A Literary Extravaganza, Huge, Funny, Constantly Surprising Novel That Spans Two Centuries And Two Cultures. Seven Generations Of The Trotter Family Populate The Comic Epic That Is By Turns Satirical, Poignant, And Magical, Embellished By Everything From Advertisements And Recipes To Couplets, Elegies, And Learned Digressions, It Is A Triumph Of Imaginative Energy That Can Be Read Piecemeal Or Taken Whole.

Asoca-often spelled Ashoka-was hailed as Ashoka the Great, the emperor who ruled most of the Indian Subcontinent and was pivotal in the spread of Buddhism from India to other parts of Asia in the third century BC. But his life as emperor was not always led by non-violence. History has it that he masterminded one of the biggest and deadliest wars ever fought, and it was the insurmountable grief he experienced at the sight of the people dying and dead on the battleground that made him turn to Buddhism and take a vow of ahimsa. Who was the man, and who was the king? What were his demons, and what gave him strength? This historical novel, drawn from research and portrayed with energy and complexity, transports the reader to the era of the Mauryan dynasty with atmospheric vividness and insight. Epic in scope and Shakespearean in drama, Asoca: A Sutra leaves the reader breathless with the full-bodied richness of Sealy's prose, his trademark whimsy and his imaginative modern reconstruction of that enigmatic and brilliant ruler of the Indian subcontinent.

Lev is a man who has come down in the world. Once a biological scientist, he is now a chauffeur in 'that new Russia where physicists wash windows and engineers drive trams'. So he decides to take his somewhat lethal knowledge abroad; to offer his services to a foreign government. But on the way from the airport his taxi is stopped, and he is robbed. It is in this helpless state, alone and adrift in Delhi, that Lev meets Maya. Beautiful, ferocious and utterly original, Maya has been waiting for a man like Lev to walk into her life. Briefly they come together, and Lev steps into the marvellous world that is Maya. But then something terrible happens - something for which the Russian scientist is blamed. The Brainfever Bird is an exquisite love story, a tale of international intrigue and biological weapons, a literary thriller of incredibly beauty, bursting with life, dreams and wonder.

On a camel's back hill beyond Agra stands a Redstone citadel altogether different from the white marble Taj Mahal. Fatehpur Sikri is the capital Akbar built to honour the saint who foretold the birth of his first son. In the inner court of the king's palace is a broad stone terrace with a chequered pattern that resembles a game board. Here, accounts say, Akbar played a kind of chess using human pieces from his harem of three hundred. Costumed in various guises, his women would have presented lively masques upon this stage.Zelaldinus mounts such a pageant, glittering and fantastical, where past and present, nobles and commoners, history and fiction rub shoulders. Its variety of verse and prose forms evoke the carnival spirit of a masque. Underlying the depiction of a rich and varied court life at Sikri are reflections on kingship, a meditation on fathers and sons and a plot within a plot that tells a crackling story of love across the Pakistan border-while through it all strides the nimble ghost of Akbar himself. Jalaluddin (Zelaldinus) Akbar

A Companion to James Joyce offers a unique composite overview and analysis of Joyce's writing, his global image, and his growing impact on twentieth- and twenty-first-century literatures. Brings together 25 newly-commissioned essays by some of the top scholars in the field Explores Joyce's distinctive cultural place in Irish, British and European modernism and the growing impact of his work elsewhere in the world A comprehensive and timely Companion to current debates and possible areas of future development in Joyce studies Offers new critical readings of several of Joyce's works, including Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Ulysses

Study and critical analysis of the themes, the motifs, and characterization in the twentieth century Indian novel in English.

The Birth of an Indian Profession is the first comprehensive history of engineers in modern India. Charting the development of the engineering profession in the country from 1900 to 1947, it explores how engineers, their roles, and their organization were transformed during the politically tumultuous interwar years. Through detailed case studies of engineers in public works, railways, and private industry, the book argues that the profession, once dominated by expatriate British engineers closely associated with the state, saw an increasing proportion of Indian members, and an emerging emphasis on industrial engineering. In the process, it fashioned for itself an Indian identity. Turning the spotlight on practitioners of technology and their professional lives, Ramnath explores several themes including the work culture of engineers, their conception of their own identity, their status in society, and their relationship with the evolving colonial state. In so doing, he provides a fresh perspective on the history of science and technology in twentieth-century India.