Featured Books at Dhaka Hay 2013

Pankaj Mishra has written a historical novel about Asia's intellectuals. The range of the history in the book is vast and extends to intellectuals from numerous countries. The book begins as Japan defeats the Russian Navy in 1905; Mohandas Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mustafa Kamal and Sun Yat-sen read the news with pleasure and envision similar triumphs in their own countries.

In this book Pankaj Mishra shows that countries like India and China have come a long way from just emulating Western powers. They are on their way to becoming super powers themselves but would they have been able to do this without following in the West's footsteps? In becoming more 'modern' these countries may have taken a few steps backwards by adopting some of the West's most unattractive qualities.

Boxer Beetle By Ned Beauman Kevin Broom is a collector of Nazi memorabilia and suffers from a disease that makes him smell like rotting fish. Certain events lead to him finding a letter relating to the fate of a late homosexual Nazi who became obsessed with a gay boxer. The novel is filled with murders, mystery and even parody.

This book by Mario Bellatin has two stories. The first story is about a gynecologist who accidentally kills his own son. The second story is about a childhood adventure of the gynecologist's patient's son. No direct relationship is given between the two stories but various interconnections may be inferred by the readers.

Beauty Salon, originally written in Spanish by Mario Bellatin, is a book about a homosexual beautician who turns his salon into a shelter for dying men. These men, along with the beautician, have a mysterious terminal plague (similar to AIDS) which has caused society to shun them.

Season of the Rainbirds By Nadeem Aslam A murder of a corrupt and influential judge occurs in a small village in Pakistan and a sack of letters presumed to be lost in a train crash nineteen years ago mysteriously appears, pointing towards the same village evoking several questions. What are the connections between these letters and the judge's murder? Why does so many powerful people do not want these letters to be found? The death starts a series of dramatic events involving the life of several characters of the novel – the judge's family, a Muslim deputy commissioner insolently involved with a Christian woman, a fundamentalist priest distressed with the lapses of the locals for luxuries, a feudal and pitiless property owner and a rebellious journalist reporting on the delivery of the mail packet. The story unfolds to its climax when the journalist disappears and the whole country lurches between fear and anxiety following an assassination attempt on the president. Based on the monsoon season of the 1980s, Season of the Rainbirds is a deep exploration of the apprehension between the Islamic viewpoint of life and the secular world. From the author of Maps for Lost Lovers, long-listed for the Man Booker Prize, Season of the Rainbirds is an exquisite fictional debut novel plotted against the ominous backdrop of religious tensions, assassinations, changing regimes and civil wars.

In this unique and beautiful personal document of an extraordinary moment in history, Ahdaf Soueif – novelist, commentator, activist – navigates her history of Cairo and her journey through the revolution that is redrawing its future. Through a map of stories, drawn from private history and public records Soueif chrts a story of the revolution that is both intimately hers and publicly Egyptian.