Showing titles in South Asia

Welcome to Long Story Short, an Audible Original podcast brought to you by Paperclip Media & Entertainment production. Join us on this wonderful journey through India's rich and unforgettable past. Come along with us on Season 1, where each episode will transport you to distant foreign lands to rediscover stories with lasting legacies that are not talked about enough.

In 1857 in India the "Sepoy" battalions took the opportunity to rise up against British rule. The sepoys were soldiers that were raised and paid for by the British East India Company and used to help maintain control of India for the British Empire. This book relates the events of the mutiny with detailed descriptions of the various battles and sieges of the rebellion.

In the feverish tropics of the Andaman Islands, a young Botanist tends to a fragile rose he has imported to welcome his bride. Hoping their marriage will bloom in this strange life, hundreds of miles from the East Coast of India, he is entranced by Chanda Devi's fierce nature and unusual gifts; speaking to trees and the ghosts of former colonialists. These islands, she tells her adoring husband, rest on a fault line, cracked so deep into the earth that spirits cross the boundary freely. But it is not this fracture that takes a tragic bite out of their happiness. 

On 3 June 1947, as British India descended into chaos, its division into two states was announced. For months the violence and civil unrest escalated. With millions of others, Marina Wheeler's mother Dip Singh and her Sikh family were forced to flee their home in the Punjab, never to return...

Romila Thapar is one of the most important indian academics writing today. Well-researched and thoroughly accessible, this volume is sure to become essential listening for those interested in Indian history and religion. It includes her experience of writing history textbooks for school, analysis of ancient history and interpretations of the epics, and the role history plays in contemporary politics.

Nobody expected the liberation of India and birth of Pakistan to be so bloody - it was supposed to be an answer to the dreams of Muslims and Hindus who had been ruled by the British for centuries. Jawaharlal Nehru, Gandhi's protégé and the political leader of India, believed that Indians were an inherently nonviolent, peaceful people. Pakistan's founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, was a secular lawyer, not a firebrand.

Ambedkar’s India is a collection of three of B.R. Ambedkar’s most prominent speeches on caste and the Indian Constitution.

In 1943 Winston Churchill and the British Empire needed millions of Indian troops, all of India's industrial output, and tons of Indian grain to support the Allied war effort. Such massive contributions were certain to trigger famine in India. Because Churchill believed that the fate of the British Empire hung in the balance, he proceeded, sacrificing millions of Indian lives in order to preserve what he held most dear. The result: the Bengal Famine of 1943-44, in which millions of villagers starved to death.

Known as the twice-born - first into the flesh and again when initiated into their vocation - the Brahmins are a caste devoted to sacred learning. But what Taseer finds in Benares, the holy city of death also known as Varanasi, is a window on an India as internally fractured as his own continent-bridging identity.

Shortlisted for The British in India Book Prize 2025 'A spellbinding account of the first forgotten half of the English encounter with India with a fascinating history of the Mughal Empire' JOSEPHINE QUINN, author of How the World Made the West 'Compelling, highly readable' NANDINI DAS, author...

This Very Short Introduction looks at Pakistan as one of the two nation-states of the Indian subcontinent that emerged in 1947. Pippa Virdee reaches into the ancient past to demonstrate the influence of trajectories of human settlement and civilization on Pakistan's contemporary political arena, and shows how the longer continuities between the land and its peoples are as important as the short-term changes in the political landscape. She considers Pakistan's religion and society, the state and the military, everyday life, popular culture, languages and literature.

A major new investigation into the Bhutto family, examining their influence in Pakistan from the colonial era to the present day.

The definitive biography of Ravi Shankar, one of the most influential musicians and composers of the twentieth century, told with the cooperation of his estate, family, and friends For over eight decades, Ravi Shankar was India's greatest cultural ambassador. He was a groundbreaking performer...

India is the forgotten heart of the ancient world. William Dalrymple draws from a lifetime of scholarship to highlight India’s oft-forgotten position as the heart of ancient Eurasia. For the first time, he gives a name to this spread of Indian ideas that transformed the culture and technology of not only its ancient world, but of the world as we know it today.

Winner of the 1997 Booker Prize. The richly exotic story of the childhood the twins Esthappen and Rahel craft for themselves amongst India’s vats of banana jam and mountains of peppercorns. Here, perhaps, is the greatest Indian novel by a woman. Arundhati Roy’s ‘The God of Small Things’...

WINNER OF THE ELIZABETH LONGFORD PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHY ‘A narrative of startling originality … As discussions of Britain’s colonial legacy become increasingly polarised, we are in ever more need of nuanced books like this one’ SAM DALRYMPLE, SPECTATOR Rebels Against the Raj...

A pioneering exploration of four cities where East meets West and past becomes future: St. Petersburg, Shanghai, Mumbai, and Dubai. Every month, five million people move from the past to the future. Pouring into developing-world “instant cities” like Dubai and Shenzhen, these urban newcomers confront a modern world cobbled together from fragments of a West they have never seen. Do these fantastical boomtowns, where blueprints spring to life overnight on virgin land, represent the dawning of a brave new world? Or is their vaunted newness a mirage?

The height of Mt. Everest was first measured in 1850, but the closest any westerner got to Everest during the next 71 years, until 1921, was 40 miles. The Hunt for Mt. Everest tells the story of the 71-year quest to find the world's highest mountain. It's a tale of high drama, of...

For a brief moment on December 27, 2007, life came to a standstill in Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto, the country's former prime minister and the first woman ever to lead a Muslim country, had been assassinated at a political rally just outside Islamabad. Back in Karachi--Bhutto's birthplace and Pakistan's other great metropolis--Rafia Zakaria's family was suffering through a crisis of its own: her uncle Sohail, the man who had brought shame upon the family, was near death.

Rahul Pandita was fourteen years old when he was forced to leave his home in Srinagar along with his family. They were Kashmiri Pandits- the Hindu minority within a Muslim-majority Kashmir that was by 1990 becoming increasingly agitated with the cries of ?Azaadi? from India. Our Moon Has Blood...