Paperback editions coming out soon in India and USA!

THE THING ABOUT THUGS: "...a novel full of suspense where the various strands of mystery, human relationships and crime are expertly woven into one absorbing and fast-moving tale. This is a book that deserves to stand the test of time and join the other masterpieces of Victorian London." (Gillian Wright in INDIA TODAY) For details, see http://indiatoday.intoday.in/site/Story/109677/Leisure/a-thug-redeemed.html

Shortlisted for the DSC Prize, the Hindu Best Fiction Prize and the Man Asian Literary Prize!!!


Amir Ali leaves his village in Bihar to travel to London with an English captain, William Meadows, to whom he narrates the story of his life – the story of a murderous thug. While Meadows tries to analyse the strange cult of the Indian Thug, a group of Englishmen sets out to prove the inherent difference between cultures and people by examining their skulls – with bizarre consequences. Set in Victorian London, this story of different voices from different places draws intricate lines of connection from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, between England and India, across individual and cultural differences.

Known for his refusal to fit his work into established 'diasporic', subalternist or post-colonialist narrative traditions, in The Thing About Thugs, Khair finally engages with these traditions by subtly and ironically deploying echoes from Victorian literature, ranging from Charles Dickens to P.M. Taylor's Confessions of a Thug and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

'Khair's skill lies in making us question our assumptions about what we do and why we do it.' – New Statesman

Details from: http://www.harpercollins.co.in/BookDetail.asp?Book_Code=2575

The Thing About Thugs will be out in French, Italian, Russian and Portuguese (Brazil) in 2012!!

MONTHLY LITERARY COLUMN by Tabish Khair in MINT (Mumbai): http://www.livemint.com/articles/Authors.aspx?author=Tabish%20Khair&type=wa

“The final joy of this magnificently disreputable novel is the realisation that like all great books it has actually been reading you.” – Indra Sinha, author of Animal’s People           



  Funny and sad, satirical and humane, How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position tells the interlinked stories of three unforgettable men –the flamboyant Ravi, the fundamentalist Karim and the unnamed and pragmatic Pakistani narrator –whose trajectories cross in Denmark. As the unnamed narrator copes with his divorce, and Ravi, despite his exterior of sceptical flamboyance falls deeply in love with a beautiful woman who is incapable of responding in kind, Karim–their landlord–goes on with his job as a cab-driver and his regular Friday Quran sessions. But is he going on with something else? Who is Karim? Why does he disappear suddenly at times or receive mysterious phone calls? When a 'terrorist attack' takes place in town, all three men find themselves embroiled in doubt, suspicion and, perhaps, danger. An acerbic commentary on the times, How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position is also a bittersweet, spell-binding novel about love and life today.


  To be released by HARPERCOLLINS on 17th April 2012.

  Pre-orders on Flipkart at a discount of 25 percent currently. See link: http://www.flipkart.com/fight-islamist-terror-missionary-position-9350293225/p/itmd87ufxzfujbtp?pid=9789350293225&_l=gWxQa0snNjHUHKJhnj_y0w--&_r=uPkt1vPP1bTJ_sj7anDyqA--&ref=6fb50f9f-6ded-4c71-a5e8-800c11e65091

   

You are visitor number 51773