/Library of Babel/ {in the process of “being built”}

http://libraryofbabel2010.blogspot.com/

/Library of Babel/ BLOG is ~ A Digital or Virtual "LIBRARY" comprising of more than 2,000 RARE & VITAL "eBooks", comprising of various and numerous "subjects" such as FICTION ~ "AUTEUR" Films ~ Poetry ~ Arts & Literature ~ Literary Criticism/ History & Studies ~ Film Criticism/ History & Studies ~ Theatre/ History & Studies ~ Philosophy ~ Psychology ~ Neuro-Science ~ Music/ History & Studies ~ Dance/ History & Studies ~ Architecture ~ Photography ~ Science ~ Culture etc.

Apart from these "subjects", a "VAST" Collection of "Computer Science" eBooks are also available.

Kindly "VISIT" /Library of Babel/ and "choose" from over 2,000 RARE & PRECIOUS "eBooks". Contact satheeshgvr@gmail.com for the "Delivery Details", "Price Info" etc. "eBooks" from the /Library of Babel/ are very "Minimally Priced". You could "cross-check" the /Library of Babel/ "price" with that of Amazon, FlipKart etc. "eBooks" comprising of 500 pages are here; and "eBooks" comprising of 50,000 pages (5,000 pages in 10 Volumes) are also here. You won't ever "get hold of" these "eBooks" just by Google-ing. This "VIRTUAL TREASURE" was "compiled" over a period of more than 2 years. This LIBRARY was "compiled" using TORRENT APPLICATIONS, FILE CONVERTERS etc.

You could "buy" particular "eBooks" (in High-Res 'pdf format'); further, "Life-Time Membership" of the BLOG is also solicited. "Life-Time Members" could DOWNLOAD all the "eBooks" hitherto UPLOADED there in the BLOG; they could also DOWNLOAD all the "eBooks" that would be UPLOADED in the FUTURE too.

THE MUSEUM OF INNOCENCE / Orhan Pamuk

Translated by Maureen Freely / Alfred A. Knopf / 2009 / 328 pp

Nobel laureate Pamuk's latest novel is a soaring, detailed and laborious mausoleum of love. During Istanbul's tumultuous 1970s, Kemal Bey, 30-year-old son of an upper-class family, walks readers through a lengthy catalogue of trivial objects, which, though seeming mundane, hold memories of his life's most intimate, irretrievable moments. The main focus of Kemal's peculiar collection of earrings, ticket stubs and drinking glasses is beloved Fusun, his onetime paramour and longtime unrequited love. An 18-year-old virginal beauty, modest shop-girl and poor distant relation, Fusun enters Kemal's successful life just as he is engaged to Sibel, a very special, very charming, very lovely girl. Though levelheaded Sibel provides Kemal compassionate relief from their social strata's rising tensions, it is the fleeting moments with fiery, childlike Fusun that grant conflicted Kemal his deepest peace. The poignant truth behind Kemal's obsession is that his museum provides a closeness with Fusun he'll never regain. Though its incantatory middle suffers from too many indistinguishable quotidian encounters, this is a masterful work.

HARUKI MURAKAMI / THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE

Vintage Books / Translated by: Jay Rubin / 1997 / 364 pp

Bad things come in threes for Toru Okada. He loses his job, his cat disappears, and then his wife fails to return from work. His search for his wife (and his cat) introduces him to a bizarre collection of characters, including two psychic sisters, a possibly unbalanced teenager, an old soldier who witnessed the massacres on the Chinese mainland at the beginning of the Second World War, and a very shady politician. Haruki Murakami is a master of subtly disturbing prose. Mundane events throb with menace, while the bizarre is accepted without comment. Meaning always seems to be just out of reach, for the reader as well as for the characters, yet one is drawn inexorably into a mystery that may have no solution. "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" is an extended meditation on themes that appear throughout Murakami's earlier work. The tropes of popular culture, movies, music, detective stories, combine to create a work that explores both the surface and the hidden depths of Japanese society at the end of the 20th century. If it were possible to isolate one theme in "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle", that theme would be "responsibility". The atrocities committed by the Japanese army in China keep rising to the surface like a repressed memory, and Toru Okada himself is compelled by events to take responsibility for his actions and struggle with his essentially passive nature. If Toru is supposed to be a Japanese Everyman, steeped as he is in Western popular culture, and ignorant of the secret history of his own nation, this novel paints a bleak picture. Like the winding-up of the titular bird, Murakami slowly twists the gossamer threads of his story into something of considerable weight.

http://www.caravanmagazine.in/

The Caravan Magazine
A Journal of Politics and Culture

In 1940, when the entire Indian subcontinent was rising in the independence struggle against the British rule, the late Mr. Vishva Nath, the founder of "Delhi Press", launched The Caravan. With its nuanced political and literary journalism, The Caravan became, in many ways, the cradle of development for English magazine journalism in India. It inspired and engaged more than three generations of political, academic and social thinkers in India, and carved a special space for itself as the magazine for intellectuals and activists.

In 1988, The Caravan was renamed as Alive, a magazine that continues to be published today. Over the years, "Delhi Press" has become the largest magazine publishing house in the country. Today we publish 31 magazines in nine languages, including popular titles like Woman's Era, Grihshobha, Sarita, Saras Salil and Champak.

The Caravan is still fondly remembered in the senior intellectual circles of the country. The magazine has now been re-launched with the same journalistic spirit of our first publication, and as a magazine dedicated to narrative journalism.

Goodbye to Ballimaran
By NABINA DAS

I’ve heard about riled up days that despised names of verses
they preferred riding set-jaw jeeps over the back of old town Dilli
earlier than the rooster, stopping for certain numbered doors

Possibly, those sweaty days turned swear words into Molotovs
charred down bamboo screens after summer’s whimsical rain
left a few blackened posts under roofs where couplets had lived

Possibly I imagined my footsteps would precede yours there
even now, waiting, a pastured horse munching tender rhymes
your leftover half-ghazals, their florid maktas, for this was love

Didn’t Ghalib live here? My rickshaw man pedaled and smiled:
He bought his quarter peg here every evening, walked from there!
No wonder, I imagined your beard hair on the banister, wind-tangled

If you still exhaled behind that cindered verandah I would not know
holding broken bangles, pieces of a departed love, post intermission —
Alvida, you must’ve said in a sad refrain, adding in English, “So long.”