Asia

Through simple and entertaining stories, Jamuna Rangachari brings out the essence of all religions practiced in India and how, underneath it all, we are all one.... More

‘It’s not people who aren’t credit-worthy. It’s banks that aren’t people-worthy’ —Muhammad Yunus Muhammad Yunus, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, set up the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh to lend tiny sums to the poorest of the poor, who were shunned ... More

In his bestselling book 1421:The Year China Discovered the World, Gavin Menzies revealed that it was the Chinese that discovered America, not Columbus. Now he presents further astonishing evidence that it was also Chinese advances in science, art, and technology that formed the basis of the European... More

Gandhi & Churchill reveals how both men were more alike than different, and yet became bitter enemies over the future of India, a land of 250 million people with 147 languages and dialects and 15 distinct religions—the jewel in the crown of Britain’s overseas empire for 200 years. Over the cours... More

Blending the intimacy of memoir and the panoramic sweep of eyewitness history, Wild Swans has become a bestselling classic in thirty languages, with more than ten million copies sold. The story of three generations in twentieth-century China, it is an engrossing record of Mao's impact on China, an u... More

Now reissued with a substantial new afterword, this highly acclaimed overview of Western attitudes towards the East has become one of the canonical texts of cultural studies. ‘Very exciting…his case is not merely persuasive, but conclusive.’ —John Leonard in The New York Times ‘His most ... More

The stroke of midnight on 15 August 1947 liberated 400 million Indians from the British Empire. One of the defining moments of world history had been brought about by a tiny number of people, including Jawaharlal Nehru, the fiery prime minister-to-be; Gandhi, the mystical figure who enthralled a nat... More

India is poised to become one of the world's three largest economies in the next generation and to overtake China as the world's most populous country by 2032. Well before then India's incipient nuclear deterrent will have acquired intercontinental range and air, sea and land capabilities. India'... More

Born against a background of privation and civil war, divided along lines of caste, class, language and religion, independent India emerged, somehow, as a united and democratic country. This remarkable book tells the full story-the pain and the struggle, the humiliation and the glories- of the worl... More

The theme for the leadrship initiative for 2004 was India and the World: A Blueprint for Partnership and Growth. Held in New Delhi in November, speakers at the initiative included Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, United Progressive Alliance Chairperson Sonia Gandhi, former British Prime Minister Jo... More

Winner of the Duff Cooper Prize for History 2007Bahadur Shah Zafar II, the last Mughal Emperor, was a mystic, a talented poet, and a skilled calligrapher, who, though deprived of real political power by the East India Company, succeeded in creating a court of great brilliance, and presided over one ... More

A stunning exposé of how A.Q. Khan set up Pakistan’s nuclear programme, and the role of the United States in the spread of nuclear weaponsBased on hundreds of interviews in the United States, Pakistan, India, Israel, Europe, and Southeast Asia, Deception is a masterwork of reportage and dramatic ... More

Winner of the 2005 Kiriyama Prize for Non-fictionSuketu Mehta left Bombay at the age of 14. Twenty-one years later he returned to rediscover the city. The result is this stunning, brilliantly illuminating portrait of the megalopolis and its people—a book, seven years in the making, that is as vast... More

As the author of the best travel book of recent years at theintensely irritating age of twenty-two, William Dalrymple has now shown that In Xanadu wasno fluke. City of Djinns is an entertaining mix of history and diaryinformed by a deep curiosity about the ways in which the ghosts  of eventhe m... More

In this book Michael Lynch presents an engaging and thoroughaccount of Mao's life and politics, making use of a wealth of primary andsecondary sources. He locates Maoism in the broader context of twentieth-centuryChinese history, discussing the development of the Chinese Communist Party, thecreation... More

The partition of India in 1947 promised its people both political freedom and a future free of religious strife. Instead, the geographical divide effected an even greater schism of the population, benefiting the few at the expense of the very many, exposing huge numbers of the population to devastat... More

Winner of the 1989 National Book Award for nonfiction, this extraordinary bestseller is still the most incisive, thought-provoking book ever written about the Middle East. Thomas L. Friedman, twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting, and now the Foreign Affairs columnist on the... More

India Unbound is the riveting story of a nation’s rise from poverty to prosperity and the clash of ideas that occurred along the way. Today’s India is a vibrant free-market democracy, and it has begun to flex its muscles in the global information economy. The old centralized, bureaucrati... More

In March 1947 Lord Louis Mountbatten became the last Viceroy of India, with the mandate to hand over "the jewel in the crown" of the British Empire within one year. Mountbatten worked with various leaders to devise a plan for partitioning the empire into two independent sovereign states. During the ... More