Speaking Tiger Books imprint: 118 books

When he gets out of jail for the seventh time, Yaqub Shah aka Jack King—from Chicago—vows never to go back again. Fed up of running small-time scams for other people, he convinces his law-abiding guardian, Uncle Jalal, that he wants to sort out his life and return to Pakistan. What he really has...

A musician never realized the truth of the saying ‘Music is a harsh taskmaster’ until his beloved instrument exacts the highest sacrifice. An unfaithful husband is baffled: his wife grows more and more perfect until she literally becomes the goddess of plenty. A loving mother is naturally distraught...

Over eleven wide-ranging stories, this collection deftly captures the world of men; the desires that drive them, and the impulses which bring them down.  A grandfather sits on a park bench, ruminating upon the beauty of his daughter-in-law and the perfidy of his son who has cast him out of...

For a few years in the early 1990s—at a time when the embers of a violent agitation for Gorkhaland were slowly dying down—Parimal Bhattacharya taught at the Government College in Darjeeling. *No Path in Darjeeling Is Straight *is a memory of his time in the iconic town, and one of the finest...

‘The author of this absorbing book was, where India is concerned, truly present at the Creation...I urge her book on everyone who lived in those great years and on all those who want to know more about them.’ —John Kenneth Galbraith When Mahatma Gandhi gave the call for the nation to...

As the British Raj begins its expansion towards Tibet, the remote Apatani valley on the Indo-Tibetan border becomes a flashpoint. George Taylor, an up-and-coming officer in the Indian Civil Service, leads the first expedition into the valley and recommends setting up a base nearby, as the Apatanis...

River of Flesh and Other Stories brings together twenty-one stories about trafficked and prostituted women by some of India’s most celebrated writers—Amrita Pritam, Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, Indira Goswami, Ismat Chughtai, J. P. Das, Kamala Das, Kamleshwar, Krishan Chander, Munshi Premchand,...

There was no striking clock within earshot—none on the staircase, none in the stable, none in the distant church tower.  Yet it is indubitable that Mr Dillet was started out of a very pleasant slumber by a bell tolling One… M. R. James is widely considered to be one of the greatest practitioners...

‘A master of the supernatural. I first read M. R. James as a boyin a forest rest-house, and he had me hooked on ghost storiesfor the rest of my life.’ —Ruskin Bond Mr Abney was found in his chair, his head thrown back… In his left side was a terrible lacerated wound, exposing the heart....

Over sixteen sparkling stories, Indra Bahadur Rai, the greatest contemporary writer in the Nepali language, skillfully narrates the individual lives and shared histories of a people. A storm batters a hillside farmstead through the night, and the family living in it debates its decision to...

‘…It looks like the rhythm of Shivapura life is upset. Even the seasons don’t keep time. The river looks wasted. The waves no longer run with a youthful vigour. The rocks under water are like bones jutting out of an old face.’ In Shivapura, the villagers worship their gods and nature,...

Lakshmibai Tilak was born in 1868 into a strict Maharashtrian Brahmin family in a village near Nashik. And at the age of eleven, she was married off to poet Narayan Waman Tilak, a man much older than her. In Smritichitre, Lakshmibai candidly describes her complex relationship with her husband—their...

In this one-of-a-kind anthology, Indrajit Hazra introduces you to booze jabberwocky in an essay brimming over with linguistic playfulness; Sidharth Bhatia writes about drinking in Hindi cinema—from ‘permit rooms’ and Prem Chopra’s close relationship with Vat 69, to Honey Singh and Deepika...

‘We are like toys—someone presses our “ON” button, or turns a key in our backsides, and we Santhals start beating rhythms on our tamak and tumdak, or blowing tunes on our tiriyo while someone snatches away our very dancing grounds. Tell me, am I wrong?’ In this collection of stories,...