The Unmarriageable Man

Download or read book The Unmarriageable Man written by Ashok Ferrey and published by Penguin Random House India Private Limited. This book was released on 2021-03-15 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sanjay de Silva lives in Colombo, under the thumb of a controlling Sri Lankan father, having lost his English mother at an early age. When his father is diagnosed with cancer, he feels the ground shifting under his feet, the balance of power realigning. Though it is something he has dreamed of all his life, he is uneasy when it happens. Learning that he is entitled to live in England-thanks to his half-English parentage-he arrives in south London. It is 1980, the start of the glorious blue-rinsed Thatcher years, when every girl looks like Princess Diana but not every boy looks like Prince Charles. He meets and falls in love with a fellow Sri Lankan, Janine, who is old enough to be his mother and famous within the acid-tongued Sri Lankan community as 'a hooker of the very highest class, with royal connections'. Sanjay manages to buy an old wreck of a house in Brixton and succeeds, against all odds, in converting it into two flats. But all is not well with that house. At night there are voices . . . This is the story of south London's first Asian builder who in eight years developed and sold eighty-four flats, cashing in his winnings just before the crash of 1988. But at its heart it is about grief: how each of us copes in our inimitable way with the hidden mysteries of family and the loss of loved ones. Because, as Sanjay is about to find out, grief is only the transmutation of love, of the very same chemical composition-liquid, undistilled-the one inevitably turning to the other like ice to water.

Download or read book Unmarriageable written by Soniah Kamal and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2019-01-22 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This inventive retelling of Pride and Prejudice charms.”—People “A fun, page-turning romp and a thought-provoking look at the class-obsessed strata of Pakistani society.”—NPR Alys Binat has sworn never to marry—until an encounter with one Mr. Darsee at a wedding makes her reconsider. A scandal and vicious rumor concerning the Binat family have destroyed their fortune and prospects for desirable marriages, but Alys, the second and most practical of the five Binat daughters, has found happiness teaching English literature to schoolgirls. Knowing that many of her students won’t make it to graduation before dropping out to marry and have children, Alys teaches them about Jane Austen and her other literary heroes and hopes to inspire the girls to dream of more. When an invitation arrives to the biggest wedding their small town has seen in years, Mrs. Binat, certain that their luck is about to change, excitedly sets to work preparing her daughters to fish for rich, eligible bachelors. On the first night of the festivities, Alys’s lovely older sister, Jena, catches the eye of Fahad “Bungles” Bingla, the wildly successful—and single—entrepreneur. But Bungles’s friend Valentine Darsee is clearly unimpressed by the Binat family. Alys accidentally overhears his unflattering assessment of her and quickly dismisses him and his snobbish ways. As the days of lavish wedding parties unfold, the Binats wait breathlessly to see if Jena will land a proposal—and Alys begins to realize that Darsee’s brusque manner may be hiding a very different man from the one she saw at first glance. Told with wry wit and colorful prose, Unmarriageable is a charming update on Jane Austen’s beloved novel and an exhilarating exploration of love, marriage, class, and sisterhood. Praise for Unmarriageable “Delightful . . . Unmarriageable introduces readers to a rich Muslim culture. . . . [Kamal] observes family dramas with a satiric eye and treats readers to sparkling descriptions of a days-long wedding ceremony, with its high-fashion pageantry and higher social stakes.”—Star Tribune “Thoroughly charming.”—New York Post “[A] funny, sometimes romantic, often thought-provoking glimpse into Pakistani culture, one which adroitly illustrates the double standards women face when navigating sex, love, and marriage. This is a must-read for devout Austenites.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Download or read book Colpetty People written by Ashok Ferry and published by Random House India. This book was released on 2017-04-17 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this extraordinary debut, Ashok Ferry chronicles, in a gently probing voice, the journeys of characters seeking something beyond the barriers of nations and generations. His tales of social-climbing Sri Lankans, of the pathos of immigration, of rich people with poor taste, of ice-cream karma, of innocent love, eternity, and more take us to Colombo’s nouveau riche, hoity-toity returnees, ladies with buttery skin and square fingernails, old-fashioned aristocrats, and the poor mortals trapped between them. Ferry’s stories comprise characters that are ‘serious and fine and upstanding, and infinitely dull’, but also others like young John-John, who loses his childhood somewhere ‘high up in the air between Asmara and Rome’; the maid, Agnes of God, whose mango-sucking teeth ‘fly out at you like bats out of the mouth of a cave’; Ashoka, the immigrant who embodies his Sri Lankan identity only on the bus ride between home and work; and Professor Jayaweera who finds sterile freedoms caged in the ‘unbending, straight lines of Western Justice’. Absurd, sad, scathing and generous, but mostly wickedly funny, Colpetty People presents modern Sri Lankans as they navigate worlds between Ceylon and the West.

Download or read book The Ceaseless Chatter of Demons written by Ashok Ferrey and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘I was born ugly. That’s what my mother always said.’ So begins the story of young Sonny Mahadewala who lives a dual life: between his adoptive England where he lives in eccentric union with a privileged American, and the mixed bliss of the Mahadewala Walauwa, the big house on the mountain belonging to his father’s family in Kandy— the ancient capital of Sri Lanka—where he has both cachet and awful memories. For Sonny’s mother, a wonderfully maleficent anti-heroine, is convinced that demons possess this awfully ugly son of hers. Demons and the devil himself are the playing field of this book, whether seated in the draughty chapels of Oxford or roaming the Kandyan countryside and, through their clever interplay, they speak of larger horrors with able grace. Who is utterly good or utterly evil—and who, indeed, is the devil?

Download or read book The Denzel Principle written by jimi izrael and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2010-02-16 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Sisters decry the shortage of good men and say there is no way she is settling for less than a good Black man. Not just a good one, but the BEST one: Denzel Washington. She, of course, has no idea what that means, what she wants or what a good Black man truly looks like." –from The Denzel Principle The Denzel Principle is the belief that the perfect man—in the form of Denzel Washington—actually exists off screen and that all Black women can snag a Denzel of their very own. So what does your very own Denzel look like? Well, he's rich but earthy, handsome but not pretty, doting but not docile, tough but vulnerable, political but not radical, passionate but not hysterical, ambitious but not overbearing, well-read but not nerdy, manly but not macho, gentle but not feminine, Black but not militant, sexy but not solicitous, flirtatious but particular...and all that on cue and in proper measure. Award winning reporter and cultural critic, jimi izrael offers to set the record straight – from a regular guy's point of view. The Denzel Principle is straight talk on everything from "Ways Women Can Break the Hold of the Dizzle," "Ways to Attract Mr. Right," to "Ten Reasons to Love Ordinary Black Men" and so much more.

Download or read book The Deserted Heart written by Dragonblade Publishing and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2018-12-07 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unmarriageable? Or simply unusual?There can only be one reason for the proud Duke of Alvan's proposed visit to Audley Park. He means to offer for Lord Overton's beautiful daughter, Thomasina, thus saving the family's waning fortune. In the midst of the hectic preparations for his arrival, Overton's least marriageable daughter Charlotte remembers to collect her young brothers from school for the holidays. When fog forces them to spend the night at the Hart Inn, they are astonished to find the house deserted, save for one other enigmatic traveler who deals most capably with armed intruders. Drawn to their unconventional new friend, Charlotte enlists his help to solve the mystery. Amidst the upheaval of the duke's visit, to say nothing of the chaos caused by Charlotte's unmanageable pet terrier, the Hart becomes the focus of nefarious doings, kidnappings and romantic entanglements. For Charlotte is unwise enough to fall hopelessly in love with her sister's intended husband, and the duke hides too many secrets of his own.

Download or read book The Good Little Ceylonese Girl written by Ashok Ferry and published by Random House India. This book was released on 2017-04-17 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our Sri Lankan narrator visits his friend Joe in Italy, where Joe attends a special course—in higher (or, shall we say, lower) studies in women. Italians—much like Sri Lankans—live at home through marriage, death, and sometimes even beyond the pale. An accompanying string of fake fiancés and phoney engagements are the backdrop to this delightful collection of darkly humorous tales about Sri Lankans at home and abroad. Long years and many miles away, Colombo’s Father Cruz attempts to rescue a church from parishioners who like to put their donations where others can see them—on large plaques; on the coast, a retired Admiral escapes the tsunami on an antique Dutch cabinet; two childhood sweethearts, in time-honoured Sri Lankan tradition, are married off to strangers. Ashok Ferrey writes about Sri Lanka and its people, wherever they roam, with remarkable acuity. He writes of the West’s effect on Sri Lankans, of its ‘turning them into caricatures, unmistakably genuine but not at all the real thing’. In The Good Little Ceylonese Girl, his second collection of stories, he shows us the reality beyond those feeble sketches, in its full glory.