Excavating Kafka
by James Hawes
Price: Rs 1200
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Kafka’s features, and that dreaded word, Kafkaesque, are known to millions who have never read serious literature. Generations of academics and critics have maintained the image of Franz Kafka as a tortured seer whose works defy interpretation. In Excavating Kafka, James Hawes reveals the truth that lies beneath the image of a middle-European Nostradamus with a typographically irresistible name.
The real Franz Kafka was no angst-ridden paranoid but a well-groomed young man-about-town who frequented brothels, had regular sex with a penniless-but-pretty girl and subscribed to up-market pornography (published by the very man who published Kafka’s first stories). Excavating Kafka debunks a number of key facets of the Kafka-Myth. Written with the panache of a supremely gifted comic writer, Excavating Kafka is an engaging and involving reassessment of a major figure of literary modernism that will be welcomed and enjoyed by students of Kafka and by general readers alike.
Wreck this Journal
by Keri Smith
Price: Rs 638
For anyone who’s ever had trouble starting, keeping, or finishing a journal or sketchbook comes this expanded edition of Wreck This Journal, an illustrated book that features a subversive collection of prompts, asking readers to muster up their best mistake and mess-making abilities and to fill the pages of the book (or destroy them). Through a series of creatively and quirkily illustrated prompts, acclaimed artist Keri Smith encourages journal-ers to engage in “destructive” acts – poking holes through pages, adding photos and defacing them, painting pages with coffee, coloring outside the lines, and more – in order to experience the true creative process. With Smith’s unique sensibility, readers are introduced to a new way of art and journal making, discovering novel ways to escape the fear of the blank page and fully engage in the creative process. This book is an exploration into creativity.
The Martin
by Andy Weir
Price: Rs 798
Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he’s sure he’ll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive – and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. Chances are, though, he won’t have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old “human error” are much more likely to kill him first. But Mark isn’t ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity and engineering skills, he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?
