Shop – Jacaranda Literary Agency

Fraudster Tales

‘A splendid book … thoroughly fun and riveting’ S. Hussain Zaidi, bestselling author of R.A.W. Hitman

Ten financial scandals that gave the world a run for its money – from ancient times to the twenty-first century.

Crime stories have fascinated audiences all over the world for centuries. But as times have evolved, the spotlight on financial wrongdoing has further intensified. In Fraudster Tales: History’s Greatest Financial Criminals and Their Catastrophic Crimes, seasoned finance professional turned true crime writer Vijay Narayan Govind presents ten cases that have transformed the course of Indian and global economics.

From Hegestratos, the Greek trickster from 300 BCE, to Haridas Mundhra, the first notable scam artist in independent India, readers are transported to the murky world of white-collar crimes. Along the way, we meet the criminally astute Natwarlal, whose infamous cons have become legendary, Charles Ponzi, a name that is now synonymous with get-rich-quick schemes, and witness Singaporean gambler Chia Teck Leng’s shocking banking frauds in the twenty-first century.

Skilfully weaving together history, intrigue and morality, Fraudster Tales takes us on a thrilling journey through financial deceit, where the line between right and wrong is blurred and the consequences of greed are catastrophic.

Add to wishlist

Compare

Becoming Goan

Goa’s magnetism and its promise of a relaxed, almost bohemian lifestyle, have always attracted admirers and colonizers. Before the locals could make up their minds about such interlopers, Covid-19 brought hordes of them to town―Michelle Mendonça Bambawale was one of them. In June 2020, Michelle found herself moving to the 160-year-old house she had inherited in Siolim, a village in North Goa, with her human and canine family. Having never lived in Goa before, she couldn’t help but wonder if her Goan ancestry made her an insider or if she would forever remain an outsider. In this memoir, she confronts her complex relationship with her Goan Catholic heritage and explores themes of identity, culture, migration, stereotypes and labels. She also uncovers some of the uncanniest legends that pervade Siolim, including those of St. Anthony and the Snake, Sao Joao, and the statue of Beethoven. She also takes us back to Siolim and Goa in the 1970s and 1980s, where she spent her summer vacations without paved roads or electricity, pulling water from a well. Today, she dodges reeking septic tankers, earth movers and piling plastic garbage while walking her Labrador, Haruki. Becoming Goan is a heartfelt and charming story of Michelle's love for this land that her grandparents left her. She cares deeply about Goa's biodiversity and is distraught about the environmental impact of tourism, construction and mining. Her devotion to Mother Earth deepens as she learns more about her roots, steeped as they are in syncretic traditions.

Add to wishlist

Compare

The book of Bullah

The poetry of Bulleh Shah (1680–1758), a great Sufi saint of Punjab, has had enduring appeal over the centuries, inspiring fresh interpretations and garnering new converts to this day. His poems are as full of emotional intensity and passionate fervour, as they are of rebellion and rage against religious dogma. They will force the reader into deep reflections on the purpose of life and the certainty of death, and at the same time inspire spiritual longing and mystical ecstasy. In this volume, Manjul Bajaj interprets the imagery and symbols, metaphors and motifs of Bulleh Shah's verses for the modern reader and presents a hundred of his poems in a fresh and lucid English translation.

Add to wishlist

Compare

Hot

Indian Roots Ivy Admits

‘Indian Roots, Ivy Admits: 85 Essays that Got Indian Students into the Ivy League and Stanford’ is an inspired collaborative by Viral Doshi, top education consultant in India, and Mridula Maluste, leading writing and editorial consultant for university applications and more. Writing the Common Application essay is one of the most anxiety-inducing tasks that many aspiring university students encounter. The essay is meant to uniquely identify each student, and give him and her the winning edge. But how do fresh young high-schoolers captivate admissions officers through their narratives, portray themselves as agents of change, and chronicle personal achievements and individual talents without seeming to brag? How does one avoid such pitfalls, stand out and even shine in this highly competitive environment? Here to answer all these questions is a rare, illuminating gem of a book that will lead all young contenders on the path to drafting successful overseas education applications. ‘Indian Roots, Ivy Admits: 85 Essays that got Indian Students into the Ivy League and Stanford’ is for any student who aims to pursue higher education in world-class universities. It fulfils its promise to engage and empower aspiring candidates, and tops that by giving them valuable perspectives in reflecting on their lives, and in analyzing and composing thoroughly engaging essays. Every essay within these pages has been written by a young student who earned a well-deserved place in an Ivy League university or Stanford. Each essay is followed by an insightful review and an in-depth assessment that will help aspirants understand how to approach, map and write their own strongly structured, creative application essays. Curated by Viral Doshi and Mridula Maluste, two of India’s leading experts in the domain of education, this book is an invaluable resource for students and teachers, as well as enthusiastic parents.

Add to wishlist

Compare

Hot

The Portrait of a Secret

"What can a patriot do when he has to make the choice between self-preservation and love for his country? As India’s Chief of Intelligence, Amitabh has spent a career battling India’s enemies, domestic and foreign. Now, in the winter of his illustrious career, he is faced with his most daunting challenge yet - averting a nuclear strike against his homeland that he knows very little about - except that it is coming. As Indian intelligence works feverishly to uncover the truth, Amitabh’s path crosses Kamal’s, a senior IAS officer, who is investigating the theft of two priceless paintings from India. Even as they work together to accomplish their missions, the paintings reveal a secret thought to have been lost in the fires of partition. The discovery unleashes a global battle between the RAW, the ISI and the CIA, as each scrambles for control over a secret that would permanently swing global geopolitical power towards them. Innocent lives and intelligence assets built over decades are ruthlessly sacrificed for something far more valuable - control over the Indian sub-continent. Everything is at stake till one man is forced to make an impossible choice - one that will decide the fate of the world."

Add to wishlist

Compare

This Land We Call Home

In 1871, the British enacted the Criminal Tribes Act in India, branding numerous tribes and caste groups as criminals. In This Land We Call Home, Nusrat F. Jafri traces the roots of her nomadic forebears, who belonged to one such ‘criminal’ tribe, the Bhantus from Rajasthan. This affecting memoir explores religious and multicultural identities and delves into the profound concepts of nation-building and belonging. Nusrat’s family found acceptance in the church, alongside a sense of community, theology, songs and carnivals, and quality education for the children in missionary schools. The family’s conversion to Christianity in response to caste society highlights their struggle for dignity. Parallelly, we see the family’s experiences during Gandhi’s return to India in 1915, the Partition, the World Wars, the Emergency and the prime ministers’ assassinations. In a way, this is a story like and unlike the stories all of us carry within us―the inherited weight of who we are and where we come from, our tiny little freedoms and our everyday struggles and, mostly, the intricate jumble of our collective ancestry. Nusrat pays homage to her foremothers, the first feminists, and her forefathers, the ones who tried hard to fit into a caste society only to be disappointed, eventually choosing alternative faiths in pursuit of acceptance.

Add to wishlist

Compare

Hot

Someone is coming

Memories come thick and heavy like the rains that fall in the jungle. Dense droplets wash the leaves and soak into the ground, cleansing the acrid smell of rubber, cleansing the jungle of its sins. I hear my mother’s voice. No more secrets, Philip, I promise. Someone is coming, get ready. Philip Goundry is 93 and living out his days quietly in a care home in England when a young researcher from Singapore arrives, wanting to learn more about his former life in Malaya for the Singapore archives. His memory growing fitful, Philip is torn between wanting to unburden himself and staying silent, as he has done all these years, about the sinister and shocking events of his childhood on a Malayan rubber plantation. The truth, however, has a habit of winning.

Add to wishlist

Compare

Qabar by K. R. Meera

As the foundations are laid for a temple to rise on the site of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, voices rise from the ground in a small town in central Kerala. She is a judge in a district court, and he a petitioner in a seemingly banal property dispute. But the very first hearing tosses the judge’s life into disarray. The scent of pink Edward roses, the iridescent scales of snakes, the spectre—and science—of vanishing twins. Girls whose feet do not touch the ground. Irascible and comically powerful ancestors. In this illusory landscape are the hard truths about the intertwined histories of Hindus and Muslims in India, as well as the chasms between men and women.A hypnotic novella by K.R. Meera, deftly translated by Nisha Susan, Qabar echoes with the dizzying knowledge that verdicts are not solutions.

Add to wishlist

Compare

Redemption

A PACY NOVEL OF CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, SET IN BANGALORE The day begins innocently enough, a cool, breezy morning in Bangalore in the spring of 2007. For seventeen-year-old Shalini Gowda, it's a day for celebration--no more school, friends to go clubbing with, and her favourite adults coming over for dinner later at night. Life couldn't be better. Which is how her parents, Archana and Raju, feel too, in anticipation of a relaxed evening at home with old friends. Until the phone rings and they hear the panicked voice of Shalini's friend, Tabassum. Something has happened, would they rush to the club? Shalini needs them... A fast-paced novel that rushes you along on a tide of unpredictable emotions and action, Redemption speaks directly to our worst fears and anxieties.

Add to wishlist

Compare

The Scent of Fallen Stars

A scholarly loner and a musical prodigy come to India for answers, over twenty years apart… In 1995, thirty-six-year-old Will arrives in newly liberalized India. Smarting from the collapse of his academic dreams, he finds little fulfilment in his well-paying telecommunications job or the social confines of New Delhi’s expat community. One monsoon night, he encounters young, enigmatic Leela, who blazes into his world and unleashes a storm of passion and devastation that will alter it forever. Twenty-three years later, Aria lands in the city on a quest to find the mother whom she believed to be dead. Estranged from her convalescing father, her journey leads her to unravel the mysteries of her parents’ story and her mother’s life—from her childhood in an orphanage to a doomed love affair and finally, the remote shores of asceticism. As she searches for answers and a sense of belonging, Aria stumbles upon lost worlds, haunting memories, and the explosive secret that torpedoed her father’s life, the reverberations of which will be cataclysmic for her own.

Add to wishlist

Compare

Hot

The Meat Market by Mashiul Alam

OUTSTANDING SHORT FICTION FROM ONE OF BANGLADESH’S MOST INGENIOUS WRITERS. In the village of Modhupur, the new mother Julekha’s breasts dry up, but to everyone’s consternation, her little baby finds a dog to suckle on; Allah’s angel gives little Khobir fifty takas to buy sweets but his gambling father snatches the money away; journalist Jamil spirals hearing that all communication has been cut off in his hometown of Roop Nagar after a girl is gangraped, hacked, cooked and eaten by young men; Modhu, a penniless farmhand, leaves for Dhaka to drive a rickshaw two weeks a month, while his wife is actively wooed and seduced by his neighbour; Aminul Islam gets slaughtered at a butcher’s shop in broad daylight on protesting the spiking of pure lamb meat with sheep and goat-meat. Bordering on hyper-reality, leading Bengali writer Mashiul Alam’s stories hold up a mirror to Bangladeshi society. He effortlessly crosses over into the surreal, which at times, as a means for us to cope and sustain, serves as an escape from the blatant, daily horrors of reality, or turns the reader into a spectator witnessing heightened versions of plausible macabre events. Some stories disrupt our complacency while a few others are immensely tender—but all of them intensely political and rendered in sharp, precise prose. The Meat Market is a dazzling collection marking the arrival of a world-class writer for those who read in English.

Add to wishlist

Compare

Hospital

A strong and courageous novel that deftly tackles psychosis. In Melbourne, Australia, a woman in her late thirties is diagnosed with her third episode of psychosis, amounting to schizophrenia. What follows is a frenzied journey from home to a community house to a hospital and out again. Sanya, the protagonist, finds herself questioning the diagnosis of her sanity or insanity, as determined and defined by a medical model which seems less than convincing to her. Having studied psychology herself, she wonders whether, even if the diagnosis is correct to some extent, the treatment should be different. Sanya tells her story in a deceptively calm, first-person voice, using conversations as the primary narrative mode, as she ponders if and when the next psychotic episode will materialize. Based on real-life events and originally written in Bengali, Hospital is a daring first novel that unflinchingly depicts the precarity of a woman living with psychosis and her struggles with the definition of sanity in our society.

Add to wishlist

Compare

Books

Fraudster Tales

Becoming Goan

The book of Bullah

Indian Roots Ivy Admits

The Portrait of a Secret

Someone is coming

Qabar by K. R. Meera

Redemption

The Scent of Fallen Stars

The Meat Market by Mashiul Alam

Hospital

BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR SALE

available now on apps

Download Online

Our Newsletter

customer service

Our Store