Book Box Choice 1

1. This is a bimonthly subscription (shipped every two months)
2. Each Box will include 1 fixed book (chosen by us), 1 book of your choice, and a Bookish Gift – something special and delightful.
3. This is a bid to encourage you to purchase books from book lovers instead of from soulless conglomerates.

The Door by Magda Szabó

The writer Claire Messud, in a review in The New York Times, says about Magda Szabó's The Door: "...I’ve been haunted by this novel. Szabo’s lines and images come to my mind unexpectedly, and with them powerful emotions. It has altered the way I understand my own life."

For our first ever Book Box in India, the fixed book had to be a lot of things; it would be the Indian reader's introduction to Boxwalla, after all. Hungarian writer Magda Szabó's The Door is everything. Szabó is one of our favorite writers ever, and if this is your first time reading her work, we're thrilled to introduce you to a writer who can change how you think about literature, or as Messud above, even alter the way you understand your own life.

The Door is the story of two women: the first is a writer, a fictionalized version of Szabó, and the other her housekeeper, Emerence. The latter remains a mystery for much of the book, though the narrator tries her best to discover her secrets. She has a formidable reputation as a housekeeper, and even at her old age, her strength is tremendous. Animals love her and people rely on her, even if they may be a bit afraid of her.

The novel is dominated by the author's interest in her housekeeper. Over twenty years, the women's relationship grows, ruptures, and deepens. But as the narrator achieves success as a writer and Emerence's secrets are revealed, the fault lines that emerge in their relationship could be devastating.

First published in 1987, this edition is a fresh, prizewinning translation by Len Rix.

Gazing Eastwards is a rare and personal glimpse of Romila Thapar before she became one of the most renowned historians in present-day India. Her account not only captures the important and exciting work she did in China, but also reveals the rigor, empathy, curiosity, and scrupulousness that have gone on to characterize all of Thapar's academic work.

Besides her work on the Buddhist sites that brought her to China, the author was able to travel to the historically important cities of Beijing, Xi’an, Nanking, and Shanghai, as also some small cities and villages of the Chinese hinterland. She travelled by plane, train, truck, and automobile. Her curiosity led her to many meetings with a variety of people, great and small, as well as forays into the country’s art, music, culture, and religion. She ate the most unusual and delicious Chinese meals, and endorsed the claim that Chinese food is one of the world’s great cuisines. She delved into Chinese history, learnt how to play the erhu, heard the operas of diverse regions, shook hands with Chairman Mao, admired the grace and beauty of Chinese women, and tried to experience as much of Chinese society as she could.

Gazing Eastwards is a lively and arresting account of Romila Thapar’s first visit to China in 1957. She went as a research assistant to the Sri Lankan art historian Anil de Silva, and worked on two major Buddhist sites in Maijishan and Dunhuang. It was a period of deceptive calm in the country, just prior to traumatic events such as the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward that churned and transformed Chinese society. Although China was changing with Mao’s rise to power, much of the old ways remained. This being her first visit to East Asia, the author was greatly intrigued by the country, its culture, and its people during the months she spent there.

Her observations of her time in China provide the reader with a profound, funny, original, and constantly insightful look at one of the world’s oldest and most complex countries.

Magda Szabó (1917–2007) was born in Debrecen, north-eastern Hungary. She was raised in a devout Protestant and intellectual family. After graduating from the University of Debrecen as a teacher of Latin and of Hungarian, she worked as a teacher and in the Ministry of Religion and Education. Szabó began her writing career as a poet, during which time she came in contact with the New Moon Group who defined poetry of that generation in Hungary. Her second collection, Back to the Human, was awarded the Baumgarten Prize, one of Hungary's most prestigious literary awards. However, the award was taken away the same day as Szabó was declared an enemy of the people by the recently installed communist party. She was fired from the Ministry the same year. Banned from publishing, Szabó turned to fiction, defying the guidelines of Social Realism laid down by the State and writing about what she referred to as “terrible women”.

Romila Thapar is Emeritus Professor of History at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her principal area of study is ancient India, a field in which she is pre-eminent. She has been General President of the Indian History Congress. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and holds an Hon D.Lit. each from Calcutta University, Oxford University and the University of Chicago. She is an Honorary Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and SOAS, London. In 2008 Professor Thapar was awarded the prestigious Kluge Prize of the US Library of Congress, which honours lifetime achievement in studies such as history that are not covered by the Nobel Prize.