BOOKS OF THE WEEK - 24TH November 2017

The Nationalist

How A.M. Naik Overcame Great Odds to Transform Larsen 

&Toubro into a Global Powerhouse

by - Minhaz Merchant 

About the Book

This is the story of an extraordinary business leader, Anil Naik, and the company, Larsen & Toubro (L&T), he has served for 53 years and led for the last 18. Long coveted by the Ambanis and Birlas, L&T has an annual turnover of Rs 1,20,000 crore and a market capitalisation of more than Rs 1,60,000 crore. It is involved in several critical national projects: India's first nuclear-powered submarine; strategic weapon and missile systems; space exploration including maiden missions to the moon and Mars; global infrastructure; airports; metro rail systems; and nearly all of India's nuclear power plants. L&T's Hazira manufacturing complex, Vadodara's Knowledge City and the Kattupalli shipyard have become symbols of world-class Indian engineering and technology. Author Minhaz Merchant spoke to Naik over several months to construct a compelling narrative of a remarkable company and its chairman. What emerges is a portrait of a man whose work and life have been bedrocked on a deeply felt sense of nationalism, synonymous with helping to build a strong and self-reliant India. From a south Gujarat village to the chairmanship of L&T, Anil Naik's journey has been one of grit, determination, entrepreneurial leadership, 16-hour workdays and a unique management style. What emerges is a visionary leader who ringfenced L&T from corporate takeovers by creating an innovative employee welfare foundation and transformed L&T into a global technology and engineering powerhouse. Naik also emerges as a devoted family man and a generous philanthropist who has donated most of his personal income to charities through family trusts focused on healthcare, education and community service. Naik's father, Manibhai, a teacher who spent his life serving the rural poor, was his role model who taught him to be fearless and honest with the motto: 'If you are in the right, you have nothing to fear.' This is the story of a man who surmounted great odds to reach the pinnacle of success, says Merchant. It demonstrates more than anything else that honesty - the quality Naik prizes most - pays the greatest dividend of all in the end: the respect of your peers, the loyalty of your colleagues, and the affection of your family.

About the Author

Minhaz Merchant is the biographer of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and the late industrialist Aditya Birla. He founded the pioneering media firm Sterling Newspapers Pvt. Ltd, which was later acquired by the Indian Express group. A widely published newspaper columnist, Minhaz's book, The New Clash of Civilizations: How the Contest between America, China, India and Islam Will Shape Our Century, was published in 2014. Recipient of the Lady Jeejeebhoy scholarship for physics, Minhaz lives in Mumbai with his wife Kahini. The couple have two children, Suhail and Tehzeeb.

ISBN : 9789352772889

Price : Rs.799.00

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BOOK OF THE WEEK 10TH, NOVEMBER 2017

The Book of Chocolate Saints 

by - Jeet Thayil 

About the Book

In incandescent prose, award-winning novelist Jeet Thayil tells the story of Newton Francis Xavier, blocked poet, serial seducer of young women, reformed alcoholic (but only just), philosopher, recluse, all-round wild man and India’s greatest living painter. At the age of sixty-six, Xavier, who has been living in New York, is getting ready to return to the land of his birth to stage one final show of his work (accompanied by a mad bacchanal). As we accompany Xavier and his partner and muse ‘Goody’ on their unsteady and frequently sidetracked journey from New York to New Delhi, the venue of the final show, we meet a host of memorable characters—the Bombay poets of the seventies and eighties, ‘poets who sprouted from the soil like weeds or mushrooms or carnivorous new flowers, who arrived like meteors, burned bright for a season or two and vanished without a trace’, journalists, conmen, murderers, alcoholics, addicts, artists, whores, society ladies, thugs—and are also given unforgettable (and sometimes unbearable) insights into love, madness, poetry, sex, painting, saints, death, God and the savagery that fuels all great art. 

Narrated in a huge variety of voices and styles, all of which blend seamlessly into a novel of remarkable accomplishment, The Book of Chocolate Saints is the sort of literary masterpiece that only comes along once in a very long time.

About the Author

Jeet Thayil was born in Mamalasserie, Kerala, in 1959 and educated in Jesuit schools in Bombay, Hong Kong and New York. He worked as a journalist for twenty-three years before writing his first novel. His five poetry collections include Collected Poems, English and These Errors Are Correct, which won the 2013 Sahitya Akademi Award. He is the editor of The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets. Jeet Thayil’s novel Narcopolis won the 2012 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and was shortlisted for five other prizes, including the Man Booker Prize, the Man Asian Literature Prize and the Commonwealth Prize.

ISBN : 9789386021038   

Price : Rs.799.00

 

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Our mail order service ships books in India and Overseas

Email: sales@ebd.in, Phone: +91 135 2655192