Manjula Padmanabhan – författare

‘A modern morality play. A bitter, savagely funny vision of the cannibalistic future that awaits the human race...’ – OUTLOOKA searing portrayal of a society bereft of moral and spiritual anchors, Manjula Padmanabhan’s fifth play, Harvest, won the Onassis Award for Original Theatrical Drama in 1997, the first year in which the prize was awarded. Following its international premiere in Greece in 1999, the play has been performed over the years by theatre groups, both amateur and professional, around the world. A dark satire, Harvest tells the story of an impoverished family and the Faustian contract they enter into with a shadowy international corporation: fabulous wealth in exchange for the organs of one of its members. As Ginni, the glamorous American woman who hopes to receive the organs, invades their one-room home via an interactive video device the play lays bare the transactional nature of human relationships – even the most intimate ones.This edition includes, for the first time, a gender-reversed version of the play – an experiment by the author that provides startling insight into the stereotypes and societal constructs ingrained deep in the human psyche and, indeed, into how we perceive gender.

This is the story of Meiji – the only girl who has remained untouched and unmutilated in a country that has savaged its entire female population. Having saved her from certain death in the new Dark Age that has come upon the world, her gaurdian, Youngest, has transported her to the only place where she can remain safe – an Island where wounded girls are, sometimes literally, stitched back together and given a new life. But the Island itself is a menacing place, and Meiji may be in more danger than ever before. To see what has become of his beloved girl, Youngest must find a way to infiltrate its odd environs while keeping the constantly assaulting voice in his head at bay. His struggles against the surreal inhabitants of a world gone wrong and with his own transformed identity only serve to steel his efforts to find the girl, and escape once more...The Island of Lost Girls showcases, yet again, Manjula Padmanabhan’s genius at creating searing landscapes and alternate, sometimes brutal, worlds while reaffirming the beauty and the ugliness, the cruelty and the tremendous compassion that essentially make us human.''

In the country she inhabits, Meiji is unique. The only surviving female in a land where women have been exterminated, she has been brought up in secret, cloistered and protected, by three men she knows as her uncles – Eldest, Middle and Youngest. Now, as she approaches adolescence, her guardians must ensure that the dictatorial clone Generals who rule their world never get to know of her existence, and it falls to Youngest to escort Meiji on a long and treacherous journey through ravaged landscapes to the very edge of the world known to them. An adventure story like no other, a tale of love and self-discovery in several unexpected layers, Escape is a novel that is as unsettling as it is unputdownable. In its captivating portrayal of tender relationships blooming and thriving in a vicious, forbidding landscape, it bears out Manjula Padmanabhan’s genius as a creator of compelling alternative worlds.

It’s the General Assembly of the Galactic Union, and the first delegation from SOL-3 is desperate to present its case before it. The crazily assorted contingent of the third planet of the star SOL - aka Earth - carries with it all its baggage of opposing opinions, narrow views, squabbles, secrets and conspiracies. Toilets, whales, racism, food, body size... everything is cause for shouting matches and name-calling as the representatives – 11 human and six non-human – each wait to hold forth. To their shock and horror, they come to know that only one delegate will appear before the Assembly. Fuss and fireworks erupt among the elected leaders of the delegation, while five rebels plot a blow-up of a different kind. Uncertainty rules: Who is that one chosen speaker going to be and what is he, she or it going to say? Will SOL-3 be stuck with being ‘ecologically unfit for full membership to the Union’, or be seen as having ‘potential for change’? Is this interplanetary jamboree an insult, an opportunity, or a test? Among telepathic cookies and high-tech waste disposal, Manjula Padmanabhan sets up a colourfully cast, witty and thought-provoking stage spectacle sure to leave its audience and readers amused, inspired and applauding.

Rebellious cellphones. Lustful holograms. A tourist vampire with a taste for spicy Indian blood. A conference of galactic gods.

In twenty-five exhilarating stories, Manjula Padmanabhan brings her trademark twist to familiar reality, dreaming up inventive futures and capturing today''s world with equal flair.

From bejewelled party guests suddenly stripped naked to a teenager who steals time, from mosquitoes that infect people with Gandhian pacifism to a dystopia where everyone breathes canned air, this remarkable collection poses urgent questions: what does it mean to live in a society, and this one in particular? Where are we headed, and do we even want to get there?

At once funny, provocative and profound, Stolen Hours and Other Curiosities is science fiction served up with a dab of ghee and a sprinkling of dark matter that will hold you captive till the very last page.

Madam ''Maddy'' Sen returns to India from the US, hoping to jumpstart her life by offering an exclusive women''s-only taxi service in grimy, chaotic New Delhi.

Then a brutal eviction turns her life inside out. A stranger makes a tantalizing offer. A new home with new friends and an excellent salary can all be hers. The catch? She must pretend, now and then, to be a male chauffeur to a powerful older man.

Taxi takes the reader on a twisty romp as Maddy struggles with gender, social class, race and a flash of wild romance.

Late 1970s, Bombay. Manjula is in her twenties, struggling to earn a living as an author-illustrator. Then, a deceptively routine visit to a diet clinic and an encounter with two tall Dutch men turn her life inside out. Without much ado she speeds off on a Westward-bound spiritual quest, which involves cheating on her boyfriend, lying to everyone she loves and cutting off all ties with her safe, respectable, bourgeois Indian upbringing. In this picaresque travel memoir, novelist, cartoonist and award-winning playwright Manjula Padmanabhan looks back on her youthful misadventures in Europe. By turns funny and fierce, Getting There will touch anyone who has ever wanted to strip off their skin to waltz, however briefly, on the wild side.

A neighbourhood that turns a blind eye to a recurring gruesome crime. A game show that puts the lives of its contestants on the line. An insidious tableau that pits three artists against each other. A world where organs of the poor are commercially harvested for the rich. Collected Plays brings together, in a much-anticipated series, the dramatic works of Onassis Prize-winning playwright and author Manjula Padmanabhan.Blood and Laughter, the first volume, presents within its covers Padmanabhan’s full-length plays – including the three-times cinematized Lights Out, the previously unpublished Mating Game Show and Artist’s Model, and the award-winning Harvest – all known for their masterful portrayal of the dilemmas of morality, relationships and the idea of justice. Horror, anticipation and chilling realism mark each of these works, drawing readers and audiences alike to the edge of their seats.With new introductions to the works that affirm the relevance of the themes of the plays, this collection showcases the playwright’s mastery of her art and reconfirms her standing among the leading dramatists of our time.

Conjoined triplets on a blind date. A lesson in human reproduction by a manic-prudish teacher. A heart-stopping game of cards. An instrument that tunes in to the music of our bodies’ organs.Collected Plays brings together, in a much-anticipated series, the dramatic works of Onassis prize-winning playwright and author Manjula Padmanabhan.Laughter and Blood, the second volume, presents within its covers Padmanabhan’s short performance pieces. From The Sextet and Ladies’ Night to Hidden Fires and Blind Date, these wildly inventive, subversive and often chilling plays introduce readers to the intrigues of inverted power structures, tantalizingly suggestive interactions and powerful voices from the fringe.With new introductions to the works that affirm the relevance of the themes of the plays, this collection showcases the playwright’s mastery of her art and reconfirms her standing among the leading dramatists of our time.