This monograph on the work of Austrian architect Carl Pruscha (born 1936) is divided into the three geographical areas into which his life and legacy falls: the United States, Kathmandu and Vienna. Following his study of architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Pruscha spent the early 1960s at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design, constantly in search of inspiration and visions. An invitation by the UN to go to Nepal in 1964 enabled him to establish himself there as a practicing architect, embarking on various construction projects and the Kathmandu Valley Development and Preservation Project. After returning to Vienna in 1978, he became the head of the Academy of Fine Arts. The three sections in this book are accompanied by photographic portfolios by Iwan Baan and Hertha Hurnaus, numerous project documentations and a detailed timeline.

Lyrical and haunting, and also deeply political, this is an original offering from one of the most distinctive literary voices from South Asia. Prema, a young woman adrift in war-torn Nepal, with little to bind her to her family, village and country, wins a green card in a US government lottery and emigrates to Los Angeles. In this unfamiliar metropolis she struggles to invent a life she can call her own, even as love and sexual awakening transform her. And in the end, a chance discovery - of the endangered El Segundo Blue butterfly - brings her to a fragile sense of belonging.

The book that catapulted Manjushree Thapa to international literary fame, "The Tutor of History" is ambitious, intelligent and keenly observed. It is the late 1990s, a few years into constitutional democracy in Nepal, and the government has collapsed. In Khaireni Tar, a small town on the Kathmandu-Pokhara highway, four separate lives come together during the campaign for fresh elections: Rishi Parajuli, a disillusioned communist who gives private tuitions in history; Giridhar Adhikari, an alcoholic who is the chairman of the People's Party's district committee; Om Gurung, a large-hearted former British Gurkha; and Binita Dahal, a reclusive young widow who runs a tea stall near the town's only bus stop. As the elections approach, and the crises in their lives mount, they must choose not only for their country, but also for their own individual futures.