Parent company | Vision Books Private Limited |
---|---|
Status | Active |
Founded | 1975 |
Founder | D N Malhotra [1] |
Country of origin | Indian |
Headquarters location | 5A/8, Ansari Road, 1st Floor, Daryaganj, New Delhi, India - 110 002 |
Key people | Kapil Malhotra (President) Sidharth Malhotra (CEO) [2] Sudhir Malhotra (MD) |
Publication types | Books |
Nonfiction topics | Fiction, Self-help; Academic |
Imprints | Orient Paperbacks; Vision Books; Caring Books |
Official website | orientpaperbacks |
Orient Paperback is an Indian publishing company. It publishes academic books as well as fiction in English and Hindi languages. It has launched the literary careers of several unknown authors like R K Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand and Shakuntala Devi who went on to achieve fame.
Orient Paperback was established in the year 1975 by Sudhir Malhotra and Kapil Malhotra. [3] They are descendants of publisher Rajpal Malhotra who was assassinated in 1912 for publishing the controversial book "Rangeela Rasool". [4] Rajpal's sons Vishwanath Malhotra and Dinanath Malhotra established Rajpal & Sons, which later got bifurcated into Orient Paperbacks and Hind Pocketbooks. [5] In 1947, after the partition of India and Pakistan, the publishing house shifted to New Delhi. [6] In 1976 Vishwananth's son Kapil Malhotra set up Vision Books as a private limited company with Orient Paperback as its official imprint. [7] Currently Orient Paperback is a registered trademark of Vision Books. [8]
The company publishes books under three different imprints. Fiction and travelogue under "Orient Paperbacks", general and self-help books under "Vision Books", and academic & career guidance are "Caring" imprint. Currently the company has more than 2000 titles distributed through around 1000 outlets. [9] Its current CEO Sudhir Malhotra is also the President of the Federation of Indian Publishers. [10]
Notable publications include books by Nelson Mandela, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Imran Khan, Shakuntala Devi, Don Bradman, Mulk Raj Anand, R K Narayan. Orient Paperback also published the only book ever written by Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. [11]
Khwaja Ahmad Abbas was an Indian film director, screenwriter, novelist, and journalist in Urdu, Hindi and English. He won four National Film Awards in India. Internationally, his films won the Palme d'Or at Cannes Film Festival and the Crystal Globe at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. As a director and screenwriter, he is considered one of the pioneers of Indian parallel or neo-realistic cinema.
Vinayak Narahari Bhave, also known as Vinoba Bhave, was an Indian advocate of nonviolence and human rights. Often called Acharya, he is best known for the Bhoodan Movement. He is considered as National Teacher of India and the spiritual successor of Mahatma Gandhi. He was an eminent philosopher. The Gita has been translated into the Marathi language by him with the title Geetai.
Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami,better known as R.K. Narayan was an Indian writer and novelist known for his work set in the fictional South Indian town of Malgudi. He was a leading author of early Indian literature in English along with Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao.
Jayaprakash Narayan, popularly referred to as JP or Lok Nayak, was an Indian independence activist, theorist, socialist and political leader. He is remembered for leading the mid-1970s opposition against Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, for whose overthrow he had called for a "total revolution". His biography, Jayaprakash, was written by his nationalist friend and the writer of Hindi literature, Rambriksh Benipuri. In 1999, he was posthumously awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award, in recognition of his social service. Other awards include the Magsaysay award for Public Service in 1965.
Mulk Raj Anand was an Indian writer in English, recognised for his depiction of the lives of the poorer castes in traditional Indian society. One of the pioneers of Indo-Anglian fiction, he, together with R. K. Narayan, Ahmad Ali and Raja Rao, was one of the first India-based writers in English to gain an International readership. Anand is admired for his novels and short stories, which have acquired the status of classics of modern Indian English literature; they are noted for their perceptive insight into the lives of the oppressed and for their analysis of impoverishment, exploitation and misfortune. He became known for his protest novel Untouchable (1935), followed by other works on the Indian poor such as Coolie (1936) and Two Leaves and a Bud (1937). He is also noted for being among the first writers to incorporate Punjabi and Hindustani idioms into English, and was a recipient of the civilian honour of the Padma Bhushan.
The Janata Party was a political party that was founded as an amalgam of Indian political parties opposed to the Emergency that was imposed between 1975 and 1977 by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of the Indian National Congress. In the 1977 general election, the party defeated the Congress and Janata leader Morarji Desai became the first non-Congress prime minister in independent modern India's history.
Events in the year 1985 in the Republic of India.
Shakuntala Devi was an Indian mental calculator and writer, popularly known as the "Human Computer". Her talent earned her a place in the 1982 edition of The Guinness Book of World Records. However, the certificate for the record was given posthumously on 30 July 2020, despite Devi achieving her world record on 18 June 1980 at Imperial College, London. Devi was a precocious child and she demonstrated her arithmetic abilities at the University of Mysore without any formal education.
Maneka Sanjay Gandhi is an Indian politician, animal rights activist, and environmentalist. She is a member of the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Indian parliament and a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). She is the widow of Indian politician Sanjay Gandhi. She has been a minister in four governments, most recently in Narendra Modi's government from May 2014 to May 2019. Gandhi inspired many individuals towards social entrepreneurship for example TreeAndHumanKnot in August 2020 which triggered it become a nationwide movement to plant fruit trees by couples.
The Emergency in India was a 21-month period from 1975 to 1977 when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had a state of emergency declared across the country.
Events in the year 1968 in the Federal Republic of India.
Events in the year 1969 in the Republic of India.
The Filmfare Award for Best Story is given by Filmfare as part of its annual Filmfare Awards for Hindi films, to recognise a writer who wrote a film's story.
Romesh Thapar (1922–1987) was an Indian journalist and political commentator. Affiliated with the Communist Party of India (Marxist), Thapar was the founder-editor of the monthly journal Seminar, published from New Delhi, India.
The Nehru–Gandhi family is an Indian political family that has occupied a prominent place in the politics of India. The involvement of the family has traditionally revolved around the Indian National Congress, as various members have traditionally led the party. Three members of the family–Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi–have served as the prime minister of India, while several others have been members of parliament (MP).
Untouchable is a novel by Mulk Raj Anand published in 1935. The novel established Anand as one of India's leading English authors. The book was inspired by his aunt's experience when she had a meal with a Muslim woman and was treated as an outcast by her family. The plot of this book, Anand's first, revolves around the argument for eradicating the caste system. It depicts a day in the life of Bakha, a young "sweeper", who is "untouchable" due to his work of cleaning latrines.
Across the Black Waters is an English novel by the Indian writer Mulk Raj Anand first published in 1939. It describes the experience of Lalu, a sepoy in the Indian Army fighting on behalf of Britain against the Germans in France during World War I. He is portrayed by the author as an innocent peasant whose poor family was evicted from their land and who only vaguely understands what the war is about. The book has been described as Anand's best work since the Untouchable.
In Lalu's tragedy lied the tragedy of the Indian village and Anand dramatizes a poignant truth: to disposses any one of land is to deny him an identity.—Basavaraj Naikar
Rajmohini Devi was an Indian social worker, gandhian and the founder of Bapu Dharma Sabha Adivasi Seva Mandal, established by her in 1951. The famine of Surguja in 1951 involved a great scarcity of food grains and crop failure. The famine had direct bearing on the rise of a reform movement called Rajmohini Devi Movement, a non governmental organization working for the welfare of the tribal people of Gondwana, in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh. It was reported that she had a vision about Mahatma Gandhi and his ideals during the famine of 1951, and she started a movement, for the liberation of women. and eradication of superstitions and drinking habits among the tribal people. The movement gradually assumed the status of a cult movement with a following of over 80,000 people and was later converted into a non governmental organization, under the name, Bapu Dharma Sabha Adivasi Seva Mandal. The organization functions through several ashrams set up in the states of Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.