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Arrested under the draconian UAPA, Seema Azad spent two and a half years of incarceration. In this memoir, she pries open India’s carceral labyrinth: insect-ridden food, dilapidated barracks, deep-rooted caste and gender hierarchies, and the ceaseless indignities of a system built on bribes and exploitation. The book is a personal, political and lyrical testament to courage and the stubborn power of the written word. Translated from the Hindi original, ‘Zindan Nama’, this is an eye-opening account of conviction and compassion in the face of injustice.

This story of a ghatam artiste is also the story of the instrument itself, the clay pot that creates magic with its sound. The author describes her love affair with the ghatam from the time when it called to her in her dreams, leading her to Sukanya Ramgopal, contemporary India’s first woman ghatam player, and to Sukanya’s guru, Vikku Vinayakram. She talks eloquently about the hierarchies amongst instruments.

This book is a collection of short stories by Punjabi writer Harjinder Paul, who goes by the name of Jinder. These stories narrate the agonies of the marginalised and explore the inner worlds of the deprived against the backdrop of their experience of alienation, fear, failure, uncertainty, exploitation and injustice, caught in the contemporary times marked by estrangement, insecurity and violence. Filial, marital and extramarital ties are central to Jinder’s art of exposing the complicated present-day human relationships.