Literary lineup
From memoirs to works of fiction, non-fiction and translations, a lot’s in store for readers
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IF there’s a silver lining to living through unsettling times, it’s that writers often find inspiration in chaos. This is reflected in the Indian publishing roster for 2025, which offers several fascinating books across genres.
As with the last few years, there’s a non-fiction boom. Gautam Bhatia’s ‘The Indian Constitution: Conversations with Power’ (HarperCollins) echoes recent debates, arguing that the national document is a site of conflicting views. The prolific Shashi Tharoor also highlights its importance in ‘The Constitution of India: A Short History’ (Aleph).
A memoir likely to attract significant attention is Arundhati Roy’s ‘Mother Mary Comes to Me’ (Penguin Random House), on her formative, complex relationship with her mother. Also noteworthy is ‘The Cell and the Soul’ (Bloomsbury), a prison memoir by Dalit scholar-activist Anand Teltumbde. Then, there’s Harinder Baweja’s ‘My Life Through Conflict’ (Roli), personal reflections on decades of reporting from Punjab to Kashmir to Afghanistan.
Two film-related recollections are the iconic Madhabi Mukherjee’s ‘Memoirs’ (Bloomsbury) and Rituparno Ghosh’s ‘First Person’ (Simon & Schuster), both translated by Arunava Sinha.
In political autobiographies, former President Ram Nath Kovind and advocate-MP Abhishek Manu Singhvi have titles slated for release (both from Rupa). Also on the anvil are the second volume of Abhishek Choudhary’s Atal Bihari Vajpayee biography (Pan Macmillan) and Ajay Bisaria’s ‘Atal Bihari Vajpayee: A Life’ (Aleph).
In a wider context, the Emmy-nominated Poonam Agarwal’s ‘India Inked’ (Bloomsbury) looks at what it takes to win at the Indian hustings. Pair that with Nidhi Razdan’s ‘The Death of TV in India’ (Bloomsbury), an insider’s account of the state of broadcast news. Other books examining contemporary India include Namita Waikar’s ‘Farmers Protest!’ (Yoda), and journalist Rollo Romig’s ‘I Am on the Hit List’ (Westland), which follows the trail of Gauri Lankesh’s killing into a world of extremism and murky religious groups.
Among books on specific regions, Nirmala Lakshman’s ‘The Tamils’ (Aleph) explores one of the world’s oldest continuous cultures, while Ghazala Wahab’s ‘The Hindi Heartland’ (Aleph) showcases an area spanning a quarter of the country. Moving north, writer-filmmaker Mehak Jamal collects oral histories of longing and repression during unrest in ‘Loal Kashmir’ (HarperCollins), while Ipsita Chakravarty unearths Kashmiri ‘folktales’ about events from Partition to Article 370 in ‘Dapaan’ (Westland). Finally, Anuradha Roy’s ‘The Himalaya in Twelve Pieces’ (Hachette) records life in a community bordering a high forest in the shadow of climate change.
History enthusiasts can anticipate Anirudh Kanisetti’s chronicle of the Cholas, ‘Lords of Earth and Sea’ (Juggernaut). ‘Nalanda: How it Changed the World’ (PRH) by Abhay K examines the legendary university’s impact, while Lucknow aficionado Rosie Llewellyn-Jones’s ‘Hazrat Mahal’ (Pan Macmillan) explores the resilience of Wajid Ali Shah’s queen during 1857.
For cricket fans, there’s Shikhar Dhawan’s autobiography, ‘The One’ (HarperCollins), and R Kaushik’s Rohit Sharma biography (Rupa). Rounding off the non-fiction shelf are Amitav Ghosh’s ‘Wild Fictions’ (HarperCollins), writings on subjects he’s been obsessed with, and Pratap Bhanu Mehta’s ‘The True Land of Promise’ (Juggernaut), essays on freedom, identity and politics.
Many anticipated titles loom on the horizon of fiction. Kiran Desai’s first novel in 20 years, ‘The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny’ (PRH), navigates Western and Eastern concepts of love and solitude through the lives of US-based Indians. Mohammed Hanif returns with ‘The Rebel English Academy’ (PRH), based in Pakistan after Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s hanging.
More voices to welcome back are Ruchir Joshi, whose ‘Great Eastern Hotel’ (HarperCollins) is set in the Raj-era Calcutta, and Amitabha Bagchi, whose ‘Unknown City’ (HarperCollins) continues the saga of his first novel’s protagonist. Similarly, Sarnath Banerjee’s graphic novel, ‘Absolute Jafar’ (HarperCollins), follows the fortunes of a character from his debut work.
Other titles illuminate individual and social changes, too. Daisy Rockwell’s ‘Alice Sees Ghosts’ (Bloomsbury) spans Boston, Mussoorie and Kolkata, and Keshava Guha’s ‘The Tiger’s Share’ (Hachette) follows the lives of Indian women in patriarchal Delhi. In Mirza Waheed’s ‘Maryam and Sons’ (Westland), a British mother grapples with her son’s suspected extremism in Iraq, while the short stories in Anita Nair’s ‘Why I Killed My Husband’ (Tranquebar) challenge norms. Annie Zaidi explores friendship, forgiveness, and art in ‘The Comeback’ (Aleph), while Jeet Thayil blends prose, poetry, fiction and non-fiction in ‘Melanin’ (HarperCollins).
Interest in translations remains unabated. Some upcoming titles are Udayan Vajpeyi’s ‘Qayas’ (Bloomsbury), a murder mystery translated by Poonam Saxena, and Jissa Jose’s ‘Mudritha’ (HarperCollins), interlinked tales of women translated by Jayashree Kalathil. Zubaan’s ‘Women Translate Women’ project with Ashoka University sounds promising, with works like Guli Sadarangani’s ‘Ittehad’ and Razia Sajjad Zaheer’s short stories.
It looks like another year of bookish bounty. There’s just one issue: we’ll have to read more and faster, or simply accept that the to-be-read stack will never shrink.
— The writer is based in Mumbai
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