The Silk Route Spy: The True Story of an Indian Double Agent by Enakshi Sengupta. HarperCollins. Pages 209. ~299 ‘The Silk Route Spy’ is the true story of a pre-Independence era double agent. Throughout his life, Nandlal Kapur was weighed...
Sarabjeet Garcha’s translation of Marathi playwright Mahesh Elkunchwar’s genre-dissolving triptych ‘Tribandha’ as ‘The Necropolis Trilogy’ sparkles and flows like wine. It is a memoir, an essay in three parts, a reverie, a fable, a desire, and a melancholic erotic fulfilment....
Reading another book on Kabir, offering a fresh experience, is always a delight. Kabir, a poet and philosopher of early modern India, has long been explored through various academic and popular lenses across India’s diverse traditions. As a saint and...
With war come endless tales of gallantry and grit and instances of performance above and beyond the call of duty. Many are preserved for posterity, while some fade into eternity and heroes die unsung. Also, in the wake of military...
Katyal’s book on Safdar Hashmi is a reminder that no form of freedom is achieved without the consistent rigour of struggle and collective aspirations
Harvinder Khetal In ‘Round and Round the Persian Wheel’, Maninder Singh crafts a moving narrative set against the tumultuous backdrop of Partition, a period that forever altered the lives of millions. The book delves into the profound struggles of a...
Bindu Menon In George Orwell’s dystopian novel ‘1984’, the all-powerful Party designs a language “to diminish the range of thought” in the totalitarian state of Oceania. Newspeak, the language which replaces Oldspeak, is invented to stifle all modes of thought...
Mangifera Indica: A Biography of the Mango by Sopan Joshi. Aleph. Pages 408. Rs 799 Beyond the often told stories of obsessions of nawabs and rajas with mango and the breathless annual debates about the best mangoes in the world,...
Debashish Mukerji By now, it is manifestly clear that the Bhima Koregaon case, unfolding since 2018, is an indelible blot on India’s democratic record. Thirteen men and three women — most of them activists who had devoted their lives to...
Karan Mujoo There are cities of concrete and asphalt, intersections and landmarks, traffic signals and roundabouts, main roads and small alleys, posh neighbourhoods and cramped slums; and then there are cities of the mind — personal cities that are shape-shifting...
Using unconventional sources, Ira Mukhoty demonstrates that Awadh was not a land of poverty and decadence, as portrayed in British records
Jamsetji Tata by R Gopalakrishnan and Harish Bhat. Penguin Random House. Pages 247. Rs 599 There is no dearth of biographies on Jamsetji Tata. The pioneer of the modern Indian industry, he was a key catalyst in the economic growth...
Geetu Vaid Be in the present moment, says everyone and everything I have read. But how does one disconnect the present from the moments that lead to it? How does one separate one drop from the infinite drops in the...
Rajesh Sharma The marginal achieves the magnitude of the epic in this 562-page debut Bengali novel of Ismail Darbesh. It originated in the form of Facebook posts which found immense traction with Bengali readers. It took the shape of a...
Sreevalsan Thiyyadi A year after KL Saigal’s death in Jalandhar, the Hindi film industry faced another blow when Partition in 1947 saw an array of singers shifting to nascent Pakistan. Movies of the time had for two decades been featuring...
Harish Jain At the beginning of Caroline Augusta Frazer’s novel ‘Atma’ (1891), a poignant scene unfolds with the disarmament of the Khalsa army, capturing both national anguish and the personal humiliation of Raee Singh. Before the British General’s tent, a...
People Called Ladakh Curated by Nisha Nair and Shashi Velath. Westland. Pages 218. Rs 599 ‘People Called Ladakh’ is a conscious attempt to look at the culture — both past and present, tangible and intangible, inherited and evolving — of...
Lt Gen Kamal Davar (Retd) History down the ages and right across the world generally suffers from innumerable voids in its compilation of empires, personalities and events. Regrettably, there are, at times, attempts to distort history, though truth has an...
Manu Moudgil Throughout history, there have been individuals known for their conquests, wealth and knowledge. Often, they leave behind a legacy of pain, exploitation, and arrogance. In contrast, there are those who take a different path. These people may...
Manisha Gangahar Compellingly provocative, strikingly incisive, sharp witted and ironical, ‘Mother India’ does a daunting task — it critiques. The novel, through a gripping account of two young people’s lives in urban Delhi, delves into the world of constructing reality...
Nonika Singh Kamal Haasan’s latest offering, ‘Hindustani 2’, may have disappointed critics and audiences alike, but who can dispute the superstar filmmaker’s commanding position in Indian cinema. Surmising an actor of over 260 films in 250-odd pages is an onerous...
The political discourse in India today swings between two contrary positions on the issue of Muslims. Hindutva politics categorises Muslims as a monolithic religious group to substantiate Hindu homogeneity and the liberals claim to protect Muslims as a religious minority...
Maninder Sidhu “…another cell in the university beehive.”— Jacques Derrida Women’s Studies Centres (WSCs), the first of its kind founded by the sociologist Neera Desai, not long after the inauguration of the field at Cornell University in 1969, rose to...
It is generally assumed that Indian democracy has had an unbroken run since Independence, with the brief disruption of the 1975–77 Emergency. In ‘The Republic Relearnt’, Radha Kumar challenges this belief. She points out that Indian democracy had been repeatedly...
Roopinder Singh Guru Nanak’s message is accessible through his bani, or his compositions. What Guru Nanak said was profound, direct and it transformed the socio-religious landscape, not only of the land of his birth, but far beyond. Indeed, now Sikhs...
Ajaz Ashraf ‘I was raped collectively — by the entire Congress government. All of them, including the Prime Minister, President, Home Minister and, in fact, everyone in this country who failed to protect us,” Satwant Kaur told Sanam Sutirath Wazir,...
Tamil author Ambai’s famed detective character Sudha Gupta travels to Mumbai to solve mysteries that meld suspense and intrigue with social commentary. ‘A Room Measuring 250 Square Feet’ tackles taboos and secrets. ‘The Death of a Sarus Crane’ explores privilege...
Jitesh Malik Compiled and edited by Lakshmi Swaminathan, ‘A Call To Return, A Journey with Didi Contractor’ presents an intimate journey of a soul, a beautiful mind, in search of deep connections between the higher realms and the material manifestation....
Lallan Baghel Meera Nanda’s ‘A Field Guide to Post-Truth India’ is a fascinating book that touches upon a critically important theme — the existing crisis of truth, science and knowledge and its newer manifestations in the form of post-truth culture....
Ira Pande The title of the book is both evocative and mysterious: is this a personal memoir of one of our most admired public activists, or a political statement of sorts? Before I go any further, let me put in...