Book review
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‘Unfolding’: Rahul Singh’s novel presents unpretentious love in queer and working-class lives
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‘August 17’ by S Hareesh: Few novels inhabit India’s unrealised future with such conviction
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‘The Ambedkar–Nietzsche Provocations’: A new perspective on Brahminism for future scholars of caste
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‘Giants’: This novel for young readers makes a case for preserving indigenous stories and heritage
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‘Maryam & Son’: A space for small lives and big grief that larger waves of global politics disallow
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‘Creeping Shadows’: Horror short stories trace cultural history, caste conflicts, national tragedies
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‘Seeking Allah’s Hierarchy’: Local politics, economic relations, and ‘caste’ among Malabar Muslims
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Tarun Bhartiya’s ‘Em No Nahi’ photobook shows deep political, emotional engagement with Khasi Hills
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Romila Thapar’s memoir, ‘Just Being’: A fearless journey of an autonomous woman
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‘Compelled to Collect’: A sound historical account of how material heritage survived the Partition
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‘The Complex’: Karan Mahajan’s new novel is pacy but does not create a lasting impression
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‘Famesick’: In her new memoir, Lena Dunham makes us laugh about a dream job turned brutal nightmare
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‘Kaaya’: A carefully, if haphazardly, stitched novel about body as a site of desire and violence
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‘Chapal Rani’: An ingenious biography of queer actor Chapal Bhaduri, commercial theatre, and jatra
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‘Colours of Home’: This graphic biography of artist Ganesh Haloi for children is a treat for adults
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‘Yesteryear’: is this viral novel’s time-travelling tradwife really ‘perfect at being alive’?
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‘The Social Life of Indian Trains’ by Amitava Kumar: Dreams and nightmares of train journey
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‘The Magnificent Ruins’: A sprawling family drama that suffers from the outside-in gaze
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‘Unsilenced’: In Seema Azad’s memoir, prison is not a monochrome space but complex social terrain
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‘The Valley of Unfinished Songs’: An uneven novel about the interior life of the Kashmiri people
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‘Absent People, Absent Places’: Saranya Subramanian’s poetic language is ingenious and at ease
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‘The Unrepentant’: These Short stories looking at Malaysia’s past feel intimate, yet startlingly new
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‘Rebel English Academy’: Mohammed Hanif’s new novel richly rewards the patient reader
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International Booker shortlist: ‘Taiwan Travelogue’ feels repetitive despite its innovative methods
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‘Waning Crescent’: A biography of the journey of Islam from divine faith to ideological system
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‘Last Song Before Home’: A deeply intimate novel that opens onto a panoramic view of India’s history
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‘Absolute Jafar’ marks graphic novelist Sarnath Banerjee’s glorious return to long form
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‘Faith and Fury’: Jyoti Yadav’s pandemic reports from UP, Bihar represent crucial field journalism
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‘Bearing Witness to the Age’: Poet Behçet Necatigil’s grounded vision of Turkish modernism
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‘A Kind of Meat and Other Stories’: Short stories built from ordinary tremors that move lives
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‘Homosexual Intifada’: An anthology embodying the resilience of Palestinian queer communities
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‘Vaadivaasal’: In the jallikattu arena, an emotional story of revenge, honour, and legacy
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‘Touring Talkies’: Jayant Kaikini’s essays about movies speak to his remarkable aesthetic curiosity
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‘Gooday Nagar’: A city’s lifetime of experiences in slice-of-life and speculative short stories
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‘Bandigoat’: This anthology of strange fiction bounces between the weird and the folkloric
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‘Half His Age’: Jennette McCurdy’s novel is an uncomfortable take on a new genre, literary abuse
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‘Voices in the Wind’: These Himalayan folktales remind us of the value of moderation and coexistence
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‘Intemperance’ by Sonora Jha: 55-year-old woman’s ‘swayamvar’ story is charming and wise
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‘The Girl from Fergana’: A compelling narrative of the cross-cultural existence of different peoples
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‘You Are the Führer’s Unrequited Love’: A masterful take on Nazi memory, myth and moral reckoning
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‘The Secret Master’: A fine critique of a music ecosystem that rewards showmanship over substance
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‘Riding With the Silver Wolf’: Bindiya Bedi Charan Noronha’s poems renew belief in love and stories
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‘Made in India’: A fine exposition of the personal and professional in creating pharma brand Lupin
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‘Writing from the Solitary’: This anthology on loneliness articulates a feeling that most dread
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‘Missing Sam’: This novel about a marriage shaken by an abduction takes the easy way out
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‘If All the World Were Paper’: A rich imagination of premodern South Asia through Hindi literature
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‘Place’ by Ananya Vajpeyi: An admirable effort to seek the unknown and to know the world afresh
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‘Love Is Participation in Eternity’: Udayan Vajpeyi’s novel reaffirms faith in good literature
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‘Made in Nepal’: A realistic look at capitalistic success in industrialist Binod Chaudhary’s memoir
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‘Wild Capital’: An important story of all that is worth preserving in India’s wild capital
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‘Silent Wall, Speaking Stones’: Lives caught in congested histories, sacred geographies in Ayodhya
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‘The Wrong Way Home’: This novel with a single woman as protagonist gets what vulnerability is
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‘The Last of Earth’: Deepa Anappara’s novel makes readers engage with the subversiveness of desire
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‘We, The People of India’: TM Krishna’s book is part-explainer, part wake-up call for the republic
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‘Hooked’ by Asako Yuzuki: A biting tale of female loneliness and obsession
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‘Clamour for a Handful of Rice’: War, memory, and the human condition in Sonnet Mondal’s poems
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‘Colour My Grave Purple’: This short story collection compromises on neither politics nor aesthetics
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‘Girls Who Said Nothing and Everything’: Meera Vijayann’s affecting snapshot of Indian girlhood
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‘Women Without Men’: The feminist novel that Iran’s regime has failed to silence since the ’80s
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‘Silent Journeys’ by Benyamin: A tapestry of migration, memory, and the women who walked unseen
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‘Stories We Wear’: The ‘Indian look’ carries burdens of gender-caste and is impossible to categorise
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‘I am the enemy of death’: Gisèle Pelicot’s memoir is a remarkable tale of survival
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‘The Sky Husband’: Easterine Kire’s book of short stories shows the enduring charm of the mundane
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‘Departure(s)’: Julian Barnes’s final novel is an emotionally charged farewell to readers
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Unhomed in the world: The work and world of the recently rediscovered writer, Rajalakshmi N Rao
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‘The Great Indian Brainrot’: These vivid portraits of internet culture bypass analytical frameworks
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‘Field Notes on Kindness’: Ankush Banerjee’s poems probe how men relearn the languages of empathy
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‘City of Kashmir’: In Sameer Hamdani’s book, a resurgent Srinagar comes alive through its histories
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‘Quiver, Don’t Quake’: When AI means ‘Allied Intelligence’ in creative collaborations
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‘The Greatest Stories from the Northeast Ever Told’: A fine showcase for emerging writers
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‘The Bare Bones Book of Humour’: An anthology of humour writing rewards big laughs
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‘That’s A Fire Ant Right There!’: An emotional archive of the common, rural Telugu Muslim lives
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‘My Life’: Ustad Allauddin Khan’s autobiography is occasionally impatient and always deeply human
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‘The Dead Fish’: In Hindi writer Rajkamal Choudhary’s novel, desire festers in a dark city
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‘This Is Where the Serpent Lives’: Daniyal Mueenuddin’s first book in 17 years is thrillingly alive
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‘Never Logged Out’: How the internet became a ‘default state of being’ for India’s Gen Z
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‘The Liar Among Us’: An ambitious YA campus thriller that understands its primary readership well
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‘Why I Killed My Husband’: Anita Nair’s ‘state of the nation’ stories leave little room for subtlety
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‘The Only City’: This evocative anthology is a window into the polymorphous megapolis of Bombay
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‘Being Modern’: Ananda Ram Dhekial Phookan’s (1829–1859) biography resurrects Assam’s forgotten hero
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‘The Robe and the Sword’: Echoes of Buddhist extremism in India’s own relationship with minorities
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‘Of Least Concern’: Arvind Krishna Mehrotra’s new book of poems is a lesson in attentiveness
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‘An Invisible Minority’: Alienation, solidarity, inter-communal cooperation among Sikhs in Kashmir
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‘The Hachette Book of Indian Crime Fiction’: A homage to tradition and a sharp turn away from it
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‘Folie à Deux’: Jennifer Robertson’s poems comb through personal history with clinical finesse
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‘Other Skies, Other Stories’: Sara Rai’s stories are born from astute understanding of the everyday
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‘Songs Our Bodies Sing’: An uneven yet memorable collection of stories about lives on the margins
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‘The Scattered Court’: Meticulous archival research reconstructs the musical afterlife of the Empire
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‘Eartha’: Poet Vinita Agrawal converses with all sentient beings on the planet
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‘Whose Urdu Is It Anyway?’: An important anthology that holds multiple identities in easy balance
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‘The Outsider’: Stand-up comic Vir Das’s memoir is expectedly funny and unexpectedly earnest
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‘Real Life’: Amrita Mahale’s new novel considers women who violate the mandates of caste and gender
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‘Brown God’s Child’: Sadness and rebirth, darkness and light, come together in Smitha Sehgal’s poems
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‘The Way Home’: Everyday tensions of social belonging and personal truth in Shanta Gokhale’s stories
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‘There’s a Ghost in My Room’: Sanjoy K Roy writes about hauntings with humour, curiosity, lightness
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‘Nowhere People’: Manoranjan Byapari’s novel ‘sees’ the nameless poor on India’s railway stations
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‘Scratching the Silence’: Prafull Shiledar’s poetic vision is a search for humane transformation
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‘Dandkarunya’: Marathi poet Avinash Poinkar writes about extractive development on tribal land
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‘Lonely People Meet’: Sayantan Ghosh’s debut loses its way in philosophy and alternate reality
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‘Half Light’ by Mahesh Rao: The many silences that queer subjects negotiate in their everyday lives