Book review
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‘Nobody Lights a Candle’ illuminates the dark realities of our unequal society
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‘Shakchunni’: A supernatural thriller about how the zamindari system crumbled under its own weight
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‘Speaking Sandals’: Stories about sociological realities of ‘untouchable’ Madigas of Andhra Pradesh
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‘Circles of Freedom’ tells a tight-paced story of Asaf Ali and friends during the national movement
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‘Solarpunk Creatures’: Sci-Fi anthology brims with hope as it explores our kinship with other beings
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‘Rescuing a River Breeze’: A joyful romp through mid-20th century Goa
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Salman Rushdie’s new memoir un-wounds the ‘knife’ of language
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‘Like Being Alive Twice’: Dharini Bhaskar’s new novel reflects on how love forces our hand
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‘Bangladesh: A Literary Journey’: An anthology that takes a stand against cultural elitism
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‘The Lady on a Horse and Other Secrets’: A wise departure from the author’s trademark styles
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‘Ma is Scared’: Anjali Kajal’s short stories step into the lives of ordinary women in northern India
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‘General Firebrand and His Red Atlas’: What is happening to my neighbour will also happen to me
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‘Never Never Land’: Life is old here. Older than the trees. Younger than the mountains
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‘Under the Night Jasmine’: In the isolation of the pandemic, a writer finds his story – and himself
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‘Conversations with Aurangzeb’: An absurdist questioning of our histories
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‘To Break and To Branch’: A gentle guide to Gieve Patel’s art, for first-timers and old admirers
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‘Red River’: To whom does a piece of land belong? Who gets to live on its resources?
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‘A Long Season of Ashes’: A memoir of flight, fight, and survival for Kashmiri Pandits in exile
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‘The Chandayan’: The 14th-century Sufi romance brought to life by a new translation and essays
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‘The Solitude of a Shadow’: A novel of unsettling moralities and sympathy with the wretched
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‘The Hippo Girl’: Each of these short stories has the potential to be a novel
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‘Bear With Me, Amma’: For writer MT Vasudevan, fiction is a blend of reality and imagination
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‘If We Burn’: A book that examines why a decade of mass protest has done so little to change things
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Upamanyu Chatterjee’s new novel situates itself in the stability and freedoms of faith
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‘A Flat Place’: A memoir of landscapes, the hometown, and complex relationships with family
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‘Famine Tales’: This anthology of patachitra and comics shows the spectre of hunger is still alive
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‘Beneath the Simolu Tree’: How the ordinary can inspire complex relationships with art and grief
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‘One Another’ explores the life of Joseph Conrad and the transformative potential of reading
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‘Vagabond Princess’: Ruby Lal’s biography of Mughal princess Gulbadan is lush and evocative
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‘Acts of God’ by Kanan Gill: An Indian entertainer has finally written a fun, clever book
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‘The Yellow Book’ makes the reader dig into their lives in search of good writing and conversations
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‘The Kidnapping of Mark Twain’: The turn of the century and a brave new Bombay
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‘H-Pop’: A cut-throat digital economy and deep-rooted hatred have fundamentally changed India
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‘Shooting the Sun’: Will the sun come out and shine again in Manipur?
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‘Mithun Number Two’: Jayant Kaikini’s stories present the impossible dream – and reality – of Mumbai
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‘Knowledge as Commons’: What happens to the world when science is sold for profit
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‘Hot Stage’: Anita Nair’s detective fiction exposes the sordid underbelly of a shiny cityscape
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‘Echoes from the Past’: A richly-detailed insider account of Hyderabad’s royalty and their quirks
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‘Chronicle of an Hour and a Half’: What if I become the mob?
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‘From Phansi Yard’: Sudha Bharadwaj’s writings from Yerawada Jail reflect on paradoxes of freedom
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‘A Bird On My Windowsill’: Actor-writer Manav Kaul’s book is an introspective guide for every artist
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‘Your Utopia’: Bora Chung’s new book of short stories is an explosion for the senses
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‘The Song of the Sky Tree’: An enchanting graphic novel about discovering and accepting oneself
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‘The White Shirts of Summer’: Mamang Dai writes about small furies, big anguishes, and togetherness
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‘Urdu: The Best Stories of Our Times’ engages with critical issues and offers no easy solutions
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‘The Assamese’ is an intricately etched, exhaustive and inclusive portrait of the community
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‘A Woman Burnt’: Imayam’s novel is an incisive observation of an unfair, violent society
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‘History for Peace Tracts’: Truths, histories may be multifaceted but peaceful existence is the goal
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‘Spellcasters’: A saga about modern Indian cities beset with collective greed and conflicting values
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‘A Fate Written on Matchboxes’: How Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed’s ten-year rule changed Kashmir
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‘The Patient in Bed Number 12’: A humane recollection of the tragedies and monotony of the pandemic
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‘The Learning Trap’ shows the dangers of a fractured education system and corporate teaching
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‘Soma’: When AK Ramanujan wrote poems about his psychedelic experiments and their effects on him
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‘The Day I Became a Runner’: Indian women’s right to ‘be’ was hard-fought and the road ahead is long
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‘Subliminal’: Radha Chakravarty’s poetry shines a light on submerged realities
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‘Camouflaged’: A fine collection of accounts of the courage and resilience of Indian soldiers
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‘6 Metros’: This two-volume book of urban planning encourages us to imagine an equal city for all
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‘Unequal’ offers enlightening glimpses of inequity in India, but the truth is more complex
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‘Love on the Second Read’: A heartwarming publishing romance propelled by literary banter
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‘The Wolves of Eternity’: Karl Ove Knausgaard’s ambitious new novel imagines Europe’s last decades
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‘Welcome to Paradise’: Twinkle Khanna, besides being Bollywood royalty, is a writer on her own merit
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‘City on Fire’: A Muslim man’s moving memoir about his city Aligarh’s fractured but resilient spirit
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‘Writer’s Postcards’: A writer-traveller’s home in the brave new world
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‘The History Teacher of Lahore’: Literature as witness and vehicle of change during difficult times
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‘Left is Not Woke’: A philosopher’s plea for universalism and ‘progress’ is a frustrating polemic
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‘Counterweight’: This novel shows Korean sci-fi could be the next big thing after K-pop and K-drama
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‘The Dream Builders’: How modern cities kill the dreams they promise their less-fortunate residents
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Aakar Patel’s ‘After Messiah’ underlines what power can make you do irrespective of idealism
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‘Good Jew, Bad Jew’ explores how the West views brutality against Ukrainians and Palestinians
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Ajanta Deo’s Hindi novel ‘Kharij Log’ is an urgent quest to unravel what it means to belong
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‘Our Strangers’: Lydia Davis’s new stories address contradictions and absurdities of postmodern life
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‘The Muslim Secular’: This book argues that Muslims contribute equally to Indian secularism
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Anuja Chauhan’s ‘The Fast and the Dead’ falters, but still is more than the sum of its parts
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‘Being Adivasi’: Questions about Adivasi life are answered in this book, but not always convincingly
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‘Prophet Song’: The Booker Prize winner is a distinctly Irish tale of civic and ideological collapse
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‘This is Salvaged’: Decay and preservation take centrestage in Vauhini Vara’s new short stories
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‘Welcome to Hyunam-Dong Bookshop’: Books and other literary reassurances in uncertain times
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‘The Sikh Next Door’: A rich study of a complex community as it grows in space, time, representation
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Barbra Streisand’s autobiography ‘My Name is Barbra’ shows how she redefined the diva
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‘One Among You’ offers a view of MK Stalin’s journey towards leadership though his own eyes
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A former Chief Election Commissioner’s book asks for transparency as the bedrock of Indian democracy
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‘For Now, It Is Night’: Kashmiri writer Hari Krishna Kaul’s stories get a new life in translation
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‘The Sea Elephants’: A young boy who is often made to feel alone finds his own skin in costumes
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‘Hurda’ interrogates circumstances that make misogynistic tragedies possible, and forgotten
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‘Mauli’: Nepali novel brings back the focus on the self through corporeal and political borders
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‘Varavara Rao: A Life in Poetry’: Six decades of activism and courage bound in one collection
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‘The Woman in Me’: Britney Spears’s memoir warns against the potential dangers of child superstardom
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‘Roman Stories’: In Jhumpa Lahiri’s book of short stories, Rome lies beyond the fabled la dolce vita
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Grandiose visions, arrested development: A biography considers the contradictions of being Elon Musk
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‘Fire on the Ganges’: What life in Varanasi is like for the Doms who dispose of corpses
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Sandra Newman’s ‘Julia’ is a vibrant retelling of George Orwell’s classic, ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’
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‘Jungle Passports’: Impactful stories of adapting to ever-changing India-Bangladesh border policies
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‘The Centre’: How far can you go to save something as important and commonplace as language?
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‘A Memoir of My Former Self’: Hilary Mantel’s final book is proof that she still had stories to tell
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‘Mother Cow, Mother India’ reveals the blindness towards the lived experience of the cow
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‘The Girl Who Kept Falling in Love’: What we talk about when we talk about love, and patriotism
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‘Holly’: Stephen King’s timely work of crime fiction about not judging a book by its cover
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‘Study for Obedience’: This richly-written novel warns against turning a person into an ‘outsider’
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‘Unsealed Covers’ interprets law like a lawyer, theorises like an academic, rebels like a citizen
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‘Azadi’: How a syncretic India can crumble away under the pressure of communal, nationalistic pride