Edited by K Satyanarayana and Susie Tharu
HarperCollins India
816 pages, Rs 799
This volume brings together, in English translation from Kannada and Telugu, the poetry, fiction, essays, critical commentary, memoirs, and research into mythopoeic pasts of 43 writers, activists and public intellectuals. Initially published in small, alternative journals and daily newspapers, this archive is a rare intellectual biography of the past half century; a record of the meanings of Ambedkar, Lohia and Marx in contemporary India; and a mine of knowledge and insight into childhood, education, family, welfare, employment, work, and the role of politics in Dalit worlds.
Bookshelf
1 May 2013
1 May 2013
Pius Malekandathil
Primus Books, 234 pages, Rs 850
Indian trade history from 1200 to 1800 is focused mostly on the inland activities of the Mughals and the Portuguese even though both rulers actually expended frequent efforts to control the vast, resourceful enclaves and profit-yielding neighbourhoods of maritime India. This book explores the transoceanic exchanges and circuits in the Indian Ocean, focusing on issues like the political implications of the religious dialogues between Akbar and Jesuits; the creation of parallel circuits to Ottoman markets in the eastern Mediterranean as an alternative to the Cape Route trade of the Portuguese; and the multiple strands of trade between coastal western India and the markets of East Africa.
1 May 2013
Manvendra Singh
Penguin Books India
200 pages, Rs 499
In March 2009, Manvendra Singh, the BJP’s candidate for the Barmer Lok Sabha constituency, launched his election campaign to retain the seat that he had won with a record margin in 2004. Over two months, he crisscrossed his sprawling constituency straddling Rajasthan’s Thar Desert, meeting his constituents who included herders and headmen; communities of traditional balladeers and craftsmen; youth groups and hoary old political fixers; Muslim pirs, Jain munis and Hindu priests. This is a daily record of those gruelling weeks of canvassing voters and a compelling portrait of democracy in action in one corner of India.
1 May 2013
Malavika Karlekar
Oxford University Press
174 pages, Rs 795
Not much is known about how the coming of photography to India in the mid-19th century changed visual discourse or affected people’s lives. The 32 essays in this book, illustrated with archival photographs, document this history. The camera and the studio became necessary prostheses in the new engagement between the colonised and the rulers. However, from around the end of the 1850s, as the Indian urban middle class started patronising photographic studios, these became a shared locale unlike many other public spaces that continued to be governed by discriminatory practices to do with race and gender. The book looks at the development of the studio as well as examining the role of photography in post-independence India.
1 May 2013
Tash Aw
HarperCollins India
500 pages, Rs 399
Prize-winning writer Tash Aw’s latest novel charts the overlapping lives of migrant Malaysian workers in sprawling Shanghai. Phoebe has come to China buoyed with hope, but the job she was promised seems never to have existed. Gary is a successful pop star, but his fans disappear after a bar-room brawl. Yinghui was once a poetry-loving activist but is now a wealthy businesswoman. Justin works hard for his powerful family, but wonders if his efforts are appreciated. And then there is the Five Star Billionaire himself, pulling the strings of destiny. Tash Aw charts their journeys in the new China, counterpointing their adventures with their old life in Malaysia.
1 May 2013
Anees Salim
Pan Macmillan India
248 pages, Rs 499
Inspired by the legend of the aging don Abu Hathim, Imran Jabbari and his friends form a gang in their mohalla of Vanity Bagh. They are hired to dispense a batch of stolen scooters to different corners of the city; not until the city rocks with scooter bombs does Imran realise that they have been involved in a terrorist act. He is jailed for 14 years, and while in prison he starts to trace the history of animosity between Vanity Bagh, nicknamed Little Pakistan, and Mehendi, a Hindu neighbourhood. A darkly comic novel that evokes a wistful small-town in the midst of a teeming city.
1 May 2013
Appupen
HarperCollins India
144 pages, Rs 499
From the author of Moonward, a new, ‘silent’ comic. Legends of Halahala is a dark ride through a mythical world, and through different periods in its history—from the long-gone Oberian Age to the dystopian era of dome-cities. Appupen’s distinctive art and his quirky engagement with worlds real and imagined mark him out as one of the great myth-builders of our time.
1 May 2013
Rajesh Chakrabarti
RupaRaintree
264 pages, Rs 295
In 2005, Nitish Kumar first came to power as chief minister of Bihar on the basis of the promise of sushasan (good governance) to its people. He managed to pull the beleaguered state back from the brink of anarchy by establishing law and order and building infrastructure at breakneck speed. What were the specific innovations and changes that made this turnaround possible? Extensively researched and engagingly written, Bihar Breakthrough is a detailed account of the revival of India’s poorest state.
1 May 2013
Ian Jack
Penguin Books India
352 pages, Rs 599
In this collection of essays, profiles and reportage, Ian Jack explores a wide and unlikely range of subjects, which he encountered in more than 30 years of reporting from India and its subcontinental neighbours. Some of the India he describes has vanished: the drift of coal smoke from passenger trains, tea drunk from clay kulhads at country junctions. Some of it remains obscure: Orwell’s birthplace in Motihari, the Anglo-Indian search for a homeland in McCluskiegunge. Some of it perseveres: the Nehru–Gandhis, the distress, the politics, and the hospitality. But every piece in this selection is informed by the author’s acute insights and superb eye for detail.
1 May 2013
Nushin Arbabzadah
Hurst
224 pages, £15.95
A book that reveals the quotidian absurdities of lives framed against the backdrop of a savage war. Offering daringly new perspectives on a country readers may erroneously assume they know, Arbabzadah delves into the unacknowledged but real secret sub-cultures and hidden worlds of Afghans, from underground converts to Christianity to mysterious male cross-dressers to tales of bacha-posh girlboys. Arbabzadah reveals for the first time Afghans’ own vibrant internal deliberations—on sex and soap operas; conspiracy theories; drugs and diplomacy; terrorism and the Taliban.
1 April 2013
Sarvepalli Gopal, edited by Srinath Raghavan
Permanent Black
444 pages, Rs 895
Sarvepalli Gopal (1923–2002) was the most respected Indian historian of his time. His biographies of Jawaharlal Nehru and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan remain the finest political portraits written in the country. His writings on Indian history and politics are admired for their flair, elegance, insight and thoroughness. The present book gathers together 30 pieces ranging from analyses of imperialists such as Curzon and Churchill, to nationalists such as Nehru, Gandhi, Ambedkar and Patel, to novelist-democrats such as EM Forster and Rabindranath Tagore.
