Book Reviews

Begin Again

Arunima Mazumdar

What happens when 13 people quit societal norms and live on a deserted island for 25 years?

Alpha

TD Ramakrishnan | Translated from Malayalam by Priya K Nair

The Commissioner for Lost Causes

Arun Shourie

Memories of a Different Country

Madhavankutty Pillai

Arun Shourie’s memoir revisits the biggest stories of the 1980s from the vantage point of a newsroom

Mindwandering: How It Can Improve Your Mood and Boost Your Creativity

Moshe Bar

‘Mindwandering Is Where Creative Thinking Happens’

Tasneem Pocketwala

Cognitive neuroscientist Moshe Bar’s new book tells us to think broader to feel better. The author in conversation with Tasneem Pocketwala

To Kill A Democracy: India’s Passage to Despotism

Debasish Roy Chowdhury and John Keane

Power of the People

Ullekh NP

Cracks in social foundations can break up democracies

Indian Innovation Not Jugaad: 100 Ideas that Transformed India

Dinesh C Sharma

The Transformers

Mohit Satyanand

Successful innovation goes beyond technology, to include commerce and policy

Villainy

Upamanyu Chatterjee

The Normality of Evil

Nandini Nair

Upamanyu Chatterjee’s seventh novel opens with the discovery of a dead body in a park. He speaks to Nandini Nair about creating crafty characters and the villainy principle

Onam in a Nightie: Stories from a Kerala Quarantine

Anjana Menon

Home Alone in Kerala

Geeta Doctor

Lockdown satire by an insider outsider

I Have Not Seen Mandu

Swadesh Deepak | Translated by Jerry Pinto

An Imprisoned Mind

Vineetha Mokkil

A fractured memoir that is as much about madness as it is about writing

Motherland: Pushpamala N’s Woman and Nation

Edited by Monica Juneja and Sumathi Ramaswamy

What’s in a Medium?

Karin Zitzewitz

Pushpamala N’s photo-performances open up to scrutiny the act of dressing-up and posing for the camera, as well as the desire to recreate visual stories