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Book Reviews

The Novel Virus

Shylashri Shankar

Lawrence Wright’s new thriller shows with chilling prescience how the world will reckon with a pandemic

The End of October
Lawrence Wright
The Love Jihadis: An Open-Minded Journey into the Heart of Western Uttar Pradesh  /
The Love Jihadis: An Open-Minded Journey into the Heart of Western Uttar Pradesh
Mihir Srivastava and Raul Irani
Truth-Finding Mission

A gripping reportage of love and the politics of hate

Backstage: The Story Behind India’s High Growth Years /
Backstage: The Story Behind India’s High Growth Years
Montek Singh Ahluwalia
Inside Track

An anecdote-rich but incomplete account by Montek Singh Ahluwalia into India’s economic reforms

Hurricane Season /
Hurricane Season
Fernanda Melchor | Translated by Sophie Hughes
Ritual and Catharsis

Two novels shortlisted for the 2020 Man Booker International Prize, by millennial writers, reveal how trauma can become bogeyman

The Cliffhangers /
The Cliffhangers
Sabin Iqbal
On the Beach

A bittersweet tale of four young men and growing religious faultlines in Kerala

The Death of Jesus /
The Death of Jesus
JM Coetzee
Book of Forgetting

In the final instalment of the Jesus trilogy, JM Coetzee shows that everything we do and desire culminates in loss

Gravepyres School for the Recently Deceased /
Gravepyres School for the Recently Deceased
Anita Roy
Search for Home

In a novel for young readers, Anita Roy takes one on a romp through Deadland

The RSS: And the Making of the Deep Nation /
The RSS: And the Making of the Deep Nation
Dinesh Narayanan
Neither Polemical nor Prejudicial

A dispassionate and scholarly depiction of the origins, ideology and politics of the RSS

Suralakshmi Villa /
Suralakshmi Villa
Aruna Chakravarti
House of Spirits

A tapestry of two families, one upper-class and the other desperately poor, united by happenstance

Soar /
Soar
Amit Majmudar
Amit Majmudar: ‘There Are No Atheists in the Trenches’

Amit Majmudar’s tragicomic novel of friendship between a Hindu and a Muslim, during the First World War, shows a way to reconciliation and healing. The author in conversation with Urvashi Bahuguna

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