Shashi Tharoor, Author and politician: Best of Books 2025: My Choice

 The year 2025 was a challenging one to find the time to read, but three books stood out (with many more waiting unread): two by women authors and one by a general.

The memoir Mother Mary Comes to Me (Hamish Hamilton) is Arundhati Roy’s deeply intimate and unflinch­ing account of her life, particularly her difficult, complex, tempestuous, and unbreakable relation­ship with her formidable mother, Mary Roy, who was a “dreamer, warrior, teacher” (and, to put it po­litely, a challenge). Roy de­scribes her mother as “my shelter and my storm”, exploring how Mary, a brilliant educator and women’s rights activist, shaped her journey as a woman and a writer, from her childhood in Kerala to her global prominence.

Kiran Desai’s highly anticipated novel The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny (Hogarth) is a sweeping cross-continental saga about two young Indian-Americans, Sonia and Sunny, whose destinies intersect despite their families’ initial at­tempt at an awkward, unsuccessful arranged introduction. The nov­el is a rich exploration of love, alienation, and identity, navigating how forces like class, history, race, and fam­ily bonds shape their search for connection and belonging be­tween the contrasting worlds of India and America.

Operation Sindoor: The Untold Story of India’s Deep Strikes Inside Pakistan (Penguin Veer) by Lt General KJS Dhillon (retd) provides a detailed, blow-by-blow account of Operation Sindoor, India’s precision strike operation against ter­rorist infrastructure in Pakistan in response to the April 2025 Pahalgam attack. Au­thored by a respected Army commander, the narrative offers unrevealed insights into the strategic plan­ning, execution, and the ensuing “Four-Day War” and busts some “fake news” as well.