Books

‘I feel like the same person. The world has changed’

Rajni George

Ian McEwan returns in top form with The Children Act. The novelist talks about mortality, the news cycle and the future of Scotland

The international list

Rajni George

Japanese introverts, aircraft carriers, celebrity interviews, new dope on a legendary double agent, contemporary feminism 101, showgirls in 30s San Francisco, Spain after Franco and the Resistance

One Book is Not Enough

Harish Khare

The controversial memoirs of the ex-confidant of Sonia Gandhi entertain but fail to deliver the Kissinger-esque history lessons the former foreign minister, a skilled storyteller, could have given us

An Ordinary Phenom

Ullekh NP

Cult writer Karl Ove Knausgaard’s powerful memory electrifies the mundane and turns it into the stuff of literary best-sellers

Serve and Sell

Sunaina Kumar

Why Indian politicians are bad memoirists. An underdeveloped genre and the greater publishing possibilities it offers

Grand Dame of Destiny

Rajni George

Nayantara Sahgal talks about her life, work and the ever-changing idea of India on the eve of a new book and biography

Stones of Empire

Swapan Dasgupta

Tristram Hunt’s portraits of cities such as Calcutta, Delhi and Bombay bring to life the imperial mission

Return of the Sage

Aditya Wig

This stark telling of the swift ascent of a political demagogue is a compelling commentary on modern India, despite a simplistic take on the ancient master of statecraft

Between the Sheets

Rajni George

An enjoyable erotic adventure, cooked up right at the publisher’s office, takes us directly to the young loins of politically correct urban India

The real deal

Rajni George

This elegant novel about young people in Delhi is a quietly subversive commentary on urban Indian life—and one of the most original voices in recent Indian fiction