Books

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

The truth behind the laughter

Faiza S Khan

The hilarious diary of a Pakistani socialite returns in its third sortie to cause a flutter yet again

Begum of the Basilica

Mark Tully

Julia Keay tells the story of an extraordinary woman ruler who constantly reinvented herself to survive the turmoil of India’s passage to British rule