Books

The Wishful Advisor

Shakti Sinha

In his controversial book, Sanjaya Baru wishes for a Manmohan Singh who does not exist, and in the process unmasks the one who does

A Family of Fine Taste

Sohini Chattopadhyay

An unlettered carpet merchant and art dealer in Amritsar chanced upon the Pahari school of painting. His son keeps the legacy going with his prized collection of traditional painting, sculpture and textiles

The Anti Twilight

Gunjeet Sra

A new novel offers redemption for the gothic novel, taking us back to a time before vampires were kind, romantic and vegetarian

Reductive India

Prayaag Akbar

Another foreign correspondent falls for clichés in his haste to explain a country he has scarcely understood

The Young Man and the City

Sohini Chattopadhyay

Celebrated Bengali novelist Sankar’s Thackeray Mansion offers a mosaic of the peoples and cultures that make up Calcutta

‘Love was the longing across an insuperable barrier’

Damon Galgut

A biographical novel reconstructs the years it took to write A Passage to India. Excerpts

Forster in Love

Devika Bakshi

Damon Galgut’s biographical novel prises from EM Forster’s writings and relationships a portrait of a writer whose work was defined by his fraught sexuality

Lamentations of a Debonair Poet

Madhavankutty Pillai

The life of Adil Jussawalla and the despair of poetry in India

‘It’s All in the Soil’

Devika Bakshi

Kamila Shamsie’s new novel animates history with textures of fruit, blood and stone

Her Spiritual Crisis

Mihir Srivastava

I draw naked people. Sketching live models is my hobby. I have drawn over a hundred individuals from all walks of life, and Conversations in the Nude captures my tryst with nudity.