Books

Too Much Life

Devika Bakshi

Jhumpa Lahiri’s new novel The Lowland is oddly compelling; tiring, yet insisting on meaning

No Questions Please

Anuradha Ananth

Unsuccessful attempts at the Berlin International Book Festival to understand how the reclusive JM Coetzee’s mind works

The Miracle Maker

Shaikh Ayaz

A new book revisits the film Amar Akbar Anthony and shines light on director Manmohan Desai’s enduring legacy

Manufacturing Hope

Devika Bakshi

Lavanya Sankaran’s aptly named first novel The Hope Factory is the latest in formulaic fiction from the Subcontinent

The Unending Nostalgia of Punjabiyat

Hartosh Singh Bal

Was there a shared Punjabi identity that united the region’s Muslims and Sikhs before the advent of British rule? Gandhi places too much faith in such a notion

The Value of History

Amartya Sen

There is a lot that Bihar can learn from its glorious past to solve problems currently plaguing the state

The Joys of Sex

Sonali Kokra

More than three decades after it was written, Penguin publishes the ‘thinking woman’s Fifty Shades’. But it fails to live up to its reputation

Tall Tales

Hartosh Singh Bal

Hoping to ‘debunk’ myths about India’s growth, Bhagwati and Panagariya spin some fairy tales of their own

The Pixellated Penis and Other Tales of Modern Censorship

Devika Bakshi

Why fear of India’s obscenity law turned HarperCollins prudish on a recent graphic novel, but doesn’t stop the publication of explicitly illustrated versions of the Kama Sutra

Heaven, Hell and Earth

Aditya Sinha

Amitava Kumar’s A Matter of Rats casts Patna in a triple role of memory, magnet and mundanity. It is a good book. With one more nudge, it could have been a great one