Books

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

“It’s Like Fine French Cooking”

Gunjeet Sra

Michael Katakis, writer, photographer and manager of the Ernest Hemingway estate, on why people will never tire of the late writer’s works

The Impermanence of Being

Devika Bakshi

In Javier Marías’ writing, nothing is sacred, no fact safe from doubt, no story left unflipped

An Encounter with a Negotiator

Siddhartha Gupta

Stuart Diamond once negotiated himself out of the sights of a submachine gun in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Negotiating well, he says, is about noticing other people

The Accidental Author

Devika Bakshi

One of the country’s most popular romance writers, Ravinder Singh is as unabashed about being a writer who doesn’t read as he is about being a male writer of romances