Books

Poet of the Paddyfields

Jyotirmoy Talukdar

Hiren Bhattacharyya, the Assamese poet who recently passed away, was a rare writer whose works are taught from high school to university

‘There will never be another don like Dawood’

Haima Deshpande

In a short conversation, writer S Hussain Zaidi offers an insight into the relevance of the underworld now that terrorists have given a new meaning to ‘crime’.

Gangs of Mumbai

Haima Deshpande

Dawood’s Rampuri knife as his first weapon, a love affair that led to a bitter fight with a Christian gang, and other such nuggets on the Mumbai mafia. In all, a thrilling read

The Anonymity Effect

Aimee Ginsburg

If you look past its author’s name and ‘Nobel prize winner’ appellation, Home is a taut read with a jazzy rhythm—till you reach a revelation that makes you squirm

Synaptic Sizzle

Aresh Shirali

A book that puts the brain under a scanner to make scientific sense of creativity

A Rotten but Not Entirely Unlikeable Man

Arshia Sattar

A corrupt underling is as crooked as the system he works in, but Bagchi’s quiet, masterly prose leaves you with sympathy for his morally bankrupt protagonist

Blaft from the Past

Achal Prabhala

An independent publishing house based in Chennai has brought the joy back to reading with pure, unadulterated pulp fiction

The Writer Who Doesn’t Mind the Northeastern Label

Jyotirmoy Talukdar

Jahnavi Barua on geographic labelling as a pragmatic exercise, giving up her medical practice, and making it to prestigious literary prize shortlists

Cartoons by the Colonised

Shruti Ravindran

The pre-Independence Parsee Punch offers political comment and gently subversive humour

Maa Maati Manush, and Motor Cars

Sumana Roy

Mamata Banerjee’s career has been bound to the automobile in strange ways. No wonder, then, the reader of her memoirs soon starts to play a game of car-spotting in the narrative