Books

The Illicit Happiness of Other People

Manu Joseph

Seventeen-year-old cartoonist Unni Chacko has jumped off a building. Nobody is able to explain why he did it. The only clues he has left behind are the cartoons and comics he has drawn, which his alcoholic father is trying to decipher. Extracts from Manu Joseph’s new novel

War, Terror and Hate

Pranati Mehra

Journalist Adrian Levy’s book Deception was about the West’s role in Al Qaida’s birth and Pakistan’s duplicity. The Meadow was about a kidnapping in Kashmir. Now he plans one on 26/11. An interview

The Immortal Vidal

Kiran Nagarkar

Why Gore Vidal will remain at the centre of 20th century American literature and political thought

If You Can’t Flush the Slush

Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi

A list of seven book titles that the author wants published

And Then There was One

Aastha Atray Banan

At last, there is someone to satisfy an Agatha Christie aficionado’s longing for old school whodunits—Japanese author Keigo Higashino

That Bird in the Bush

Rauf Ali

This compilation of the late M Krishnan’s Statesman column is a worthy companion for your evening tea on the balcony as you watch that little winged fellow hop around

Nayar’s Believe It or Not

Jatin Gandhi

Kuldip Nayar’s memoirs, really a personalised history of contemporary India, are a good read. But his apologies and retractions since its publication do justice neither to his book nor his reputation as a journalist

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