Books

The Writer’s Riyaaz

Sohini Chattopadhyay

Amit Chaudhuri on the death of the author-editor relationship, the boredom of being a novelist, and writing on his feet, literally

The Reader’s Writer

Jyotirmoy Talukdar

Tabish Khair on why he doesn’t write for critics, his dislike of the term ‘postcolonial’, and how journalism helped him overcome his dread of deadlines

A Spanking New Bestseller

Rosalyn D’Mello

This could have been a Mills & Boon novel, but for its sado-masochistic twist. So what is it about this cliché-ridden book that is driving women in hordes to read it?

The Subaltern Sings

Shruti Ravindran

Gogu Shyamala, a Dalit feminist and Telangana activist, writes captivating short stories about life in rural Andhra Pradesh

One Hundred Years of Good Girlitude

Saba Imtiaz

The lessons of Bahishti Zevar, advising Muslim women to defer to their husbands and never consider them their equals, are still popular with talk show hosts in Pakistan

When Something Works

Tabish Khair

As with her first collection of poems, Tishani Doshi’s best poems here are those in which a female experience, located boldly in the body, works as a comment on something larger

The Free Man

Annie Zaidi

Ah, the joys of reading a diasporic story that’s not angsting itself silly over finding one’s roots

All Noisy on the Western Front

Aresh Shirali

How did the West suddenly get so much richer than the East about 350 years ago? Another book on business history, another explanation

Legendary Bharatanatyam dancer Balasaraswati’s story, as told by her son-in-law, is pleasant enough but it glosses over the debate at the heart of the art form—the abuse inherent in the devadasi system