Books

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

Will the Real Irom Sharmila Stand Up?

Chinki Sinha

The political activist’s poetry suggests that in many ways, she is now a victim of her own sacrifices

The Carburettor

Devika Bakshi

Rajesh Parameswaran talks about his reluctance to talk about his writing—and the lasting lessons of failing quickly with short stories

The Hermit

Gunjeet Sra

After years of putting off a lifelong passion, Kishwar Desai finds she must shut herself off from the world in order to write—but the world still seeps into her writing

The Case of the Missing Writer

Gyan Prakash

In the midst of his research at the British Library in London, historian Gyan Prakash stumbled upon an incomplete manuscript of an action-packed thriller written by a Bombay-based Parsi in 1927. Here, Prakash tells the fascinating tale of how he tried to solve the mystery of the author’s identity as well as how the novel ends

Bias Busters of the World Unite

Aresh Shirali

But this book was evidently written for ‘good people’ in America. Don’t count on it to do India any favour

Nothing Lush, Soft or Verdant

Devika Bakshi

Taiye Selasi’s first novel runs circles around the ‘African story’ you’re used to

I Was That Girl Who Was Supposed To Be Dead

Eve Ensler

In her memoir, Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues, talks about how her work in the Congo and her battle with uterine cancer enabled her to re-inhabit her body. In the following excerpt, she tells us how drugs almost destroyed her—and how pot might have helped save her life