Books

A Hindi Film on Paper

Madhavankutty Pillai

The reaction of a literary snob on turning the pages of a Chetan Bhagat book for the first time

Nowhere Men

Shruti Ravindran

Alien cults, Wall Street analysts, missionaries, ethnologists and rockstars go on an existential quest in the desert

Cricket’s Bad Boy

Boria Majumdar

Shoaib Akhtar’s autobiography is a bitter man’s rant against his more accomplished peers

The F Word

Arshia Sattar

At a time when many women are rejecting the ‘feminist’ label, those who led India’s first wave of feminism review the battles they fought

‘The Discipline of the Short Story is Terrifying’

Parvati Sharma

Alan Hollinghurst on fighting laziness, living in the world of his novels and the pressures of being a gay writer

Couplet Omlette

Vivek Narayanan

Arvind Krishna Mehrotra’s translations of Kabir, with a generous dose of American slang, are awkward at times. But the remix experiment is worth the risk of failure

His Father’s Ghost

Hartosh Singh Bal

There is no doubt about Aatish Taseer’s skills as a writer, but there’s a limit to how much one can read about his troubled relationship with his father

‘Writing has a Religious Character’

Shaikh Ayaz

Aatish Taseer believes writing is an ‘intense form of concentration’, and when immersed in it, he often feels he can live without friends, family or lovers

The Memory Game

Parvati Sharma

A favourite for the Man Booker prize this year, Alan Hollinghurst’s country house novel may appear oddly familiar to Indian readers of English literature