Lounge

God and Machine

Gillian Wright

Technology creates circles of hell in Manjula Padmanabhan’s latest in a science fiction series

A City in Memory

Charmy Harikrishnan

Predictability makes a ruckus in Kunal Basu’s new novel

Taliban in Jane Austen’s London

Siddharth Singh

The story of an unknown founder of modern Iran and his love for England

Reporter’s Diary

Sunanda K Datta-Ray

Angst apart, Barkha Dutt’s first book is rich in atmospherics and hyperbole

The Legend of Maathukuttychaayan

MG Radhakrishnan

As the patriarch of Malayala Manorama, one of India’s largest media groups for almost four decades, KM Mathew played a seminal role in shaping the political and cultural life of Kerala

The Poet and the Pause

Madhavankutty Pillai

Jeet Thayil’s collected poems chart the evolution of a man and his art in all its splendidness

The Case for Debate

Aresh Shirali

Indian political discourse is not a lost cause. A good grounding in an old tradition could inspire a revival, argues the political philosopher Bhikhu Parekh