Lounge

The international list

Rajni George

From Britain’s music scene of the 90s to China’s Cultural Revolution to the publishing worlds of New York and London, a treat of drama and comedy

Nikon D810

Gagandeep Singh Sapra

A full-frame D-SLR for cinematographers and multimedia photographers

News from Babel

Madhavankutty Pillai

The art of translation and the tragedy of Indian literature

The wretched land

Jason Burke

A study of Pakistan’s pervasive military influence masters the broad strokes of its history but lacks the insight of intimacy

The island of the day before

Gordon Weiss

An empathetic portrait of the Sri Lankan Civil War gives powerful voice to the living and the dead

Graveyard of ignorance

Neil Padukone

A first-hand study of Pashtuns offers a native’s perspective often lost on world capitals

LG 84UB980T

Gagandeep Singh Sapra

It’s not just a top-end smart TV, but an experience that’s as immersive as it gets

Sacred treasure

Rajni George

A limited edition pictorial guide to Varanasi returns a rare British Library map to India after more than a century

‘I have an ill-defined yearning to belong to some stretch of this earth’

S Prasannarajan

Zia Haider Rahman’s first novel, In the Light of What We Know, is already the literary event of the year (reviewed in Open, ‘A Groundbreaking Work of Staggering Genius’, 23 June 2014). Born in Bangladesh and educated at Oxford, Cambridge and Yale, Rahman has worked as an investment banker and human rights lawyer. The novelist in conversation with S Prasannarajan, editor, Open magazine