books

Political Islam is afraid of sex, says Hanif Kureishi

Rajni George

Talking about women's writing and talking about sex may soon be passé, two of today’s sessions suggest

Farewell Exotica

Faiza S Khan

Granta’s second India issue brings together a new crop of writers who don’t quite up the ante

Bright Lights, Every City

Rajni George

A spunky collection of essays takes an acclaimed novelist through India and the world in search of her many homes

In Praise of Mrs G

Sunanda K Datta-Ray

In the first of a trilogy which is part history and part memoir, Pranab Mukherjee misses the big picture of history

Poseidon’s Lovers

Shougat Dasgupta

A slow-burning novel vivifies the life and loves of young gay men, moving between the Northeast, Delhi and London

An Endless Spiral

Smriti Daniel

Two women writers turn an unflinching eye to the lasting fallout of Sri Lanka’s civil conflict

Bringing Back the Queen

Burhan Wazir

AN Wilson’s majestic biography rehabilitates the much misinterpreted Victoria

The return of a Latin American literary idol, a Holocaust morality tale, pre-WWI England, stories from the shadowlands, a Victorian saga of closeted lesbians and a gay parallel narrative in seventeenth-century Amsterdam

The New Heroes of MBA Lit

Snigdha Poonam

The rise of authors from the IIT/IIM milieu gives Chetan Bhagat’s audience the stories of the homes they adopted and the ones they left behind—in Devanagari