Arundhati Roy’s much-awaited memoir, Mother Mary Comes To Me, tackles Roy’s writing career, India’s sweeping political instability, and most of all, a reckoning with an exhilarating character: her mother, Mary Roy. From Roy’s village, fictionalised even here as “Ayemenem”, to the chaotic urban sprawl of Delhi, the book covers Roy’s rocky childhood, her brief architectural foray, her sudden and dizzying literary stardom, and eventually, her settling into the role as one of India’s most beloved—and most widely politicised—writers.
Biography
Begum Wilayat Mahal, the self-proclaimed heir to the House of Awadh, has fascinated journalists and writers for decades. She claimed she was Indian royalty, descended from the kings of Awadh, a kingdom annexed by the British in 1856. She spent a decade in the waiting room of the New Delhi train station, receiving journalists intrigued by the image of Indian royals in cramped conditions. Then, her family was granted use of a rundown 14th-century hunting lodge in Delhi; none were seen in public again.
Tipu Sultan, known as the “Tiger of Mysore”, ruled the southern Indian kingdom of Mysore from 1782 to 1799. Born in 1750 to Haidar Ali, a military leader who gained power through strategic alliances, Tipu inherited a strong state during colonial upheaval. He led Mysore to prominence, fighting the British East India Company in the Anglo-Mysore Wars, and died heroically in 1799 defending Srirangapatna. Tipu stood out for his innovations and controversies. He boosted the economy with silk and trade reforms, introduced a new calendar and coins, and developed iron-cased rockets that impressed British forces. He even sought alliances with Napoleon and the Ottoman Empire to counter British rule. However, his legacy splits opinion: hailed as an anti-colonial hero, he’s also criticized for forcing conversions and destroying religious sites in Malabar and Kodagu, sparking debates over his tolerance versus tyranny.
Writers have long found it useful to approach the tumult of modern China through the lives of those leaders born around or shortly after the turn of the twentieth century: men whose careers stretched across the subsequent decades of revolution, war, political turmoil and economic transformation. In the last twelve months we have already had two heavyweight biographies of such Chinese leaders—Chen Jian on Zhou Enlai, Robert Suettinger on Hu Yaobang—and now Joseph Torigian has written a similarly substantial account of the life of Xi Zhongxun. Though he never held the highest office, Xi’s life provides a revealing lens through which to view the history of both party and country, as well as the remarkable psychology of persecution and allegiance that marks the stories of the generation of leaders who suffered through the worst excesses of the Mao era.
This epic story centres on an irresistible premise: is the main character “Her Royal Highness, The Begum of Oudh, Shehzadi Wilayat Mahal, Heir to the Last King of Oudh Begum Hazrat Mahal and Wajid Ali Shah” … or just plain old “Mrs Butt”? Satisfyingly, even the latter more prosaic option “Mrs Butt”—horse-loving wife of an academic—opens a Pandora’s box linked to the 1951 assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan, the first prime minister of Pakistan.
The Kims, of North Korea, are perhaps the 21st century’s most successful family dictatorship—if only due to sheer longevity, having run North Korea for the almost eight decades since the country’s post-war founding. Kim Il-sung led North Korea for over half that time, from its founding in 1948 to Kim’s death in 1994.
Best known in Singapore as the writer and performer of the smash-hit comedy album “Why U So like dat?’, Siva Choy was a multi-talented musician, journalist, stand-up comedian, movie actor and teacher. An intimate and revealing new book paints an affectionate portrait of a life filled with pioneering artistic endeavour.
Ma Thanegi’s roots are deeply planted in Myanmar. She’s the great-niece of a noble scoundrel who once ornamented the court of King Thibaw, her country’s last king, and the great-granddaughter of one of the last queen’s ladies-in-waiting. The daughter of a sophisticated, mercurial intellectual and the brilliant, tempestuous beauty who was his wife, Ma Thanegi has spent her life in Myanmar with the ambition of revealing its beauties and virtues to the rest of the world. She’s achieved her goal through her writing, with six books written in English and published internationally, but until now her own story has been told only in fragments.
Chinese Parents Don’t Say I Love You, Candice Chung’s “memoir of saying the unsayable with food”, feels like a glimpse into her peri-pandemic journal. The title refers to the often-shared recognition by the children of immigrants, that expressions of love are indirect, and also filtered through food.
Fyodor Tertitskiy, a young and prolific academic specialist on North Korean affairs working in Seoul, has written a biography of the first North Korean leader that is both highly readable and extensively researched.
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