Podcast with Audrey Truschke, author of “India, 5000 Years of History on the Subcontinent”
How do you tell the story of India—not just the modern-day country, but the whole region of South Asia, home to over two billion people?
“India’s First Radicals: Young Bengal and the British Empire” by Rosinka Chaudhuri
Rosinka Chaudhuri’s latest work, India’s First Radicals: Young Bengal and the British Empire, is the first book-length study of the Young Bengal movement and the contribution of its members to the history of India’s anti-colonial struggle. In this book, Chaudhuri delves deep into their activism, examines their socio-political agenda and analyses the neglect and misrepresentation…
“Caste: A Global Story” by Suraj Milind Yengde
Embedded within Indian ethos, caste is the idea that people (defined by their social positions) are of four types—scholarly-priestly (Brahmins), warriorhood (Kshatriyas), trade and commerce (Vaishyas), and menial jobs (Shudras)—and these are fixed by birth, with no class and social mobility available, especially to the last group. This is no abstract concept; it takes very…
“The Elsewhereans” by Jeet Thayil
A collage of epigraphs make up the first few pages of The Elsewhereans. Each subsequent chapter is heralded by a series of locations, dates, photographs, and quotes—some perhaps falsified. Jeet Thayil’s newest work is exactly what its subtitle—“A Documentary Novel”—claims: a partially-fictional documentation of Thayil’s family history, recorded scrapbook-style in bits and pieces. Dedicated to…
“Vaadivaasal: The Arena” by CS Chellapa & Perumal Murugan
Though the Tamil freedom fighter and writer, CS Chellapa, was initially influenced by the energy and zeal of Bhagat Singh’s anarchical resistance to the British Empire, he grew increasingly enamoured by the non-violent, subtle resistance of Mahatma Gandhi. It’s a seismic shift from Singh to Gandhi, one that many in India adopted pre-independence. Yet it…
“The House of Awadh: A Hidden Tragedy” by Abhimanyu Kumar and Aletta André
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…
New book announcement: “Brown God’s Child” by Smitha Sehgal
The poet in Brown God’s Child makes no bones about laying bare the cultural rooting of her identity in the very first poem of the volume. Be it through “burnt caramel”, the colour of her God’s skin or the sounds of her language—half Sanskrit and half Dravidian—poet Smitha Sehgal makes her entry as a formidable…
Podcast with Sanjena Sathian, author of “Goddess Complex”
Sanjana Satyananda, the main character of Sanjena Sathian’s novel, Goddess Complex, is a bit of a mess. She’s back in the States after a spell in India, ending her marriage with her actor husband when he wanted kids… and she didn’t. Her friends are starting to settle down—and wondering when Sanjana will do the same. And,…
New Book Announcement: “Yogis, Bhaktas & Sufis: Religious Traditions in Medieval North India, c. 1000-1450” by Subin Sabu
Yoga has become highly popular worldwide and is generally received with enthusiasm in the western world. But it is mysterious in nature as, several interpretations have been offered by scholars from antiquity to recent times. Earlier, Yoga was practiced in the spiritual, philosophical and metaphysical sense in Indic traditions. In the medieval period, it was…
“The Future of Futurity: Affective Capitalism and Potentiality in a Global City” by Poornima Mankekar and Akhil Gupta
The IT sector seems to be concerned with the flow of information across nations. However, it can also be about the flow of emotions. Labour around technology is not only about programming; it can also be about emotional exhaustion. In The Future of Futurity: Affective Capitalism and Potentiality in a Global City, anthropologists Poornima Mankekar…
“Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia” by Sam Dalrymple
The noun “Partition” (with a capital “P”) has, in South Asia and perhaps globally, come to mean the 1947 split of India and Pakistan, a climactic event that still roils, if not poison, domestic and international politics.
“Goddess Complex” by Sanjena Sathian
In Sanjena Sathian’s new novel, Goddess Complex, women’s bodies are reduced to the idea of their divine if not interchangeable—wombs. The protagonist, Sanjana Satyananda (the stark similarity in names between the author and her character is no coincidence) is a thirty-something burnt-out academic who feels intense alienation toward motherhood. She spends the course of the…
“The Spider” by Aurko Maitra
Set in West Bengal, Aurko Maitra’s debut novella The Spider grapples with the human predisposition to violence, to unmediated crimes of rape and murder. Maitra has spent part of his career as a journalist in this state of east India known for endless political violence, which, like clockwork, occurs as local elections approach and politicians…
“Sakina’s Kiss” by Vivek Shanbhag
It’s a brave step to have a coward as your protagonist but acclaimed author Vivek Shanbhag’s unlikeable creation proves to be a memorable device for exploring power, patriarchy and politics in contemporary India.
“The Second Book of Prophets” by Benyamin
It’s not every day one comes across a new novel about Jesus as a social activist, least of all one in translation from Malayalam. So Ministhy S’s recent translation of renowned Indian writer Benyamin’s 2007 novel, The Second Book of Prophets, is unexpected, to say the least. One need not know much about biblical stories…
