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Welcome to this edition of The Hindu on Books Newsletter. Akshaya Mukul’s biography of the influential Hindi poet Agyeya, Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya, (Penguin) has won the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize for 2023. In its sixth edition, Agyeya was picked from a shortlist comprising Achyut Chetan’s Founding Mothers of the Indian Republic (Cambridge University Press), Rotem Geva’s Delhi Reborn: Partition and Nation Building in India’s Capital (Stanford University Press), Gita Ramaswamy’s Land, Guns, Caste, Woman: Memoirs of a Lapsed Revolutionary (Navayana) and Taylor C. Sherman’s Nehru’s India: A History in Seven Myths (Princeton University Press). The book sees the Hindi poet’s life (1911-1987) as a microcosm of 20th century cultural history, with a formidable cast of characters from writers like Premchand – who gave him his moniker; Agyeya was born Sachchidananda -- Phanishwarnath Renu, Raja Rao, Mulk Raj Anand and Josephine Miles to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, revolutionary Chandra Shekhar Azad and actor Balraj Sahni. Read the review by Purushottam Agrawal. In reviews, we read Mary Beard’s profile of the Roman emperors, a cautionary tale of the AI wave, a book on the Maldives, poems of Taslima Nasreen and more. We also interview Twinkle Khanna on her new collection of stories and Prahlad Kakar talks abouthis memoirs.
Books of the week
In Emperor of Rome (Profile Books), Mary Beard, Professor Emerita of Classics at Cambridge University who has written several books on ancient Rome, sifts fact from the tall stories of excess, intrigue and outright terror associated withseveral Roman emperors. Herstudy maps the period from 44 BCE to 235 CE. In her review, Mini Kapoor writes that Beard asks readers to consider “what it meant to be a Roman emperor”. It is a study of the “malevolent chaos” that emperors, instinctively or deliberately, thrived on, a study in part of the culture of suspicion that enabled imperial authority but also kept the men in power on edge. “It is a book also about the ruled, as Beard teases out the clues to how ‘the emperor’s control worked in practice’... in an empire that stretched from ‘Scotland to the Sahara, Portugal to Iraq’.”
Artificial Intelligence technologies are poised to create a generational shift in not just digital technology but everything from the future of work and the fate of democracies. Containing this transformation – and quickly – is the message from Mustafa Suleyman in The Coming Wave: AI, Power and the Twenty-First Century’s Greatest Dilemma (The Bodley Head), written with Michael Bhaskar. The coming ‘wave’ of AI and biotech advances, Suleyman asserts, will wash over everything: replacing workers, overwhelming national governments, and transforming business. In his review, Aroon Deep writes that Suleyman’s most pressing emphasis is on the speed with which these changes will happen. Suleyman founded DeepMind, the startup now folded into the tech giant Google, and subsequently founded his own startup, and so his book is informed by the experience of AI royalty.
Is the Maldives as seen by the rest of the world differ from what the country is for a citizen? This is the biggest takeaway from Daniel Bosley’s immersive book, Descent into Paradise: A Journalist’s Memoir of the Untold Maldives (Pan Macmillan). In her review, Meera Srinivasan says that Bosley doesn’t stop with the “jarring contrast”, as he terms it. “He journeys across the island nation, with a rearview mirror to its past as he points to the many pressing questions about the young democracy’s future, ranging from its bumpy political course to its ever-growing climate risks to religious fundamentalism.”
Taslima Nasrin at Krithi International Festival of Books and Authors in Kerala. | Photo Credit: THULASI KAKKAT
Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen whose best-selling novel Lajja brought her both bouquets and brickbats and led her to a life of exile, started her literary career by writing poetry. She had already published half a dozen volumes of poems “before any controversy broke over her head,” writes Harish Trivedi, in his review of her poems collected in Burning Roses in my Garden (Penguin), translated by Jesse Waters. The volume offers a selection of 103 of her poems. “These are by and large unified in tone and tenor but range over a wide variety of themes. Of these, love is supreme in its many contrary manifestations: love as longing, love requited, love in separation, love remembered after it has passed, love of a man, love of a woman, love of one’s language, love of one’s own country, love of humanity, love of life.” Nasrin’s voice, says Trivedi, is never loud or strident. “Rather, it is soft and even, sometimes ironic but more often wistful, as if she were recollection her turbulent emotions in reflective tranquillity.”
Spotlight
In her new collection of short stories, Welcome to Paradise (Juggernaut), Twinkle Khanna refuses to stick to the norm. There is her trademark humour, but it’s more subtle and dark; she is also willing to travel uncharted territory, exploring her Ismaili Khoja ancestry and her writing process. In an interview with Swati Daftuar, Twinkle Khanna says she developed the dialogues for her characters by taking notes from people’s conversations. “I’m a terrible eavesdropper. I’m always listening to other people talking. I will take notes. So I have all these dialogues.” The writer, who has previously written three books, also decided to do a Master’s in fiction writing at Goldsmiths, University of London. After doing two courses at Oxford and enjoying them immensely, “I felt so immersed in the world of writing and talking about writing and meeting people like me... I thought I might as well go and do my Master’s.”
Prahlad Kakar, 75, known for his campaigns for Pepsi, Maggi and Britannia, is out with his memoir, Adman Madman, Unapologetically Prahlad (HarperCollins), written with Rupangi Sharma. In an interview with fellow adman Piyush Pandey, Kakar says “life is a classroom – [and] the fact is that life throws everything at you, there are no terms of engagement. And you respond to the best of your ability. If advertising animals like you and me don’t confront a large establishment and say there are no rules of engagement, everything would sound the same.” When Pandey points out that there’s only one rule of engagement and that is engaging with the audience, Kakar quips: “Not only engaging, but tickling their imagination and challenging them to take the journey with you.”
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- The American Beast (Hachette) by Jill Lepore offers a portrait of America, capturing the troubled relationship between the country’s violent past and divided present. Her essays reflect on culture wars, the media, disruptive technology, and constitutional crises.
- A veteran diplomat, Mohan Kumar, who has represented India at multiple international forums over a more than three-decade career, explores the shifts in international power equations over the years and traces how India’s position has evolved over time in India’s Moment (HarperCollins).
- In Mitch Albom’s The Little Liar (Hachette), 11-year-old Nico Crispi is instructed to convince Jewish residents to board trains heading east where they are promised jobs. He realises too late that the people will never return. Nico’s story is interwoven with other individuals impacted by the Nazi occupation of Greece.
- Writer and translator Lopamudra Maitra brings alive the stories of a great Bengali writer in The Collected Stories of Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury (Aleph). The selection of 63 stories by the master storyteller (1863–1915) includes tales of Tuntuni, the mischievous tailor bird and that of Gupi and Bagha (filmed by his grandson Satyajit Ray), featuring fantasy characters, magical lands, and exhilarating adventures.
