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Welcome to this edition of The Hindu on Books Newsletter.
After a three-year hiatus, The Hindu’s literature festival, Lit for Life, is back on the ground in Chennai. To be held on February 24 and 25, a host of interesting sessions have been lined up with the likes of journalist P. Sainath, Booker winner Geetanjali Shree, historian William Dalrymple, economist Shrayana Bhattacharya, who used Shah Rukh Khan as a research hook to write on gender and economics, actor Deepti Naval, diplomat Navtej Sarna, speedster Wasim Akram (joining virtually) and journalist Gideon Haigh. After opening remarks by Dr. Nirmala Lakshman, director, The Hindu Group, and Director, The Hindu Lit for Life, there’s a session, titled ‘Live Your Best Life,’ in which monk and motivational speaker Gaur Gopal Das will talk about the importance of mental and emotional well-being as the key to inner peace.
Check the schedule for the The Hindu Lit for Life here
In reviews, we read journalist Seema Sirohi’s book on India-U.S. relations and why bilateral ties are where it is today; and talk about some of the books that will headline conversations at the Lit for Life Fest. We also interview Bhattacharya about her tome Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh: India’s Lonely Young Women and the Search for Intimacy and Independence and William Dalrymple who will deliver an illustrated talk, ‘The Company Quartet’, at The Hindu Lit for Life this weekend. With German director Edward Berger’s remake of Erich Maria Remarque’s 1929 anti-war classic All Quiet on the Western Front winning big at the British film awards, the BAFTAs, we take a look at the original and its chilling relevance in 2023.
Books of the week
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott and Planning Commission Deputy Chairman and Prime Minister’s special envoy Jaswant Singh, in New Delhi on July 20, 1998. | Photo Credit: The Hindu Archives
In Friends with Benefits: The India-U.S. Story (HarperCollins), journalist Seema Sirohi takes stock of bilateral ties and explains why the relationship has had its share of ups and downs. The strength of the book, says the reviewer Narayan Lakshman, is that it masterfully identifies political cleavages, ironies, and paradigmatic shifts over time that lucidly demonstrate what the bilateral pressure points have been – whether the China factor, Pakistan’s shadowy lobbying on Capitol Hill or sanctions slapped on India after the 1998 nuclear tests. Sirohi acknowledges that irritants remain, from the ‘nannygate’ episode involving Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade at the micro level, to broader frictions surrounding the periodic tightening of U.S. visa conditions for tech workers that were overwhelmingly from India. “Her narrative also thoughtfully illuminates why and how much leaders and styles of leadership matter, when she examines Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s outreach to the Indian diaspora in the U.S. and former President Donald Trump’s focus on trade deficits, and how that impacted the ebb and flow of the bilateral bonhomie of the time. Ultimately, it serves as an important document of record, which systematically plots the ups and downs of the India-U.S. story, and offers a ready reference for why the relationship is where it is today.”
Read Narayan Lakshman’s review of Seema Sirohi’s Friends with Benefits: The India-U.S. Story here
Author Geetanjali Shree, right, and translator Daisy Rockwell pose with the 2022 International Booker Prize author and translator awards for Shree’s novel ‘Tomb of Sand’. | Photo Credit: AP
At Lit for Life on Saturday, Geetanjali Shree -- her Tomb of Sand (Penguin), translated by Daisy Rockwell, won the International Booker Prize for 2022 -- will be in conversation with Anita Ratnam, dancer, writer and choreographer at the session, ‘The Making of a Masterpiece’. The story revolves around the central invisible figure in any Indian home, Ma, and her family which extends to birds and trees and other beings. It is essentially a story about transcending borders of all kinds. Read the review and an interview with Geetanjali Shree.
At another session, ‘Sultan of Swing’, N. Ram, veteran journalist and director, The Hindu Publishing Group, will be talking to Wasim Akram, and sports journalist Gideon Haigh who has co-written the speedster’s candid memoir, Sultan (Harper). In the book, Akram goes into issues both on and off the field – from reverse swing to Pakistan cricket, mentor Imran Khan to personal demons, as our review too highlighted.
Read K C Vijaya Kumar’s review of Wasim Akram’s Sultan here
P. Sainath will be talking about his book, The Last Heroes: Foot Soldiers of Indian Freedom (Penguin), written as India celebrated 75 years of Independence last year – read an extract. Navtej Sarna, whose novel Crimson Spring (Aleph) revisits the historical truths behind the Jallianwala Bagh massacre and won the KLF (Kalinga Literary Fest) Fiction award, is in a panel to discuss ‘Punjab: In a Fractured Land’. Other conversations include a talk with Deepti Naval about her memoir, A Country Called Childhood (Aleph), which is not only about her journey in films but also a commentary on growing up in Amritsar in the late 20th century; and a session with K. Srilata about her new book This Kind of Child: The ‘Disability’ Story (Westland Books).
Spotlight
William Dalrymple’s four titles on the East India Company were put together and brought out as a single volume, The Company Quartet (Bloomsbury), in 2021. Ahead of his talk at Lit for Life, he spoke to Ziya Us Salam about his podcast, an upcoming book, and new trends in studying history. Asked whether like some other historians he was reinventing himself to cater to the demands of the times, he said: “I am doing exactly what I have always been doing – my talks have invariably been accompanied by illustrations. But yes, I have done a podcast recently. It has been quite an experience – there have been a million downloads every week.” He said he was delighted when the quartet was published in a single volume because between them, they tell the story of the East India Company. Asked how he looked at attempts to restudy history in India, he said: “There is nothing wrong in reassessing history – but it has to be based on evidence, primary sources. It cannot be an expression of bigotry or political compulsion or religious fervour.”
Read Ziya Us Salam’s interview with William Dalrymple here
For Shrayana Bhattacharya, an economist at the World Bank, Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh (Harper) was a way to talk about gender and economics. She connected with young women, particularly in villages and small towns, by speaking the language of Shah Rukh Khan. Ahead of her session at Lit for Life with Nandini Krishnan, she told Aditya Mani Jha in an interview that she believes in “slow, labored, gradual engagement. I’m very clear about the fact that this is how I want to write my next book as well. I want it to be longitudinal. When I met these women, it was for a research project but I wasn’t tied to a deadline and that difference in approach is significant.”
Read Aditya Mani Jha’s interview with Shrayana Bhattacharya here
Of all the literature that came out of the World Wars, Erich Maria Remarque’s anti-war novel All Quiet on the Western Front (published in 1929) has possibly gained the widest number of readers. Narrated by a soldier who is too young to be at the front, two and a half million copies were sold within months of its publication till the Nazis called the book “defeatist” and began burning copies in 1933. While Hollywood adapted it to screen soon after its publication, German director Berger’s remake last year won several prizes at the recent BAFTAs. With the war in Ukraine nearing its first anniversary, the book’s contemporary relevance cannot be underscored enough; and the writer’s chilling explanatory lines at the beginning of the novel can never be forgotten: “This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men, who, even though they may have escaped the shells, were destroyed by the war.”
Read Sudipta Datta’s reprise of All Quiet on the Western Front here
Browser
- In The Big Con (Penguin), Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington claim that there is an entrenched relationship between the consulting industry and the way business and government are managed, arguing that this is stunting innovation and the mission to fight climate change.
- Josh Kurlantzick analyses China’s attempt to build a media and information superpower around the world in Beijing’s Global Media Offensive (Oxford University Press), focusing on how this is playing out in its immediate neighbourhood and also in the U.S.
- Richard Bradford’s biography of Normal Mailer (Tough Guy/Bloomsbury) gives a perspective of Mailer’s (The Armies of the Night, The Executioner’s Song) personality and writings.
- Poet, lyricist and screenwriter Javed Akhtar is in conversation with Nasreen Munni Kabir in Talking Life (Westland Books), providing an insight into his life and work from his early childhood in Lucknow to his time in the Hindi film industry peppering it with anecdotes and stories from film history.
