Reviews of Fiction and Non-Fiction Books by The Hindu seo.section.displayname=Book Reviews - The Hindu

‘The Department of Sensitive Crimes’ by Alexander McCall Smith: Summertime madness

Anusua Mukherjee McCall Smith makes Scandi noir white with his new series set in Sweden, featuring a special investigator whose name translates as Wolf Wolf

‘Unruly Waters — How Mountain Rivers and Monsoons have Shaped South Asia’s History’ review: Taming the rivers

Sujatha Byravan With the monsoon as leitmotif, a historian explains the lessons we must imbibe from our past to save diminishing water resources

‘Beast’ by Krishna Udayasankar: The brute within

Navmi Krishna This fast-paced fantasy thriller is convincing in its exploration of possibilities

Bureaucracy ‘The Steel Frame — A History of the IAS’ review: Power to make a difference

Uma Mahadevan Dasgupta

Two writers on the Indian Administrative Service and what it means to be a part of it

Historical Fiction She without the fire

The Sobtiesque traits are there, but the diva’s last novel is underwhelming

‘Zucked — Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe’ review: The devil is in the DNA

Jinoy Jose P. Facebook’s problems lie in the way it is built, argues an early investor

The Verdict: Decoding India's Elections

'The Verdict: Decoding India's Elections' review: Behind hidden figures

Varghese K. George Prannoy Roy and Dorab Sopariwala on the Indian elections and the methods in the madness

‘Belt and Road — A Chinese World Order’ review: Beijing’s map of the world

Kallol Bhattacherjee The nuts and bolts of China’s mammoth infrastructure project that straddles many continents

History Reviews

History ‘Jallianwala Bagh’ review: Fear of an imaginary rebellion

Imagination relentlessly reinvented

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Bureaucracy Reviews

‘The Steel Frame — A History of the IAS’ review: Power to make a difference

Technology Reviews

‘Zucked — Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe’ review: The devil is in the DNA

Ecology Reviews

‘Unruly Waters — How Mountain Rivers and Monsoons have Shaped South Asia’s History’ review: Taming the rivers

Fantasy Thriller Books

‘Beast’ by Krishna Udayasankar: The brute within

Historical Fiction Books

She without the fire

Detective series Books

‘The Department of Sensitive Crimes’ by Alexander McCall Smith: Summertime madness

A lived experience

Mukund Rao’s understanding of spirituality is refreshing because it avoids blind glorification and cynical rejection. One can see it in his book on Akka Mahadevi, Sky Clad

‘A Quantum Leap in the Wrong Direction?’ review: Leaning on facts for an appraisal

With data and other information, a group of scholars assesses the Modi government on different parameters

‘Beyond Stones and More Stones — Domestication of the Indian Subcontinent’ review: How Indians became farmers

An interesting study of our prehistory and the beginning of agriculture

‘Power & Diplomacy — India’s Foreign Policies during the Cold War’ review: Coming in from the Cold War

Why and how India’s non-alignment policy changed over the decades

Time to retell histories

Purushottam Bilimale’s book, Bandaya-Dalit Chaluvali mattu Sahitya, is very useful for beginners. It gives sufficient information about the Movement in lucid prose besides telling this story plainly

‘Belt and Road — A Chinese World Order’ review: Beijing’s map of the world

The nuts and bolts of China’s mammoth infrastructure project that straddles many continents

‘Jallianwala Bagh’ review: Fear of an imaginary rebellion

A 100 years on, it is still difficult to reconcile with the Jallianwala Bagh massacre and the violence unleashed by British colonialism

'The Verdict: Decoding India's Elections' review: Behind hidden figures

Prannoy Roy and Dorab Sopariwala on the Indian elections and the methods in the madness

Imagination relentlessly reinvented

Common to all Girish Karnad’s historical plays is the exploration of human historical reality in a world without God

‘The Globotics Upheaval — Globalization, Robotics and the Future of Work’ review: The globetrotting robot

How a new tech wave is bringing unprecedented changes, disrupting life as we know it

‘The Third Pillar — How Markets and the State Leave the Community Behind’ review: Reviving the community

Why people need to have a far greater say in economic matters

‘The Poetics of Land — From Epic Times to Nandigram’ review: A million mutinies over land

Understanding the Nandigram agitation by travelling through Bengal’s villages and towns

‘Surrogacy — Oxford India Short Introductions’ review: Birth power and women’s rights

A primer on surrogacy and the Bill in the context of India and its poor

‘Camels in the Sky — Travels in Arabia’ review: Circles in the Arabian sand

An excellent travelogue that observes every aspect of the desert, from people to water issues

‘Stories of Storeys — Art, Architecture and the City’ review: Life between spaces

An architect on the gross disparity that defines our divided cities

As the curtain goes up

‘Arangile Matsyagandhikal’, a compilation of plays written by Sajitha Madathil, one of the few woman playwrights in Malayalam theatre, is a captivating peek into the characters created by the veteran actor and director

‘Insider/ Outsider — Belonging and Unbelonging in North-East India’ review: Displacement diaries

How the son-of-the-soil syndrome scarred the Northeast

‘Myanmar in the World — Journeys Through A Changing Burma’ review: Fighting peacock

Layered insights into Myanmar, one of our least understood neighbours

‘Ganga — The Many Pasts of a River’ review: The purity principle

Why people have such an emotional connect with the Ganga

Reviving the sacred verses of Nathamuni

The genesis, growth and development of Nalayira Divya Prabandham and their codification by Nathamuni are discussed vividly in the book

Of the prosodic structure of poetry

The distinct use of syllables in languages like Tamil and Sanskrit are dealt with in detail by V.S.N. Ramaswamy in his book

‘Business and Politics in India’ review: Coming up short

Examining a lopsided economy where growth is dependent on state levers

‘Dalit Literatures in India’ review: Voice of protest

A critical look at Dalit works, their literary value and political role

‘Medical Education in Western India — Grant Medical College and Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy’s Hospital’ review: Interpreting maladies

How doctors and philanthropists came together to build a great hospital in colonial Bombay

Smells and sounds of the source

A translation of Greek poems to Kannada by Vijaya Guttal and Vikram Visaji, directly from Greek without the intervention of English, takes you closer to the original poems

‘Deities and Devotees — Cinema, Religion and Politics in South India’ review: The god in Telugu films

From devotee to voter, a study of cinema and its impact on politics

‘The Great March of Democracy — Seven Decades of India’s Elections’ and ‘Every Vote Counts — The Story of India’s Elections’ reviews: Looking beyond numbers

Two books on the election process and why Indian voters take it so seriously

‘Around the World in 80 Trains’ review: Rides across borders

Travels across 16 countries on rickety and posh railways

‘Winter of the Witch’ by Katherine Arden: Fire, ice, midnight and magic

This witch’s cauldron of a tale will make you look over your shoulder or peer into the darkness a few moments longer

Coffee with Kaldi

The infusion that keeps you wide-eyed and tickles the little grey cells of the brain

‘News of a Kidnapping’ by Gabriel Garcia Márquez

The Colombian writer and Nobel Laureate Gabriel García Márquez had devoted three of his early novels, No One Writes to the Colonel (1961), In Evil

‘Doab Dil’ by Sarnath Banerjee: Where the rivers meet

Twin streams, of words and images, drawings and colouring, converge into a seamless whole

‘The Scent of God’ by Saikat Majumdar: Beautiful and fragile as a dream

The book’s world and its contradictions are always vivid, and yet those contradictions are never quite realised

‘Dipa Karmakar The Small Wonder’ review: Leap of faith

India’s best known gymnast traces her incredible journey

‘Dissent on Aadhaar — Big Data Meets Big Brother’ review: Rhetoric and ground reality

Exposing the fallacies in claims made by Aadhaar’s votaries

‘History of Education Policymaking in India 1947-2016’ review: The schools we need

Why appropriate policy interventions are a must to ensure all our children are in the classroom and learning well

‘The Heist Artist’ review: larceny, with a side of lechery

A novel about an art heist gone wrong that’s action-filled and fast-paced, but flawed

‘Fierce Fairytales’ review: Red Riding Hood, the alpha wolf

Somewhere in Gill the poet lies Gill the budding therapist

The Dhabas of Amritsar: trotter soup for the soul

If you are going to Amritsar, carry this book with you

‘The Selected Works of Abdullah the Cossack’ review: life lessons from a rakish uncle

Naqvi weaves a tale rich in chuckle-inducing irony as he lets us get to know Abdullah the Cossack, and peer into Karachi’s soul

‘The Queen of Jasmine Country’ review: the poetry of pining

Andal’s is a difficult character arc to draw, but the author is careful in her craft

On the learning curve

In Mogalli Ganesh’s new book, Mogalli Vimarshe, the culture-specific experiences that inform his creative works are transformed into an expression of a larger collective identity

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