Reviews of Fiction and Non-Fiction Books by The Hindu - The Hindu

‘Capital & Imperialism: Theory, History and the Present’ review: The long reach of imperialism

Kandaswami Subramanian Two economists trace the march of capitalism, aided and abetted by colonialism, from the World Wars till the advent of globalisation and beyond

‘Dust of the Caravan’ review: A keen sense of history and a critique of pre-1947 India

Ghazala Jamil Anis Kidwai’s unfinished works, now translated into English, provide insights on how women got involved in nationalist politics

‘Shuttler’s Flick: Making Every Match Count’ review: The making of a champion

Ashwin Achal Pullela Gopichand opens up on his incredible 2001 win in England and how he built his academy to train future stars

profile ‘Policymaker’s Journal’ review: The essential lightness of being

Kaushik Basu recalls with candour and wit his stint as chief economic adviser to the Manmohan Singh government and his years at the World Bank

‘The Break-up of Britain: Crisis and Neo-Nationalism’ review: The British Empire falls apart at home

Arvind Sivaramakrishnan

Tom Nairn argues that though Brexit may be the cause of the U.K. disintegrating, there are other problems like the makeup of the British state itself

Short Stories Feral fancies: Review of Malayalam author Gracy’s ‘Baby Doll’

Navamy Sudhish Gracy’s gloriously defiant women bring home the toxic taste of misogyny

‘Space Life Matter: The Coming of Age of Indian Science’ review: The struggles and triumphs of India’s scientific fraternity

Shubashree Desikan A journalist traces the country’s endeavour to becoming a knowledge society after Independence, overcoming many challenges, including lack of funds

Poetry Ganga and Yajnaseni, again: Review of anthology ‘Collegiality and Other Ballads’

S. Sarkar The anthology tends to reduce female experience to tragic sagas of sacrifice

‘The Marginalized Self: Tales of Resistance of a Community’ review: On the periphery of change

SPORT ‘Believe’ review: Pushing the boundary

Other Articles Today

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‘Capital & Imperialism: Theory, History and the Present’ review: The long reach of imperialism

profile Reviews

‘Dust of the Caravan’ review: A keen sense of history and a critique of pre-1947 India

‘Shuttler’s Flick: Making Every Match Count’ review: The making of a champion

society Reviews

‘Women of Influence: Ten Extraordinary IAS Careers’ review: Blazing powerful trails

Politics Reviews

‘The Disruptor: How Vishwanath Pratap Singh Shook India’ review: Mandalites and their reluctance to invoke V.P. Singh’s legacy

profile Reviews

‘Resolved: Uniting Nations in a Divided World’ review: Child of war to man of peace

‘Inherited Memories: Third-Generation Perspective on Partition in the East’ review: Remnants of a separation

Descendants of refugees and migrants talk about the people’s movement between India and Bangladesh

‘Ancient India: Culture of Contradictions’ review: Complexities of a culture

A historian studies ancient India and discovers radical tensions and oppositions, between inequality and salvation, desire and detachment, goddesses and misogyny, violence and non-violence

‘Vaxxers: The Inside Story of the Oxford AstraZeneca Vaccine and the Race Against the Virus’ review: Vaccine for Ebola a pivotal moment for COVID-19 shot

The ‘inside story’ of how Oxford scientists developed the AstraZeneca vaccine within a year of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak

‘Kamala Harris and the Rise of Indian Americans’ review: A milestone in the Indian diaspora’s larger America connect

Vice-President Kamala Harris leveraged the community’s diversity and strengths, particularly the hard work it has put in, to good effect

‘Advantage India: The Story of Indian Tennis’ review: On the line

Documenting Indian tennis’ fine past and a rather dismal present

‘The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity’ review: Exploding myths of prehistory

An anthropologist and an archaeologist marshal reams of new evidence to produce a fresh account of the past that questions the assumptions behind an evolutionary history of humanity

A feminist retelling of ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’

American writer penning a new version of Orwell’s masterpiece through the eyes of Julia

‘Modi’s India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy’ review: The collapse of democracy

Christophe Jaffrelot, who has caught every wave in India, says the country has changed, perhaps irreversibly, from a liberal secular polity a decade ago to a majoritarian ‘ethnic democracy’ today

‘Renaissance State: The Unwritten Story of the Making of Maharashtra’ review: The many versions of Maharashtra

There are limitations but Girish Kuber delivers on the objective to tell the story of his home State through vignettes and histories

‘Vimukta: Freedom Stories’ review: Living in the shadows

Stories of denotified tribes and their fight for better housing, education and rights

‘Kabir, Kabir: The life and work of the early modern poet-philosopher’ review: The plurality of an early mystic

Understanding the words of Kabir in the context of a divisive time

‘The World of India’s First Archaeologist: Letters from Alexander Cunningham to J.D.M. Beglar’ review: Discovery of ancient sites through an archaeologist’s eyes

Alexander Cunningham, who headed the Archaeological Survey of India, provides a glimpse of his meticulous work in his letters

‘Why We Kneel, How We Rise’ review: Voice against discrimination

Cricket icon Michael Holding on the dehumanising aspect of racism and what it is to be treated differently based on the colour of the skin

‘Indian Innings: The Journey of Indian Cricket from 1947’ review: Perspectives on the willow game

A collection of writings on Indian cricket and its larger-than-life players

‘The Fractured Himalaya: India, China, Tibet 1949-1962’ review: A march to estrangement

The history of the critical initial years of a political relationship when India and China tried to manage issues such as the boundary question, and failed

‘Tata: The Global Corporation That Built Indian Capitalism’ review: Viewing India’s economic history through the prism of the Tatas

Profiling a group, sometimes nationalistic and at other times outward looking, but uniquely invested in science, technology and philanthropy

‘A Kashmiri Century: Portrait of A Society In Flux’ review: The disappearance of a way of life in the Valley

All that is quintessentially Kashmir, from culture and history past and present, is woven into a story of the Pandit community

‘Opium Inc.: How a Global Drug Trade Funded the British Empire’ review: For a few pieces of silver

Looking back at the opium trade which was necessitated, executed and rationalised by the British to get China’s tea, while using colonial India as a base

‘My Family’ review: The discovery of love

In J.M. Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals, the novelist and philosopher Elizabeth Costello scandalises everyone by saying that slaughterhouses embody “an

‘Smaller Citizens: Writings on the Making of Indian Citizens’ review: The crisis in education

Krishna Kumar highlights the disparities that exist in the system: gender, caste, class, and the urban-rural gap, and also casts a light on how schools treat their youngest citizens

‘Amader Shantiniketan’ review: Songs of freedom in the classroom at Tagore’s Santiniketan

At Visva Bharati, the philosopher-poet tried to rectify all the wrongs he had noticed in his own ‘jail-like’ troubled schooldays

‘India vs UK’ review: A victory for diplomacy

Syed Akbaruddin on a famous Indian win against the U.K. at the International Court of Justice

‘A Forgotten Ambassador in Cairo: The Life and Times of Syud Hossain’ review: A diplomat and a Gandhian

Recounting the life of Syud Hossain and his significant contributions to the freedom movement

‘The Violence in Our Bones: Mapping the Deadly Fault Lines Within Indian Society’ review: An ideology of hatred

A political scientist tries to understand why violence and democracy continue to co-exist in India despite the fact that the two are antithetical to each other

‘Ramrao: The Story of India’s Farm Crisis’ review: Why the farmer stands alone despite shiny new schemes

India’s farmers, at the mercy of blind and blanket agrarian reforms, continue to fight administrative apathy, says a journalist

‘A Silent Revolution: The Journey of the Srinivasan Services Trust’ review: A model of development

Documenting the work of the Srinivasan Services Trust in uplifting lives of rural communities

‘An Economist at Home and Abroad: A personal Journey’ review: A ringside view of India’s path to tax reforms and liberalisation

Shankar Acharya, former chief economic adviser, gently looks back at his time in the government, without revealing any secrets

‘Home in the World: A Memoir’ review: An economist and a humanist

In narrating the first 30 years of his life, Amartya Sen provides a glimpse of the making of his worldview with a focus on the idea of justice

When Sita speaks for herself

Bhanumathi Narasimhan’s book delves into the problematic politics of Sita’s life

‘Mountain Tales’ review: Where home is a rubbish mountain 20 storeys high

A gut-wrenching story of the poor and marginalised who work and live at Mumbai’s Deonar landfill to earn their daily bread

‘Zohra! A Biography in Four Acts’ review: The actor remains an enigma

The story of Zohra Sehgal’s life is also the tale of the arts in India in the past century

‘The Nutmeg’s Curse’ review: Listening to nature’s voice

Connecting the dots between imperial practices and climate change, Amitav Ghosh traces the reasons for ecological disasters facing the world and the way ahead

Ashoka on the rocks: Anil Menon reviews ‘Asoca: A Sutra’ by Irwin Allan Sealy

Sealy’s recreation of third-century India is gorgeous even if a bit too contemporary

Death in the clouds: Sudipta Dutta reviews ‘Funeral Nights’ by Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih

A novel that is actually an intense rumination on everything that is Meghalaya

‘Mahesh Architecture’ review: Shaping Kerala’s architecture

From railway stations to resorts, a tribute to N. Mahesh who paved the way for a whole new generation of architects in the State

‘An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Dominion’ review: Losing face around the world

The global outage on October 4 is not the worst of Facebook’s problems. This volume is an insightful addition to the litany of works on what is wrong with the Mark Zuckerberg creation

‘Freedom’ review: A long walk to experience freedom through personal autonomy

With the present as context, where many countries are taking an authoritarian turn, Sebastian Junger questions democracy’s inability to guarantee essential rights

‘A Bangladesh War Commentary: 1971 Radio Dispatches’ review: An unfolding battle of narratives alongside the 1971 war

Despatches written for All India Radio stressed on inclusive nationalism as the only way forward for Pakistan and the basis for good neighbourly ties

‘To Kill a Democracy: India’s Passage to Despotism’ review: At a dangerous crossroad

Two writers retrace Ambedkar’s concerns and warning post-Independence to argue that India’s social structure of inequality is totally incompatible with parliamentary democracy

‘No Straight Thing was Ever Made: Essays on Mental Health’ review: Giving a chance to hope

The need to continuously learn and adapt while facing up to mental health issues cannot be stressed enough

‘Restless as Mercury: My Life as a Young Man’ review: A life of activism and service

A valuable addition to Gandhi’s autobiography, this volume explains how the struggle of his early years in South Africa sharpened the strategy of non-violence

‘The Indian Contingent: The Forgotten Muslim Soldiers of the Battle of Dunkirk’ review: Force K6 in a colonial war

Tracking soldiers from the subcontinent who fought on the battlefields of Europe

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Dev Raturi with his family in Xian, China. Photo: Special arrangement

36K | An Indian’s tale of Xian’s lockdown makes headlines in China

Pandit Birju Maharaj

15K | Birju Maharaj, legendary Kathak dancer, dies at 83

Photo used for representational purpose only. Covid 19 vaccination drive underway for students at a government school in Jahangirpuri.

10K | No justification now for keeping schools closed in view of COVID-19: World Bank Education Director

India has stated that the WTO dispute panel’s findings are completely “unacceptable” to it. File

7K | Explained | Why is India challenging WTO verdict on sugar?

7K | Friend in need: On India-Sri Lanka ties

Xenotransplantation might be the future of organ transplants. Photo: University of Maryland School of Medicine via Reuters

6K | Explained | Will the pig-to-human heart operation lead to a new approach to organ transplantation?

Yati Narsighnanad, alias Deepak Tyagi, the head priest at Dasna temple in Ghaziabad. Photo: Special Arrangement

6K | Haridwar hate speech | Yati Narsinghanand arrested in two separate cases

Photo used for representational purpose only.

6K | Covaxin booster increases neutralising antibodies, study finds

6K | S. Somanath | At the helm of India’s space research