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Best-selling American writer Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love/2006) has pulled her new book set in Russia after a backlash online criticising the publication in the time of war with Ukraine. Gilbert took to Instagram to announce the indefinite delay of publication of The Snow Forest, a story about a family who relocates to Siberia in the 1930s to resist the Soviet government, saying, “it is not the time for this book to be published.” It was supposed to be published in February 2024, coinciding with the second anniversary of the Russia-Ukraine war. She said she had received an “enormous, massive outpouring of reactions and responses from my Ukrainian readers, expressing anger, sorrow, disappointment and pain about the fact that I would choose to release a book into the world right now — any book, no matter what the subject of it is — that is set in Russia.” Reactions to her self-censorship were mixed, but publishing industry insiders said the ramifications would be huge. At a time when books are being banned all across the world, PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel hoped Gilbert would reconsider her decision, putting out a statement which said the author’s choice was “regrettable.” Nossel said that though “Ukrainians have suffered immeasurably, and Gilbert’s decision in the face of online outcry from her Ukrainian readers is well-intended, the idea that, in wartime, creativity and artistic expression should be preemptively shut down to avoid somehow compounding harms caused by military aggression is wrongheaded.” Several writers, too pointed at the absurdity of authors being asked to stay off certain topics and subjects.
In reviews, we read Parakala Prabhakar’s essays on India, the English translation of the Tamil novel Karisal, Tanika Sarkar’s book tracing the rise of Hindutva, and more. We also talk to travel writer Zac O’Yeah about his new book on India’s rich culinary tradition and to S.B. Divya on science fiction and her latest novel, Meru.
Books of the week
In The Crooked Timber of New India: Essays on a Republic in Crisis (Speaking Tiger), Hyderabad-based commentator Parakala Prabhakar attempts to capture political developments in the country since 2014. He engages with a diverse set of topics, ranging from the rise to power of the BJP to the now-withdrawn farm laws. However, there is a thread that persists, and that is the pernicious effect on India of the dispensation that governs the country presently, says the reviewer Pulapre Balakrishnan. The book begins with the arrival in Delhi of Narendra Modi in May 2014. Balakrishnan points out that there is an interesting analysis of the Independence Day speeches made by the Prime Minister over the years, with Parakala wanting to show that the early promises can only be seen as flattering to deceive. “The speeches turn sectarian, even if not menacing, as Modi’s tenure proceeds. This is also reflected in the legislation, with the discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Act enacted early in the second term. By then, the regime had begun to bare its fangs, reflected in a clampdown on the freedom of the press and the use of central investigative agencies, notably the CBI and the ED, to muzzle the opposition. The author sees himself as speaking truth to power, and in this he succeeds.” Balakrishnan says there are four elements of India after 2014 which do not figure in Parakala’s account, including the fanning by all political parties of a divisive caste-based identity politics, seen most recently during the Karnataka polls.
Review of The Crooked Timber of New India — Essays on a Republic in Crisis: India after 2014
Historian Tanika Sarkar has been publishing on Hindu nationalism for nearly four decades, and the essays in Hindu Nationalism in India (Permanent Black/Ashoka University), written between 1991 and 2022, focus on the dynamics of the rise and expansion of Hindu nationalist pedagogy and popular mobilisation. More specifically, says the reviewer, Anirban Bandopadhyay, they explore the methods and strategies of various affiliates of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) for popular mobilisation with regard to women, children and education, especially discourses on the past and history. “Sarkar offers useful insights into the changing trajectory of Hindu nationalism. She observes, for example, that pedagogy in RSS-run schools does not advocate any major departure from mainstream nationalist thinking but only enforces an erasure of the multiplicity of possibilities within the latter. The chapter on the Rashtra Sevika Samiti likewise shows that the occasional encouragement to women’s participation in public life is often predicated on prior formal approval of traditional patriarchal structures.” Anyone looking to understand the rise of Hindu nationalism in India, says Bandopadhyay, will do well to read these challenging essays.
Review of Tanika Sarkar’s Hindu Nationalism in India: Medium and message
Sahitya Akademi Award-winning writer Ponneelan’s Karisal was first published in 1976. Now his granddaughter, J. Priyadarshini, has translated it into English (Black Soil/Penguin), reminding a whole new generation of readers of the struggle of ordinary working-class people in a “rain-dependent landscape”. The novel, says the reviewer B. Kolappan, will also remind readers of the massacre of 44 Dalit agricultural labourers in Keezhvenmani in the eastern part of Thanjavur in 1968. “In some ways, Kannappan, the protagonist, bears a resemblance to Ponneelan, who wrote the novel after his transfer to Nagalapuram in Thoothukudi district, “an extremely barren, underdeveloped, remote area with no transport facility.” In her translator’s note, she says she first read the novel when she was 12 and it stayed with her. Priyadarshini wanted to translate it into English to convey the “beauty and pain of the people of Karisal to a large number of readers.”
Spotlight
Bengaluru-based travel writer of Swedish origin Zac O’Yeah’s new book, Digesting India (Speaking Tiger), is a collection of eight essays taking readers on a ride across India and the food it holds. He traces Bengaluru’s colonial history, visits Gandhi Sevagram Ashram in Maharashtra, and hops between Goa and Delhi providing detailed descriptions of fiery curries and deadly lavatory experiences. In a conversation with Preeti Zachariah, he says he travelled, he ate and then he was in a “new paradise”, which was often about some interesting history behind its food. “In Tamil Nadu, for instance, you can go to any place in the Kongu Nadu region, which is the heart of the State, and find gourmet dishes that are probably cooked the same way today as millennia ago.” Zac O’ Yeah talks about his experience when he got off the train in Bangalore years ago and decided to stay on. “The town is full of bookshops and good restaurants, so in my mind, I thought I was in heaven….”
Sci-fi author S.B. Divya pulled Sanskrit into her new novel, Meru (Hachette), which is set in the far future but the inspiration for it comes from the past. Describing Meru (the protagonists are inspired by the Mahabharata) as an adventure and a love story, Divya tells Mini Anthikad Chhibber that the novel has “politics and space travel. It has a vast scope – we start on Earth and then travel through the solar system and land 200 light years away on this Earth-like planet Meru. It is an epic in space, and involves all the elements of a classic – conflict, romance, power struggles, great change....”
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- In his autobiography, Through the Broken Glass (Rupa), T.N. Seshan, the former chief election commissioner, brings to light his years of struggle to usher in a new era of electoral reforms. Seshan passed away in 2019, leaving behind the manuscript. His former research assistant Nixon Fernandes and a host of other people who knew Seshan ensured that his memoir saw the light of day.
- Abad Ahmad’s Understanding Islam (HarperCollins) examines the spirit and essence of the religion and reveals how far it has moved from its origin and values. The writer also sheds light on questions of right and wrong, divine mercy and wrath, trials and prayer, life and the afterlife.
- Short stories from the award-winning feminist writer Manasi(Subversive Whispers/Hamish Hamilton), translated from Malayalam into English by J. Devika, channel the voices of women in a deeply patriarchal society, to capture their suffering and challenge the status quo.
- The Stolen Necklace (HarperCollins), written by Shevlin Sebastian and V.K. Thajudheen, is an account by the latter of the time he was apprehended in Kerala for stealing a gold necklace. A cat-and-mouse game ensues as Thajudheen desperately tries to prove his innocence with the police bent on pinning the crime on him.
