A Horse Walks into a Bar
By David Grossman
There are some novels that are hard to read but infinitely harder to put down. A Horse Walks into a Bar , winner of this year’s Man Booker International award, is one such work. It is a masterpiece of storytelling from David Grossman, a powerful successor to the haunting To the End of the Land (2008). Jessica Cohen’s translation from the Hebrew is fluid and powerful, even in the wild savagery of the jokes.
Lone Fox Dancing
By Ruskin Bond
To readers who have followed his every word, Ruskin Bond’s autobiography won’t be much of a surprise. After all, incidents from his life have been fictionalised in many of his stories. In fact, if you’re reading the book, it might be a good idea to keep a pile of his other books nearby. Every now and then, a fleeting ‘where have I read this?’ will
lead you to hunt through the various Collected Works that you have collected.
Camino Island
By John Grisham
Camino Island , Grisham’s 30th novel in a span of 28 years, is his stab at the beach book. A mercenary gang orchestrates a heist in Princeton University and makes off with five F. Scott Fitzgerald manuscripts. Several months later, Mercer Mann, a young, recently unemployed writer gets a delectable financial offer from a security company and a chance to work on her long-gestating second novel on the eponymous island. The catch? She must work as a grifter and help investigators nab Bruce Cable, the respected and rakish bookseller and bookdealer who is suspected to be in possession of the priceless manuscripts.
Shadow Armies: Fringe organisations and foot soldiers of Hindutva
By Dhirendra K. Jha
At a time when activities of fringe right-wing outfits are under the scanner, political journalist Dhirendra K. Jha sets out to lay bare their existence within the core Hindutva universe. In his book Shadow Armies: Fringe organisations and foot soldiers of Hindutva , Jha seeks to piece together the hidden links of all Hindutva organisations with the official Sangh Parivar. He argues that even as they are non-committal about these links, these fringe bodies do the “dirty work” of polarisation for the Sangh Parivar.
The Life of Harishchandra
By Raghavanka, translated by Vanamala Viswanatha
We think we know the story of King Harishchandra, a ruler who was generous, honourable and truthful to a fault, whose principles led him to lose everything he had. But we have never read or heard the story quite this way. The Life of Harishchandra, Vanamala Viswanatha’s lucid, playful and sympathetic translation of Kannada poet Raghavanka’s Harishchandra Kavya, brings this medieval text to rich and vibrant life.
