(This article forms a part of The Hindu on Books newsletter which brings you book reviews, reading recommendations, interviews with authors and more. Subscribe here.)
Welcome to this edition of The Hindu on Books Newsletter. The Russian Opposition leader Alexei Navalny who died in a prison in the Arctic last week kept himself busy by reading books, writing letters and keeping himself aware of what was going on in the world. According to The New York Times, Navalny “sought solace in letters” and wrote to many of his friends, acquaintances and writers. “Books appeared to be at the centre of Navalny’s prison life, all the way until his death,” said NYT. For instance, Navalny re-read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn on Stalin’s gulag. Having survived a hunger strike, and gone months without adequate nutrition, Navalny wrote that he could now “grasp the depravity of the Soviet-era labour camps. You start to realise the degree of horror.” He read Mikhail Fishman’s book on Boris Nemtsov, another Opposition leader who had been assassinated (The Story of Boris Nemtsov and of the Country in Which He Didn’t Become President); at the Arctic prison called Polar Wolf, where he spent his last few months, he had access to only those books available in the library and he read the classics, by Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Anton Chekov. “Who could’ve told me that Chekov is the most depressing Russian writer?” he wrote in a letter to journalist Sergei Parkhomenko.
In some good news, the inaugural Women’s Prize for non-fiction has announced a longlist of 16 books which includes Joya Chatterji’s Shadows at Noon that tells the “turbulent, rich and compelling” history of the subcontinent and how it informs the present, Naomi Klein’s Doppleganger, Anna Funder’s Wifedom, Alice Albinia’s The Britannias and Madhumita Murgia’s debut tome, Code Dependent, on current conversations around AI. A shortlist of six for the £30,000 prize will be announced on March 27 and the winner on June 13. Chair of judges and historian Suzannah Lipscomb said it was a “revelation and a joy” to read the stories, which are of various genres. The books delve into hidden stories of enslavement (All That She Carried by Tiya Miles), assisted dying (Intervals by Marianne Brooker), the woman’s body (Eve by Cat Bohannon), and motherhood (Matrescence by Lucy Jones), and other important issues like Empire and identity theft. On the panel, Lipscomb is joined by fair fashion campaigner Venetia La Manna; academic, author and consultant Professor Nicola Rollock; biographer and journalist Anne Sebba; and Kamila Shamsie, author and 2018 winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction for her seventh novel, Home Fire.
In books, we read the first part of herpetologist and wildlife champion Romulus Whitaker’s memoir, a message from China, a biography of Neeraj Chopra and Etaf Rum’s second novel on Palestine. We also talk to Somnath Batabyal on his new novel, Red River.
Books of the week
The first part of herpetologist and wildlife champion Romulus Whitaker’s autobiography, Snakes, Drugs and Rock ‘N’ Roll, (HarperCollins) is a delightful read, cheeky and candid at all times, says the reviewer Sunil Rajagopal. Since this is a book about Romulus, “so obviously there are plenty of snakes in it. But this is not about snakes. This first volume of a rambling, rough and tumble autobiography (and not a memoir as is spelt out clearly in the introduction) attempts to find the building blocks of how he became the man he is. And for a man who has lived a life as extraordinary as him, it is only understandable that his life spills over in to more than one book! Janaki Lenin [who co-wrote the book] is in fine form here; her clear, matter of fact voice and humour are evident throughout. As are her skills at editing out the fluff which could have weighed this book down. I associate Romulus most with the Madras Snake Park and his work with King Cobras in Agumbe. There is plenty to look forward to in the next.”
One of the most interesting recent books on China, from India’s perspective, has been authored by Ketian Zhang, an Assistant Professor at the Schar School of Policy & Government at George Mason University in the U.S. China’s Gambit: The Calculus of Coercion (Cambridge University Press) examines when, why and how China attempts to coerce other states over perceived threats to its national security. The book’s merit, says the reviewer Vijay Gokhale, lies in Zhang’s efforts at crafting a theory about China’s coercion decisions by using case studies relating to the South China Sea, Taiwan, Japan and Tibet. “A glaring omission is the India-China case although Zhang recognises that China uses coercion against India. Notwithstanding this omission, Zhang’s book makes an important and valuable contribution to theorising as to why China is selective in its timing, target and tools for coercing other states. It is relevant for Indians who are grappling with the question of what made China undertake its misadventure in Galwan in 2020.”
Norris Pritam catches the spirit of Neeraj Chopra’s stupendous achievements on the world stage and puts it in perspective in his new book, The Neeraj Chopra Story (Bloomsbury). In his review, Y.B. Sarangi writes that while it is challenging to write about a person who is famous because every aspect of his life would have been discussed threadbare, Norris Pritam draws readers in with his honest and straight-from-the-heart approach. “Embellished with a befitting foreword by six-time world champion and London Olympics bronze medallist boxer M.C. Mary Kom, the book, with simple prose and easy pace, tracks the iconic javelin thrower’s life of a boy from the Haryana hinterland to a history-making global star.” His narrative includes everyone who played an important role in making Chopra what he is today – an Olympic and world champion.
Palestinian-American writer Etaf Rum’s second novel, Evil Eye (HQ), explores the theme of exile and the immigrant experience, and revolves around the story of Yara, a young mother who aspires to be a full-time art lecturer in North Carolina. In her review, Navamy Sudhish says the novel evokes a sense of gloom and qualm while posing some difficult questions. “While Evil Eye chronicles Yara’s interior and intimate worlds, it also becomes the tale of Palestine and its homeless, nameless people – men and women clutching rusted wrought iron keys of their homes and dreaming about the sparkle of the Dead Sea, hoping to return some day.”
Spotlight
For his third book, Red River (Westland Books), Somnath Batabyal, an anthropologist and ethnographer by training, wanted to document the life of a small village in Assam between two election cycles. But as he began talking to people, he realised he had a larger story to tell and turned to fiction. In an interview on the sidelines of the recent Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Series Jaipur Literature Festival, Batabyal said: “I moved from non-fiction to fiction to tell a larger story. That story was about the nation state, about who belongs, who doesn’t, who isn’t allowed to, and I couldn’t do that within the constraints of facts. The novel is rooted in ethnographic detail, but raises larger questions about identity, migration, nationalism, separatism etc.” He tells the stories through the lives of three friends, one a migrant, another an ULFA sympathiser and the third an armyman. “A migrant [for example] lives in all these spaces, in the fractured borderlands of memory, nostalgia, wanting to belong and fit in.”
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- Audacious Hope (Westland Books) by Indrajit Roy documents the big and small acts of resistance that is keeping democracy alive. From the farmers’ protests of 2020 and the outcry against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, the book archives resistance in many forms.
- The U.S., India and the U.K. will be, at different times this year, voting in general elections, either to re-elect their incumbent government or choose a new alternative. Sanjay Jha, the former spokesperson of the Congress party, raises urgent questions as India gets set to go the polls in 2024: India in a Free Fall (HarperCollins).
- K. Srilata’s Three Women in a Single-Room House (Sahitya Akademi) is a book of poems which is part of a larger conversation about difference. It also emphasises the difficult yet joyous work of care and nurture, and about the richness of female lineage.
- The Man Who Lost India (Simon & Schuster) by Meghna Pant is set in 2032 and China has declared war on India. But the conflict comes to an abrupt halt due to a supernatural event that saves the town of Lalbag from annihilation. This is an ambitious dystopian tale of love, strife and family.
