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Welcome to this edition of The Hindu on Books Newsletter.
The founder of Newsclick.in, Prabir Purkayastha’s memoir, Keeping Up the Good Fight, has just been published by LeftWord Books. It is the story of Purkayastha, jailed by two authoritarian regimes, once during the Emergency in 1975 and now in October, 2023; it’s a political coming-of-age tale of a young man and his decades-long engagement with social, political and economic issues. On September 25, 1975, months after Indira Gandhi had declared a state of Emergency, students of Jawaharlal Nehru University called for a strike to protest against the expulsion of an elected councillor of the students’ union. On the second day of the strike, a black Ambassador car pulled up near a group of students, and picked up a student – Purkayastha -- who spent a year in jail. Cut to October 3, 2023, and officers of the Special Cell of the Delhi Police arrested Purkayastha under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. The FIR accuses the news portal of accessing funds from pro-China sources and has questioned its coverage of the farmers’ protests and the anti-Citizenship Act protests among other things, charges the news organisation has rejected.
Tributes are pouring in for Matthew Perry, star of the hit comedy series Friends, whose memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, was published last year to acclaim. The 54-year-old actor passed away on October 28. He was best known for his portrayal of Chandler Bing in Friends, which ran for 10 seasons from 1994 to 2004, but he wanted to be remembered for being someone who was always ready to help other people. During the height of his success, Perry battled for years with addiction to painkillers and alcohol, and attended many rehabilitation clinics, as he wrote in his memoir. He dedicated his book to “all the sufferers out there.” Read a review of his memoir.
In reviews, we read about India’s relationship with water, Calder Walton’s book of spies, the Booker Prize-shortlisted This Other Eden by Paul Harding, Ranjit Lal’s tome on the charms of creepy crawlies and we pay tribute to Italo Calvino in his centenary year. We also have a weekly curation of books online, The Hindu’s Bookshelf, by Swati Daftuar that will help you discover your next favourite read. This week we bring you a reader’s guide to picking your first books by acclaimed fiction and genre writers including Haruki Murakami, Amitav Ghosh, Anita Desai, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Hilary Mantel, Neil Gaiman, Agatha Christie, Stephen King and others.
Books of the week
In Shades of Blue: Connecting the Drops in Indian Cities (Penguin/Viking), the writers Harini Nagendra and Seema Mundoli take readers on a panoramic view of the water bodies of India and push for the urgent need to save various waterscapes across the country. From the Yamuna in Delhi to the Cauvery in Karnataka and the Pichola Lake in Udaipur to the Brahmaputra in Assam, the writers intersperse these vignettes with folk tales, myths, sociological and scientific data. The reviewer, R. Krithika, says that “reading Shades of Blue is a pointed reminder of our relationship with water. As the authors put it, ‘We cannot live without water. But it seems we cannot live with water either’.” Like the duo’s earlier work, Cities and Canopies, this is extremely reader-friendly with its large font, simple language, and charming illustrations. “Another plus is how the authors allow the reader to make the connections without beating one over the head. Whether it is the baolis of Delhi, the stepwells of Rajasthan and Gujarat, the lakes of Bengaluru, or the wetlands of Chennai and Kolkata, Nagendra and Mundoli not only highlight the water management systems of the past but also how citizen activism has helped renew and revive waterbodies today.”
Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, photographed in Prague, with Dr. Lesny, the local Indologist and President of the Indo - Czechoslovak Society. | Photo Credit: HINDU PHOTO ARCHIVES
Calder Walton’s Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West(Abacus) takes readers through the twists and turns of last century’s Cold War to the “New Cold War” between the U.S. and China and explores the nobler and darker arts that characterise the world of intelligence. In his review Ramanathan Kumar writes that the availability of serious, well-researched literature on intelligence is in inverse proportion to the insatiable public interest the subject attracts, and it is this deficit that the Harvard University historian and scholar seeks to bridge in his magisterial work. “From the time of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, Russia – or the U.S.S.R. till 1991 – and its satellites on one hand and the U.K., U.S. and their allies on the other have been mutually locked in shadowy wars that largely play out beyond the glare of public attention.” Walton brings home to readers these shadowy wars in the world of intelligence.
The Atlantic island of Malaga, fictionalised as Apple Island, in Paul Harding’s Booker-shortlisted This Other Eden (Hutchinson Heinemann) is home to a mixed-race fishing community till their eviction in 1912 by the state, driven by eugenics. If their fate is Biblical, writes Saikat Majumdar in his review, the texture of their atmosphere and the doomed rhythm of their days are strangely Homeric. “One of the greatest triumphs of Harding’s novel [is] the delicate ability to touch and hold contrasting worldviews.” The novel, based on a slice of American history, becomes the metaphor of a “hopeful rainbow nation” of the future, with a community filled with “white Negroes and coloured white people.”
The Harmony of Bees and other Charms of Creepy Crawlies(Speaking Tiger) by Ranjit Lal shares details of extraordinary creatures like bees, spiders and cockroaches. In his review, Serish Nanisetti writes that the book, written with wit, wry humour, scientific detail and exacting observation, is an exciting addition to the dozens of books penned by Lal. Greyscale illustrations by Kavita Singh Kale add to the charm of the book. “Lal’s final argument makes it appear as if the earth actually belongs to creepy crawlies. For this, he shares intriguing details about the origin of these small creatures. Like scorpions have been there for 435 million years or moths are there for 190 million years old or that the termites established a caste system some 100 million years ago. To put things in perspective, the earliest man to walk on two feet evolved only four million years ago.”
Spotlight
In Calvino’s centenary year (1923-1985), we dip intoInvisible Cities, an ode to one city – Venice – written in 55 ways, all named after women. It was first published in Italian in 1972, and translated into English in 1974 by William Weaver. In it, an ageing Kublai Khan is being told stories by a young Venetian traveller Marco Polo of the cities he has visited on his expeditions. Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says, but he listens to him as he has reached that desperate moment when he knows that his empire is in “formless ruin.” Marco agrees the empire is sick, and so the aim of his explorations is to examine the traces of happiness still to be glimpsed: “If you want to know how much darkness there is around you, you must sharpen your eyes, peering at the faint lights in the distance.” Invisible Cities does not deal with recognisable cities, according to Calvino, and they are all inventions. And yet, each of the book’s short chapter “is a reflection which holds good for all cities or for the city in general.”
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- Insurgent Feminisms: Writing War, (Zubaan) edited by Bhakti Shringarpure and Veruska Cantelli, brings together a decade of war writing published in Warscapes magazine through the lens of gender. Comprising, reportage, fiction, memoir, poetry and conversations from over 60 writers, it includes contributions by Suchitra Vijayan and Uzma Falak among others.
- Rose, jasmine, sandalwood, saffron – Divrina Dhingra delves into India’s contemporary perfume trade by tracing aromatic ingredients and their journey to becoming a perfume in The Perfume Project (Westland Books). “I witnessed chemistry in fascinating action,” she writes, and the imprecise, messy universe of people, lands and stories that make up the Indian perfume industry.
- Six years after three girls disappear from school, a journalist goes to the scene of the crime to find out what happened in Atharva Pandit’s Hurda (Bloomsbury). What emerges is the portrait of a society steeped in misogyny, and an examination of what women’s lives are worth.
- The plot in Teju Cole’s Tremor (Faber & Faber) revolves around Tunde, and the many places and times of his life. From his West African upbringing to being a photography teacher on a renowned new England campus, Tunde’s many world are refracted from his own, personal lens.
