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Welcome to this edition of The Hindu on Books Newsletter.
The American writer, George Saunders, is out with his new collection of short stories, Liberation Day (Bloomsbury) and he tells Avantika Sharma that this form allows for a “multiplicity of views”. In a way it represents what’s happening in his home country – and it’s true of other places as well. “…in the States, we can’t even agree on what is true anymore, so that sort of kaleidoscopic effect needs to be represented,” and he feels his stories with a lot of different stances within the book, do just that and “feels truthful to the moment.” Short stories are still his favoured form because they keep eluding him: “At 63 years old, I am still fascinated by them.” Saunders bagged the Man Booker Prize in 2017 for his only novel to date, Lincoln in the Bardo. As many critics have noted, Liberation Day is arguably Saunders’ most overtly political work of fiction to date, and that has possible to do with what is happening on the ground. “In the United States, politics is very front-of-mind for everybody, mainly because it is becoming catastrophic. There are forces that have been loosened that I didn’t really think were present in our country. My approach is very intuitive, but if I am trying to make a real person on the page, then anything that is happening in the world will find a way into the story,” he says. In other news, the 2022 JCB Prize for Literature shortlist was announced late last week, and, in a first, all five books are translations.
The diverse books represent five languages, Bangla, Urdu, Malayalam, Hindi and Nepali. Manoranjan Byapari’s Imaan (Eka) has been translated by Arunava Sinha from the Bangla original Chhera Chhera Jibon. The protagonist is teenager Imaan Ali, who grew up in jail having landed there when he was six months old after his mother is convicted of killing his father. His mother dies in three years, and Imaan is looked after by the inmates till he is released from prison when he is 16. Byapari probes how Imaan, which means honest, will survive in the real world, outside the ‘safe’ confines of the prison.
In The Paradise of Food (Juggernaut), translated from the Urdu Nemat Khana, Khalid Jawed explores the travails of existence and squalor through the metaphor of food. Translated by Baran Farooqi, it tells the story of an orphaned boy, Zahiruddin Babar, who is brought up in a joint family, and looks at life from different angles. Sheela Tomy’s Valli (Harper Perennial), translated by Jayasree Kalathil (a past winner with S. Hareesh’s Moustache), takes us deep inside Wayanad where she explores what happens when the culture of the original inhabitants, the Adivasis, is upended after outsiders flock to the region.
Also on the shortlist is Geetanjali Shree’s International Booker Prize-winning Tomb of Sand, translated by Daisy Rockwell. In this genre-bending fluid novel of ideas, an 80-year-old woman slips into depression after the death of her husband, and then re-energises herself for a new lease of life, which will break all stereotypes and cross borders of gender, religion and countries.
Song of the Soil (Rachna Books), by Chuden Kabimo, translated from the Nepali by Ajit Baral, is set in rural Kalimpong against the backdrop of the Gorkhaland agitation of the 1980s. The jury said Song of the Soil is a shining example of how one can write about a violent incident without recreating the violence. The ₹25 lakh prize will be announced on November 19.
In reviews, we read Janice Pariat’s ode to nature, a book on the 50th anniversary of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, Moni Mohsin’s new novel and more. We also talk to veteran journalist T.J.S. George on his new book where he profiles India by writing short biographies of 35 personalities.
Books of the week
In her new novel, Everything the Light Touches (HarperCollins), Janice Pariat dangles many stories on a branch of a magnificent wish-fulfilling tree. Under Pariat’s nurturing gaze, says the reviewer Geeta Doctor, the kalpavriksha, that is named ‘Diengiei’, spreads through time and space. It shelters mysterious tribes and secrets, particularly those from forested mountains beyond Shillong in the Meghalayan capital. “Pariat’s particular skill is to occupy each different nest that she weaves, not as an interloper but as its original inhabitant. Among her occupants are real-life scientific personalities such as the polymath German Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist and inveterate classifier of the plant species. The third significant occupant is a young woman, Evie – her mission is to discover the mysterious ‘Diengiei’ deep within the forest.” The fourth is Shai who represents the modern young woman determined to re-invent her identity by digging for her roots. What makes Pariat’s thesis tragic, says Doctor, is that old conflicts between civilisation and nature are not just happening today but the battle itself may have been lost long ago.
A beautiful web of connected stories: review of Janice Pariat’s Everything the Light Touches
The ceremonious airlifting of the long extinct cheetah, from Namibia to the Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh, and a recent report indicting humans for being responsible for the extermination of at least 70% of the world’s wildlife, offer a disturbing backdrop to reading WildlifeIndia@50 (Rupa). Edited by Manoj Kumar Misra, a former member of the Indian Forest Service, the book critiques five decades of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 (WLPA), with short, personal experiences by administrators, foresters, conservationists, activists and journalists that include a stellar list from renowned conservationist and tireless forester H.S. Panwar to the wildlife reporter Usha Rai. In his review, Sudhirendar Sharma says, in the last five decades, the law has gone through several enabling amendments, but its implementation has been found wanting. The book is divided into two parts, the first section reflects on the successes and failures of the WLPA; the second part is anecdotal with stakeholders sharing their stories, and there are two chapters on the future of wildlife and the WLPA in India.
Review of Wildlife India@50: Wild encounters
The Social Butterfly of Lahore, whose curated gossip is actually a sharp send-up of people, is back in Moni Mohsin’s Between You, Me & the Four Walls (Penguin India). In this book, Butterfly throws shade on a lot of things and people, says Sheila Kumar in her review: “the Lahore Lit Fest, with all the befuddlement of one who doesn’t read; the knee-jerk tendency of her country’s government to ban anything and everything; Rahul Gandhi, who didn’t sweep away the full election but got to retain his seat of Methi…” You get the drift. Among the few who get unbridled appreciation from Butterfly are SRK and Malala who won the Nobel Cup. “Butterfly’s Indian friends might be the uber-wealthy with properties in Mumbai, Goa, New York, those prone to fleeing home shores in their jets when COVID-19 peaks here, but the underlying message is clear: “that Indians and Pakistanis are basically humsayas (neighbours), trying their best to ford their political and economic morass, the autumn smock (smog), and suchlike.”
Review of Moni Mohsin’s ‘Between You, Me & the Four Walls’: The Social Butterfly is back
Spotlight
T.J.S. George’s new book, The Dismantling of India (Simon&Schuster), is a compendium of short biographies of 35 Indian personalities, which illustrates India’s trajectory, from Independence. T.J.S. (Thayil Jacob Sony) George, says Ramjee Chandran who interviewed him in Bengaluru, is singularly qualified for such an enterprise. His career of 75 years as a journalist began in 1947—the year of Indian independence. He is 94 years old this year, and he continues to be a working journalist. The 35 personalities are his list of Indians who have made a significant impact on the country’s history, and therefore, our lives. They are people from art, entertainment, politics, science, business, crime and cause. How did he pick them? “As a journalist,” he explains, “I have a sense of understanding who is newsworthy. What do they call it… sixth sense? That sense… it makes me pick somebody as newsworthy.” As it turns out, some names are predictable—Gandhi, Savarkar, Ambedkar, Bal Thackeray, J.R.D. Tata. Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and the Gandhi family—Indira to Rahul. “Some are surprising inclusions. The bandit Veerappan and India’s most wanted, Dawood Ibrahim, for example. Another is stock market chiseller Harshad Mehta, and Abdul Karim Telgi, who was convicted of counterfeiting stamp paper.”
South Indian culture is incompatible with North India: T.J.S. George
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- Siachen 1987 (HarperCollins) by Lt. Gen. Ramesh Kulkarni and Anjali Karpe is a memoir which gives an account of important combat operations during Lt. Gen. Kulkarni’s tenure, including Operative Rajiv and Operation Vajr Shakti, which was launched to secure the post from Pakistan’s attempts to recapture it.
- For years, Sanjay Pinto, an advocate and journalist, wrote a newspaper column on legal matters, cutting through the jargon and simplifying it for readers. High and Law (Thomson Reuters) continues in that vein, and explains statutes and other nuances of the law in a lucid manner.
- Three women brutally raped and assaulted are left for dead in Calcutta. In a cat-and-mouse game, top cop Tanya Samanta is pushed to the limits and finds herself running out of time to catch the elusive culprit in Suhit Sen’s atmospheric crime fiction, The Hunter of Lalbazar (Speaking Tiger).
- When 21-year-old Vishnu is murdered in a hate crime in the U.S., his conscience travels through time to look back on the life, and, in the process, deconstructs the systemic hate and violence in India and America. Vishnu finds he is both victim and offender in Karan Madhok’s A Beautiful Decay (Aleph).
