Welcome to this edition of The Hindu on Books Newsletter.
Writer and editor Gal Beckerman’s new book, The Quiet Before: On the Unexpected Origins of Radical Ideas (Penguin), outlines how ideas fuelling revolutions from the 1600s to the present have traditionally been conceived in much quieter spaces. In the introduction, he writes that change – the kind that topples social norms and uproots orthodoxies – happens slowly at first. “We are gripped by the moment when the crowd coalesces on the street, the adrenaline, the tear gas, the deafening chants, a policeman on horseback chasing down a lone protester, or a man standing up to a tank, but he says that these acts of defiance are the culmination of the idea which usually began with a group of people talking. The incubation of radical new ideas, he argues, is a very distinct process with certain conditions: a tight space, lots of heat, passionate whispering, and a degree of freedom to argue and work toward a common, focused aim. His book is a search for those quiet spaces, and comes with a note of caution – that in a world dominated by social media, they might soon go extinct. Raising pertinent questions about the role of social media, he wonders why the Arab Spring fell apart, why the Occupy Wall Street idea failed to gain traction and about the work left unfinished by the Black Lives Matter movement. Beckerman contends that the new social media ecosystem lacks everything from patience to focus, and offers his thoughts on how to nurture radical ideas again.
In reviews, we read Samuel Moyn’s appraisal of American foreign policy even as tensions between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine spiral, Rebecca Solnit’s rediscovery of George Orwell and understanding his politics through his rose garden, Sharanya Manivannan’s graphic novel, poems by Vinayan Bhaskaran and more. We also interview Isabel Allende who believes feminism is the most important revolution of all time.
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Books of the week
In Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War (Verso), Samuel Moyn highlights that despite futile U.S. interventions around the world from Vietnam to Afghanistan, Washington’s approach has not changed, and that it often interferes in another country without any justification. In all four cases -- Vietnam, Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan -- Washington officials progressively distorted accurate field reports so as to exaggerate local stability and military capability. In his review, Arvind Sivaramakrishnan, quoting Moyn, points out that the new U.S. approach is worse. “Remote-control killing has replaced ground troops overseas, and under the 2001 Authorisation for the Use of Military Force, Washington can declare ‘any person’ as being close enough to Al Qaeda to warrant preemptive attack.” By opening the Guantánamo Bay prison outside U.S. territory, George W. Bush assumed detainees’ guilt; his successors Barack Obama and Donald Trump pursued an endless war using drones and special forces. “For Washington this kind of war, driven by what looks like self-righteousness rather than arguable ideological claims, needs no justification,” and this smacks of U.S. political culture’s susceptibility to what Moyn calls a ‘messianic sense of purpose’. Moyn demonstrates throughout why war itself is the continuing problem, says Sivaramakrishnan.
What new can be said about George Orwell? Well, in her book, Orwell’s Roses (Granta), Rebecca Solnit writes how she chanced upon Orwell’s garden, in England’s Hertfordshire, which opened up a whole new way to view the writer, best known for his cautionary words. As Mini Kapoor explains in her review, Orwell has inspired an adjective (Orwellian) that is shorthand for a scenario as few other writers have; decades after its publication, his most famous novel (1984) provides the vocabulary to identify totalitarian red flags. What place here for roses, gardening? For Solnit, one of the striking things was how much Orwell enjoyed enjoyment…” She brings that same eye to her rereading of 1984, says Kapoor; “now that she knows what to look for, she finds ‘much lushness and beauty and pleasure’ in the novel. In his novels of dystopia, Orwell was of course alerting readers to what all totalitarianism could destroy; but through her readings and enquiries in his footsteps, Solnit foregrounds his recognition that this ‘valuation of desire itself, and pleasure and joy’ can be a part of the pushback and opposition against the authoritarian state.”
Elegant girl dancer in white dress in a state of levitation under the deep waters of the ocean with sunlight beaming on her face. | Photo Credit: Getty Images/iStock
Sharanya Manivannan’s graphic novel, Incantations Over Water, (Context) is set near Kallady lagoon in Mattakalappu, Ilankai (Batticaloa, Sri Lanka). But the story, says the reviewer Sneha Krishnan, stretches beyond the common concepts of place and time. In its structure and theme, it exemplifies multiplicity – of name, place, ways of being. Structured into 12 parts, the story is narrated by Ila, a fiercely independent half-woman, half-mermaid who goes by many names. “Fighting against fixities, the novel urges us to consider points-of-view other than human. For instance, just as an octopus thinks with its tentacles, Ila thinks her cognition could lie within her tail. The decentreing of anthropomorphism helps foreground a non-human intelligence and another, perhaps more enriched, way of life.”
Using powerful images, Vinayan Bhaskaran’s debut collection of poetry – The Quiet Archway Within Words (Authorspress) – brings alive painful centres of the mind that resound with a lack of belonging. In her review, Shubashree Desikan says Bhaskaran’s poems urges readers to stop by and spend a few moments alone with his words. “They do not offer solace, nor do they churn up the external world. They mirror the shape of the world in an interior landscape where one can only walk alone. They speak of distance. They resound with alienation. They laugh at the absurdity of life. They ask to be re-read.”
Spotlight
Isabel Allende is the author of 25 books, including arguably her best-known and first novel, The House of the Spirits, and others like Of Love and Shadows, The Stories of Eva Luna, My Invented Country, The Japanese Lover and her latest, Violeta. Born in Peru to Chilean parents, she was forced to flee Chile after the assassination of her uncle and President Salvador Allende, and eventually settled down in California. In a freewheeling interview to Vineetha Mukkil, Allende says the success of The House of the Spirits was a surprise for everybody involved, most of all, her. “This happened 40 years ago and the book is still in print in many languages. A miracle, really.” Asked about gender politics and gender justice – important themes in her writing – and whether there is any real hope of smashing the patriarchy and building an equitable world, Allende says, “We have come a long way but the journey is long and difficult… The face that we have not replaced the patriarchy with a new, equitable civilisation does not mean that we have failed. It means that the struggle continues. Feminism is the most profound and important revolution of all time because it involves the fate of half of humanity.”
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- Being and Becoming Multilingual (Orient BlackSwan), edited by Rajesh Sachdeva and Rama Kant Agnihotri, is a collection of personal narratives about growing up and inhabiting multiple languages and contexts. Written by a group of linguists and educators, it offers insights into multilingualism; how their professional lives have been deeply informed by their personal multilinguality; and the politics of language.
- Astrophysicist Biman Nath writes a monograph -- Homi J. Bhabha: A Renaissance Man among Scientists (Niyogi Books) -- bringing to light the life and times of the nuclear physicist who pioneered India’s nuclear research programme. It portrays Bhabha’s foresight in anticipating the need for high-class facilities for research, and of his keen interest in art, architecture and classical music.
- Neel Patel’s Tell Me How to Be (Penguin Hamish Hamilton) is the story of Renu Amin and her son Akash, both of whom lead perfect lives until they start analysing. Renu sends a message to the man she almost married years ago, sparking an emotional affair. Akash slips back into bad habits as he confronts his past affair with the boy who broke his heart.
- A young girl disappears and her remains are discovered three years later. The neighbourhood in which the girl lived is famous for an annual street festival. During the parade, the suspected killer dies. Chief Inspector Kusanagi turns to his college friend, Detective Galileo, to help him solve the murders in Keigo Higashino’s Silent Parade (Little, Brown).
That is all for this week. We look forward to hearing from you, be it about this newsletter, our reading list, your literary queries or the book you are reading now. You can find us at www.thehindu.com/books and on Facebook and Twitter at @TheHinduBooks.
