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Welcome to this edition of The Hindu on Books Newsletter. Announcing 2024’s Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist recently, Monica Ali, writer and chair of judges, said: “This year’s shortlist features six brilliant, thought-provoking and spellbinding novels that between them capture an enormous breadth of the human experience. Readers will be captivated by the characters, the luminous writing and the exquisite storytelling. Each book is gloriously compelling and inventive and lingers in the heart and mind long after the final page.” On the shortlist are Anne Enright for The Wren, The Wren (Jonathan Cape), “a beautiful powerful meditation on generational trauma and love.” Isabella Hammad’s Enter Ghost (Jonathan Cape) is the story of a British Palestinian actor who gets involved in a production of Hamlet in the West Bank and what unfolds thereafter; V.V. Ganeshananthan’s Brotherless Night (Viking) is a narrative on the Sri Lankan civil war; and Kate Grenville’s Restless Dolly Maunder (Canongate Books) is an adventure set in Australia about a woman trying to create a place for herself. Enright apart, another celebrated Irish writer Claire Kilroy has been shortlisted for Soldier Sailor (Faber & Faber), the story of a mother and son, and Aube Rey Lescure’s River East, River West (Duckworth) tells the contemporary tale of Shanghai and its denizens. The winner will be announced on June 13.
In reviews, we read Prabir Purkayastha’s book on why science and technology must always serve the public good, fairy tales written by the differently-abled, a book on the diverse emotions of sport and more. We also have a tribute to Sudhir Kakar, the formidable psychoanalyst and writer who passed away last week, by publisher David Davidar. He had published some of Kakar’s books in the 1990s, and had a considerable impact on him. “Simply put, Sudhir was one of the most original writers this country has produced — an alchemist who fused Western tools of psychoanalysis and scientific enquiry with a deep knowledge of Indian myth, religion, culture, and society to produce extraordinarily insightful books on India and Indians.” Some of his best-known books are The Inner World: A Psychoanalytic Study of Indian Childhood and Society in India; Shamans, Mystics and Doctors; Intimate Relations; The Colours of Violence; The Ascetic of Desire and so forth.
Books of the week
In Knowledge as Commons: Towards Inclusive Science and Technology (LeftWord), Prabir Purkayastha raises pertinent questions about how should we look at science and technology, its role in society, and equally important, “what is society’s role in developing science and technology?” In her review, Usha Ramanathan says Purkayastha has set down his thinking through his decades as an engineer, social/political activist, as a part of the people’s science movement, and of the free software movement. Few engineers and technologists have written about the nature of their discipline, and this book is his contribution to the dearth in the literature. “The battle over the commons is also a battle of ideology or ideas. In a juxtaposition of two ways of thinking, he cites the Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom when she speaks of the irony that the infinite commons of knowledge are treated as if they were finite, while the finite commons of air and ocean are treated as if they were infinite.”
Sport can be deciphered at many levels. Nandan Kamath’s Boundary Lab (Viking) hustles in with the energy of the junior cricketer he once was and the lawyer and sports entrepreneur that he is now, says the reviewer K.C. Vijaya Kumar. In a weighty book, Kamath throws light on skills, commerce, individual brilliance, team solidity, corruption and lays bare the fine print that shadows sport. “Like the great Philip Kotler’s musings on marketing, Kamath gets into the branding space and holds forth: ‘Markets and economies have grown around the identification, development and marketing of athletes, the hosting of events, the communication of sports content to spectators and viewers, and the engagement of fans’,” leaving enough food for thought for those interested in sport and others.
Thirteen differently-abled women have rewritten fairy tales with fervour and courage, emerging with tales of victory, as Nandini Bhatia writes in her review of And They Lived... Ever After (Rising Flame/HarperCollins). The stories are of princesses deaf or blind or in wheelchairs, of neurodivergent ducklings, and forgotten sisters and side characters. The collection comprises writing from leading reformists, educators, and advocates from the field of disability. “These stories — some inspired by the writers’ own lived experiences — demonstrate that there is no one way of being a human being.”
Spotlight
One of the best things to come out of our cannibalistic consumption of content is the rediscovery of absolutely brilliant writers, says Mini Anthikad Chhibber, in Bibliography, a column on books. Watching Steve Zaillian’s gorgeous black-and-white Ripley is a chance to meet American writer Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley once more, she writes. Highsmith (1921–1995) wrote 22 novels, many of which were adapted to film, television and radio, including Alfred Hitchcock’s famous adaptation of her debut novel, Strangers on the Train (1950). Five years later, in 1955, came The Talented Mr. Ripley, which captures the zeitgeist of the churn in America. “Tom Ripley is a small time scam artist, who sees the chance to make it, and like Caesar, grabs it with both hands. The twinning of Ripley and Dickie, the lengths Tom is willing to go to acquire and keep his way of life, the casual violence and the clever way in which Highsmith gets us, the readers, to root for Ripley makes the gripping novel a perfect gem.”
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- Indian Philosophy, Indian Revolution: On Caste and Politics (Westland Books) by Divya Dwivedi and Shaj Mohan, edited and Introduced by Maël Montévil, is a collection of essays by two well-known philosophers who chronicle the rise of authoritarianism in India. In his introduction, Montévil writes that the essays present the point of view of the lower caste position in politics to the destruction of democratic norms under the Bharatiya Janata Party.
- Arvind Panagariya’s India’s Trade Policy: The 1990s and Beyond (HarperCollins) is a collection of his writings from 1989 to the present day, providing an overview of the Indian economy. As chairperson of the 16th Finance Commission, Panagariya had closely observed the economy, pushing for a more open regime especially with respect to international trade.
- Crooked Seeds (Picador India/Pan Macmillan) by Karen Jennings is set in Cape Town, 2028. There’s a drought, leading to a water crisis and forest fires are threatening the mountains. Amidst this chaos, Deidre van Deventer receives a call from the police that the family home, which has been reclaimed by the government in post-apartheid South Africa, is the scene of a criminal investigation. Jennings tells a powerful story of an individual and her country’s troubled past.
- Edited by Ruth Dsouza Prabhu, India’s Most Legendary Restaurants (Aleph) features seven Indian eateries which found a place on influential online food encyclopaedia Taste Atlas’s elite list of 150 legendary restaurants of the twenty-first century: Paragon in Kozhikode, Tunday Kababi in Lucknow, Peter Cat in Kolkata, Amrik Sukhdev Dhaba in Murthal, Mavalli Tiffin Rooms (MTR) in Bengaluru, Karim’s in New Delhi, and Ram Ashraya in Mumbai. In this book, five writers trace the humble origins of these popular eateries and describe their savoured offerings.
