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Welcome to this edition of The Hindu on Books Newsletter. The International Booker Prize shortlist of 2024 was announced last week, featuring six countries, Brazil, Argentina, Germany, The Netherlands, South Korea and Sweden, and six languages Portuguese, Spanish, German, Dutch, Korean and Swedish. One-third of the list is represented by Latin American writers: Argentinian feminist writer Selma Alvada’s Not a River (Charco Press), translated from the Spanish by Annie McDermott, and Brazilian writer Itema Vieira Junior’s debut novel Crooked Plow (Verso), translated from the Portuguese by Johnny Lorenz. The others on the shortlist are Hwang Sok-young for Mater 2-10 (Scribe, UK), translated into English by Sora Kim-Russell and Youngjae Josephine Bae, which traces a century of Korean history told through generations of railroad workers; What I’d Rather Not Think About (Scribe UK) by Jente Posthuma, a moving story of grief and loss, translated from the Dutch by Sarah Timmer Harvey; celebrated novelist Jenny Erpenbeck’s Kairos (Granta), translated from the German by Michael Hofmann, a story of two lovers in the backdrop of a collapsing East Germany; and Swedish writer Ia Genberg’s The Details (Wildfire Books), translated into English by Kira Josefsson. The winner will be announced on May 21.
In books, we learn more about Chitralekha Zutshi’s biography of Sheikh Abdullah, Tim Schwab’s investigation into the world of billionaires and philanthropy, and more. We also interview André Aciman of Call Me By Your Name fame.
Books of the week
Chitralekha Zutshi explores the paradoxes and contradictions that trailed the political life of one of the tallest leaders of the Kashmir Valley, and why the abrogation of Article 370 did not come out of the blue in her new book, Sheikh Abdullah: The Caged Lion of Kashmir (HarperCollins). Pointing out that there is a significant continuity in Delhi’s approach towards the border State-turned-Union Territory since 1947, Zutshi tells Varghese K. George: “What happened to Article 370 in 2019 was the culmination in some ways of Delhi’s relationship with Kashmir and the gradual dismantling of the State’s claims. It wasn’t something that came out of the blue. It was very much along the lines of what has been happening in Kashmir since 1947.” The national parties, Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party, have always pushed for deeper integration, seen in the policies of Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Narendra Modi.
In The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire (Penguin Business), Washington D.C.-based investigative journalist Tim Schwab examines Bill Gates as a case study of how billionaire philanthropy can parlay extreme wealth into political influence sans accountability. In an email interview with G. Sampath, Schwab explains why India is important in Gates’s scheme of things. At the beginning of his philanthropic career, Gates made India a central focus of his foundation. “One feature that makes India so important to the foundation is its role as the so-called pharmacy of the world. Gates has sought out partnerships with Indian pharma to move low-cost drugs and vaccines into the poorest nations on earth. Much of Gates’s work in the pandemic, for example, hinged on a deal with the Serum Institute of India to produce vaccines for African nations. As a major wave of infections spread across India in early 2021, the government effectively issued an export ban, directing Serum’s shots into the arms of Indian citizens. That political decision was one reason Gates’s COVID response effort failed. But this episode also helps show how many of Gates’s philanthropic projects — globally — depend on Indian corridors of power, whether it is the private sector or the Modi administration.”
Spotlight
Timothee Chalamet and Armie Hammer in ‘Call Me by Your Name’ by Luca Guadagnino, an official selection of the Premieres program at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. Credit: Sundance Institute
André Aciman’s fame exploded with the release of his debut novel, Call Me By Your Name, in 2007, also adapted into an Oscar-winning film of the same name. In 2019, he wrote a sequel to the book, Find Me, and recently he has published a novella which follows three students stuck in Italy’s Amalfi coast (The Gentleman from Peru). In a video interview with Aditya Mani Jha, Aciman spoke about what the idea of travel means to him: “What I am interested in is what I see, what I imagine. And it took me a long time to realise this. Sometimes, what I see and what I imagine are not the same thing. They’re not necessarily congruent with each other.” Aciman is working on essays and a new book of non-fiction, a memoir which will be released in October. “It is a memoir about a year I spent in Italy as a very young man, 16-17 years of age. Now, I never turn down an invite to spend time in Italy, not least because I am no longer an Italian citizen. I lost my citizenship, which is so typical of my life.”
Browser
- Elections, Parties, and Coalitions in India: Theory and Recent History (Permanent Black) by Eswaran Sridharan traces India’s recent experience with elections, parties, and coalitions. Ten papers cover two broad areas – elections and voting behaviour, and political parties and coalition politics. It explains the evolution of key elections and shifts in voting patterns in the post-Congress-dominance period since 1989. There’s been a rise or decline of some parties and reshaped the party system.
- As Ruskin Bond turns 90 on May 19, it will be celebrated with the publication of his new book, The Hill of Enchantment: The Story of My Life as a Writer (Aleph). He shares insights into his life as a writer, offering readers a glimpse into the man behind the stories. He writes about the influence of nature, the need for solitude, and his creative process.
- The Keeper of Desolation (HarperCollins) by Chandan Pandey is a collection of stories translated from the Hindi by Sayari Debnath. It chronicles the realities everyday lives must confront and battle. In telling these stories, Pandey is also chronicling contemporary India through fiction.
- My Beloved Life: A Novel (Aleph) by Amitava Kumar traces the arc of Jadunath Kunwar’s life, a life made exctraordinary by the fact that he has loved and has been loved in turn. Kunwar’s beginnings are humble, but he becomes a historian. He has a daughter, Jugnu, a television journalist with a career in the U.S.—and both their stories illuminate the past and present.
