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Welcome to this edition of The Hindu on Books Newsletter. Last week, the New India Foundation announced the longlist for the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize 2023. Ten books which focus on various aspects of contemporary India through diverse forms like art history, biography, constitutional history, media history, evolution of political ideas and so forth are vying for the Rs. 15 lakh prize. The jury includes political scientist Niraja Gopal Jayal, historian Srinath Raghavan, columnist-writers Navtej Sarna and Yamini Aiyar and entrepreneur Manish Sabharwal. On the longlist are Sudeep Chakravarti’s The Eastern Gate: War and Peace in Nagaland, Manipur and the Far East (Simon&Schuster), Achyut Chetan’s Founding Mothers of the Indian Republic (Cambridge University Press), Rotem Geva’s Delhi Reborn: Partition and Nation-Building in India’s Capital (Stanford University Press), Insurgency and the Artist (Roli Books) by Vinay Lal, Crooked Cats: Beastly Encounters in the Anthropocene (HarperCollins) by Nayanika Mathur, Akshaya Mukul’s Writer, Rebel, Soldier,Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya (Penguin), Mrinal Pande’s The Journey of Hindi Language Journalism in India (Orient BlackSwan), Gita Ramaswamy’s Land, Caste, Guns, Woman: The Memoir of a Lapsed Revolutionary (Navayana), House of the People: Parliament and the Making of Indian Democracy (Cambridge University Press) and Taylor C. Sherman’s Nehru’s India: A History in Seven Myths (Princeton University Press). The shortlist will be announced in November and the winner on December 1.
In reviews, we read about Patrick Olivelle’s new biography on Ashoka, Jhumpa Lahiri’s short stories set in Rome, an anthology of women environmentalists, a compendium on the Nilgiris, two poetry collections and more. The JCB fiction Prize shortlist is out too with five diverse books on it. Swati Daftuar explores the theme of journeys, both physical and personal, in Tejaswani Apte-Rahm’s The Secret of More (Aleph), Manoranjan Byapari’s The Nemesis (Eka), translated by V. Ramaswamy, Fire Bird (Penguin) by Perumal Murugan, translated by Janaki Kannan, Vikramajit Ram’s Mansur (Pan Macmillan) and I Named my Sister Silence (Eka) by Manoj Rupda, translated by Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar.
Meet the stars: A journey through 2023’s JCB Prize shortlist
Books of the week
Under Ashoka, the last great Mauryan emperor, the empire extended across almost the entirety of the Indian subcontinent. In his new book,Ashoka: Portrait of a Philosopher King (HarperCollins),historian Patrick Olivelle examines the life of Ashoka, and issues around his approach to violence, religious harmony, his relationship with Buddhism and his development of the concept of dharma. In an interview with the historian Manu S. Pillai, the Professor Emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin explains why Ashoka is ‘unique’ in many ways. Asked why he calls him a “philosopher king,” Olivelle says, it’s rare for a king to be a philosopher as well -- “it is not only rare but perhaps unique. The only other example one can think of is the Mughal king Akbar. There are so many ways in which Ashoka is ‘unique’, and that was part of his greatness. His ancestors did not provide a blueprint for his activities. He was a trailblazer. But, alas, his successors were unable or unwilling to follow his path.”
Jhumpa Lahiri’s new collection of shorts,Roman Stories (Penguin), translated into English by the writer and Todd Portnowitz, is mostly about the immigrant experience in Italy. They are dark skinned and politely called la moretta or more likely heckled as ragazza on the streets. In her review, Anindita Ghose finds the story, ‘Well-Lit House’, devastating. In it, a young father of five thinks back to the journey to Italy after the war killed his grandparents back home. He remembers the white butterflies flitting above the sea’s surface, almost seeming to lead the way. Once in Rome, however, there are only cicadas leaping out of trees and frightening his wife. Reading Lahiri the week we encountered news of millions of displaced Palestinians was particularly affecting, writes Ghose. “The idea of othering – the idea of a woman being told by school children that she is dirty and unliked – it is these minor humiliations that lead to big wars.”
As Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Illinois and also Editor-in-Chief of Visual Anthropology, Professor Paul Hockings brings an overview of the Nilgiris in his edited anthology, The Nilgiri Hills: A Kaleidoscope of People, Culture and Nature(Orient BlackSwan). In her review, Geeta Doctor writes that between the introductory essay by Hockings on Ootacamund, also known as Ooty and Udhagamandalam, which has gone through many transformations after the Englishman John Sullivan planted his stake in the area, and the closing chapter written by Indu K. Mallah, who creates a mytho-poetic image of its inner world, the effect is of opening a portmanteau of recollections from the past. We also get an overview of the five major tribal groups in the hills -- Todas, Badagas, Kotas, Kurumbas and the Irulas – and the way climate change, rapid urbanisation and other anxieties have impacted them.
Women in the Wild: Stories of India’s Most Brilliant Women Wildlife Biologists (Juggernaut) by Anita Mani, founder of India’s first bird book imprint, Indian Pitta Books, focuses on wildlife, depleting biodiversity, and the women who have dedicated their lives to its research, protection and preservation. The anthology features a vast array of pioneering biologists and ecologists, from India’s first ‘Birdwoman’, Jamal Ara, the ‘Turtle girl’ J. Vijaya, who saved olive ridley turtles, wildlife biologist Vidya Athreya who spent years studying life patterns of leopards, Divya Mudappa known for her resilient work in the area of restoration ecology and others. In her review, Nandini Bhatia says Mani’s book embodies the intersection of wildlife and women in wildlife – the minority within the minority. “There are, of course, infrastructural lacks in successfully implementing the global goals of education and literacy. Nonetheless, the hurdles do not seem to be entirely technical, but social, possibly even geographical or economic. Mani addresses these hurdles. For the women in her book, gender is a part of the sustainability they aspire to achieve.”
Spotlight
Two recent poetry anthologies address the devastating impact of a vanishing natural world by bringing together a multitude of poetic voices from across the globe, and in a range of languages. WhileCount Every Breath: A Climate Anthology (Hawakal Publishers), edited by Vinita Agarwal, is a slim collection doggedly pursuing the theme, and hence is a bit uneven in parts, Greening the Earth: A Global Anthology of Poetry (Penguin), edited by K. Satchidanandan and Nishi Chawla, is a heftier volume, “not only for its girth, but also the seriousness of its curation,” writes Somak Ghoshal in his review. What role can poetry play in a world besieged with climate crisis? “The writer’s world is not only the social world, but the ecosphere itself,” argue Satchidanandan and Chawla. The answer to fixing the broken world is not in “museumising” nature; “we need a ‘shock’ to our systems” so that we can “feel a deep sense of urgency, an emotional pull to soil and sun.”
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- The Crossroads: Kashmir – India’s Bridge to Xinjiang (Rupa) by Kulbhushan Warikoo traces the history of Kashmir through India-Xinjiang relations. The account unravels the intricate power dynamics of the region, providing insights into contemporary relations between Delhi and Beijing.
- The term ‘Gita’ indicates anything that can be sung and chanted. In Sacred Songs: The Mahabharata’s Many Gitas (Rupa), Bibek Debroy brings together the unabridged English translations of 24 such Gitas from the Mahabharata, along with that of the Pandava Gita, which is not part of the epic.
- In Sudha Murty’s Common Yet Uncommon (Penguin), 14 stories highlight the quirks of ordinary people. There’s Bundle Bindu who embellishes the truth; Jayant, the shopkeeper, who does not make a profit; and Nalini, who carries her lunchbox everywhere.
- Jada Pinkett Smith’s Worthy (Fourth Estate) is a painfully honest memoir in which she looks back at her life, warts and all. From her upbringing in Baltimore to her unconventional marriage to actor Will Smith, she tries to reclaim her narrative and embrace her authentic self through this exercise.
