by Patrick deWitt
Patrick deWitt’s French Exit is a page-turner. You devour zany plot and sparkling prose, but when you are done, there’s no feeling of satiation. You turn the last page feeling hollow and fractious, like a short-changed customer.
by Haruki Murakami
The hypnotic lure of Murakami’s writing comes from subtraction, his Zen capacity to take away the superfluous. The novel starts with an artful set-up; Murakami grabs the reader with a simple story and a balanced tone.
‘Swerving to Solitude: Letters to Mama’
by Keki N. Daruwalla
The title of the novel is awkward but the narrative is engaging enough to hold the reader’s attention with some attractive turns of phrase, touches of humour, and the real lessons to be learnt from contemporary history. Daruwalla has always had a profound sense of both national and international history, quite evident also in his poetry.
The Bride’s Mirror’: A tale of Life in Delhi a hundred years ago
by Nazir Ahmad, translated by G.E. Ward
The Bride’s Mirror is still important as a historical document that brings alive the humming markets and seething streets of old Delhi. Oscillating between joint and nuclear families, The Bride’s Mirror reflects the rapid transformation in society in general and in many households in particular.
The Twice-Born — Life and Death on the Ganges
by Aatish Taseer
The Twice Born neither has the depth of scholarship of Diana Eck’s Banaras: The City of Light nor does it capture the effervescence of the chaotic city like Geoff Dyer’s Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi . Taseer’s prose is promising, which is why it’s a pity that he’s good at only writing about himself.
On Jim Corbett’s Trail and Other Tales from the Jungle
by A.J.T. JohnSingh
Johnsingh describes the tender bond an old male dhole had with his pups, and then notes the animal is gone — which in the animal world, means a quiet, anonymous death. “He appeared to be the leader of the pack and was extremely fond of the pups. When the pack made a kill of a small animal, the pups would run to him pestering him to regurgitate extra meat,” he writes. The wildness and freedom of the dhole left a deep impression on the author.
Is this Azaadi? — Everyday Lives of Dalit Agricultural Labourers in a Bihar Village
By Anand Chakravarti
The book traverses through the lives of the most subjugated of India’s people and highlights their living conditions, that ‘fall below’ the ‘threshold of well-being’ — an obvious lived reality of India’s Dalits, i.e. lack of basic access to livelihood, health, education and a life of dignity.