Home Fire
By Kamila Shamsie
Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire is a post-9/11 Antigone . This is signalled by the novel’s epigraph from Seamus Heaney’s 2004 translation of Socrates’ lines: ‘The ones we love . . . are enemies of the state’.
All about hearing and being heard, this novel from the Booker longlist asks an important question: can the oppressor listen?
Everybody’s Son
By Thrity Umrigar
On the seventh day, the boy broke the window,” is how Thrity Umrigar’s latest novel, Everybody’s Son , opens. A nine-year old boy left locked inside the house alone by his crack-addled mother is a familiar scene from American news or Hollywood cinema (most recently, Moonlight ). However, this is an intriguing story of possibilities as a biracial boy growing up in the southern belt finds himself, after the incident described above, in a foster home that couldn’t be further from his impoverished life in the American state of Georgia.
Faiz Ahmed Faiz: The Colours of My Heart
By Baran Farooqi
This translation of Faiz’s poetry attests to his enduring relevance.
The new generation regards Faiz as a spokesperson for global unrest; his influence is no longer confined to South Asia. All over the world, campuses resound with Faiz’s poetry: he touches the innermost recesses of students’ hearts. The translator, Baran Farooqi, has chosen the poems which have universal relevance.
Monumental mess: Pancheshwar caves, a state protected monument in Junagadh district, Gujarat,was once used as a garbage dumping yard.
Monuments Matter: India’s Archaeological Heritage Since Independence
By Nayanjot Lahiri
Nayanjot Lahiri’s book comes at a time when many monuments are under threat with a proposed amendment being considered to allow construction within the prohibited zone.
Interestingly, this idea of a prohibited zone came from the tomb of Abdur Rahim Khan-e-Khana as Lahiri notes in the book, “The idea itself, that a security net ought to be created around heritage buildings, can be traced to Jawaharlal Nehru..."
The Mixer: The Story of Premier League Tactics, from Route One to False Nines
By Michael Cox
In January 2010, the English journalist Michael Cox set up a website, ‘zonalmarking.net’, which aimed at analysing football matches from a dispassionate, tactical stand point. The first piece published on the website (backdated to October, 2009), which was a report of Arsenal’s three-nil win over their North London rivals Tottenham Hotspur, began thus: “Tottenham had the dilemma faced by most 4-4-2 sides visiting top four opposition this season—stay with their regular shape, or shift to a 4-5-1 more effective at winning and keeping position in the centre of midfield?”
Rich People Problems
By Kevin Kwan
Kevin Kwan’s trilogy of life on the superfast lane of Singapore’s beautiful ethnic people (read Chinese of different vintage) comes to a slam-bam-thank you-Kwan conclusion in this last book. As bar-hoppers will know, a Sling consists of equal parts of gin, cherry brandy, lime and grenadine syrup, maybe a dash of pineapple juice and lashings of soda and ice. Kwan writes as if scripting a storyline for an Asiatic version of ‘The Bold and the Beautiful’ with inputs from Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor and a squirt of The Far Pavilions where even our very own Shahrukh Khan gets a walk-on part that is only very slightly insulting.
The Girl Before
By J.P. Delaney
The ability to weave a tale of damage and death is not exceptional. The art lies in making it riveting. J.P. Delaney’s The Girl Before seems to follow the conventional precedent for psychological thrillers. The book has gruesome murders, a barrage of suspects and unforeseeable twists—much as in The Girl on the Train and Gone Girl .
