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Welcome to this edition of The Hindu on Books Newsletter.
A historian of Russia and West Asia (The Romanovs; Stalin: The Court of the Red Star; Jerusalem: The Biography;), Simon Sebag Montefiore, has written a magnum opus, a history of the world from the evolution of man to the war in Ukraine. The World: A Family History of Humanity (Penguin Random House) chronicles the world’s great dynasties across human history. Besides rulers and conquerors, there are a host of characters including priests, charlatans, artists, scientists, tycoons, gangsters, lovers, husbands, wives and children. There are some incredible stories, like for example about Hongwu, the beggar who founded the Ming dynasty; or Ewuare, the Leopard-King of Benin; Kamehameha, the conqueror of Hawaii; Zenobia, the Arab empress who defied Rome; Lady Murasaki, the first female novelist. The modern era is represented by leaders like Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher, Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky. From the Caesars, Incas, Ottomans and Mughals, Bonapartes, Habsburgs and Zulus, Kennedys, Nehrus, to the Saudis, Kims and Assads, he profiles powerful families which represent “the breadth of human endeavour, with bloody succession battles, treacherous conspiracies, and shocking megalomania alongside flourishing culture, moving romances, and enlightened benevolence.”
In reviews, we read about the architecture and history of several magnificent Indian rail stations, a handbook for activists, being single women in India, a new graphic novel on the Indus Valley Civilisation and more.
Books of the week
Vinoo N. Mathur had a long service with the railways and retired as a member of the Railway Board. He was actively involved in proposals that resulted in both the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (VT) and the Kalka-Shimla Railway line being declared UNESCO World Heritage sites. He always had a keen interest in the architectural and engineering heritage of the railways, and has now written a book, Indian Railway Buildings, Heritage, History and Beyond (Niyogi Books). The narrative begins with the Royapuram Railway Station, now India’s oldest, and from there progresses via the early railway companies, tracing their development and the construction of their principal railway stations. It then goes on to deal with the railway lines and stations of the various princely states. The headquarter buildings of the various private railway companies of India that eventually merged post-Independence to form the Indian Railways, are then dealt with in detail. The book has a separate section on mountain railways. In his review, Sriram V., writes that apart from the excellent narrative, the book scores greatly in the quality of its visuals. “The author seems to have spent a lifetime collecting picture postcards of the various railway stations of India. These black and white images, all of late 19th and early 20th century vintage, supplemented with those from the railway’s collection give a very clear idea of how the stations were in their prime and how the urban landscape has changed over the years.”
In his recent books, The Hindu Rashtra and The Price of the Modi Years, Aakar Patel wrote about issues that worried him about India, from rising deprivation to shrinking human rights. His latest book, The Anarchist Cookbook (HarperCollins), completes a trilogy of sorts on what ails India. It is a book which aims to turn passive citizens into vocal activists. His collaborator, an anonymous political satirist PenPencilDraw, has garnished the manual for activists with some sparkling illustrations.
They help the author sketch a neat portrait of the times, and prepare activists for what to expect and be aware about. In her review, Seema Chishti writes that one of the book’s biggest strengths is its tone, designed to knock off the shame that sometimes accompanies the word ‘activist’. “It asks with a straight face, would you be happy to be a ‘passivist’? Patel and PenPencilDraw try to help create aware citizens.”
‘Why are you single?’ Sarah Lamb’s journey into the lives of single women in India begins with a question and the varied answers result in the first book-length academic study of singlehood in India. Singles Studies is an emerging discipline in India, and as Lamb maintains, being single is unusual in the country because living outside the familiar habitus of kinship is not common. As an anthropologist, Lamb’s key focus on singlehood is through the lens of kinship. In Being Single in India (University of California Press), Lamb examines single women across social classes in Bengal, ranging from the affluent elite to the middle classes, to the impoverished ones. Single women, Lamb notes, offer a valid critique to many things: life, family, gender, sexuality, kinship, propriety, respect, social class, belonging, pleasure etc. In her review, Ketaki Chowkhani says that through the book Lamb examines single women’s lives in relation to education, work, care, love, sex, motherhood, pleasure, and friendships. “She strikes a balance between examining the challenges as well as the possibilities of being single.”
Vivek Narayanan who teaches creative writing at George Mason University in the U.S. has reimagined the Ramayana in a unique fashion. He reinterprets the story using mostly two-line verses, some prose and several illustrations. According to Narayanan, “the key to the Ramayana’s greatness lies in its innate multiplicity, its resilience and its potential for being retold.” In his review, Manohar Shetty says the beautifully produced book, After (HarperCollins), is a labour of love and though the text is almost 600 pages long, it is a worthwhile read. It takes into account not just the epic poem, but also has a section on reports of state violence against Naxals, atrocities in Kashmir, the displacement of the Pandit community, brutality against Dalits and so forth.
Ramayana reimagined: book review of poetry collection After by Vivek Narayanan
Spotlight
The People of the Indus (Penguin) is a 192-page graphic novel on the Indus Valley civilisation by Nikhil Gulati and Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, which intersperses academic expositions with a fictional narrative. Gulati’s journey began in Lothal, Gujarat, a site of the Indus Valley civilisation that the author-illustrator visited in 2013 when he was an MBA student at IIM-Ahmedabad. “At first glance, I remember being very, very disappointed,” he tells Avantika Shankar. “Why isn’t it visually stunning, like it [ancient civilizations] is supposed to be?” That question got him delving deeper into the subject, and he discovered fascinating things. “The lack of monuments, for example, was suggestive of a decentralised political structure, in which there were no kings. This led him to more intriguing questions about why and how the Indus Valley settlers actively rejected hierarchies of power.”
Nikhil Gulati on his new graphic novel, The People of the Indus
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- The Tech Phoenix: Satyam’s 100-Day Turnaround (Rupa) by T.N. Manoharan and V. Pattabhi Ram is an insider’s account of the 100 days that followed the confession of B. Ramalinga Raju, chairman of Satyam Computers, that the books of the company had been fixed for years. The government stepped in, and Manoharan was part of that team.
- In Highway to Swades (HarperCollins), Bhairavi Jani writes about her discovery of India in 2014, when she travelled across the country to find out what connects a diverse nation. She discovered 12 “superpowers” and writes a chapter on each. For example, in ‘Power of Enterprise’, she explores values that connect street vendors and tech entrepreneurs of Bengaluru.
- Arjavam (Red River) by Geetha Ravichandran draws upon her personal stories to weave a symphony of life itself through poetry. Divided into four parts, the poems touch upon nearly every human emotion and experience.
- The third book in ‘The Mahabharata Quest’ series combines science with history and mythology to produce a thriller. The Khandavprastha Conspiracy (Westland) by Christopher C. Doyle has humanity racing against time to solve a mystery and save themselves from a deadly disease.
