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Welcome to this edition of The Hindu on Books Newsletter.
The 2022 JCB Prize for Literature longlist is out, featuring 10 novels, six of which are translations. In a first, Chuden Kabimo’s Nepali novel, Song of the Soil (Rachna Books), translated by Ajit Baral, and set in the backdrop of the Gorkhaland agitation of the 1980s, is on the list; so is Mamang Dai’s Escaping the Land (Speaking Tiger), which tells the story of the people of Achingmori (now in Arunachal Pradesh) and how a massacre in the 1950s changed their lives. From the Penguin stable, there are three nominations: Geetanjali Shree’s International Booker Prize-winning Tomb of Sand, translated by Daisy Rockwell; Rahman Abbas’s Rohzin, which bagged the Sahitya Akademi award in 2018, and has been translated from the Urdu by Sabika Abbas; and Anees Salim’s The Odd Book of Baby Names. The other Urdu book on the list is Khalid Jawed’s The Paradise of Food (Juggernaut), translated by Baran Farooqi from the original Nemat Khana. Easterine Kire’s Spirit Nights (Simon&Schuster), Sheela Tomy’s Valli: A Novel (HarperCollins), translated by Jayasree Kalathil (she had won the JCB Prize in 2020 with S. Hareesh for Moustache), Manorajan Byapari’s Imaan (Westland), translated from the Bengali by Arunava Sinha, and Navtej Sarna’s Crimson Spring: A Novel (Aleph), with the Jallianwala Bagh massacre as the setting, complete the list. The shortlist of five books will be announced in October, and the winner in November. The Booker Prize shortlist will also be announced later this evening, we will bring you the lowdown in the next edition.
In reviews, we read an extract from Vinayak Chaturvedi’s new book on Hindutva ideologue V.D. Savarkar, Mohsin Hamid’s new novel, transgender activist Akkai Padmashali’s memoir, Jael Silliman’s Jewish history of Calcutta and more.
Books of the week
In Hindutva and Violence (Permanent Black), historian Vinayak Chaturvedi examines Hindutva ideologue V.D. Savarkar’s central claim that “Hindutva is not a word but history.” For Savarkar, says Chaturvedi, this history was strategic. He selected “chief actors” from the past who had turned to violence in a permanent war for “Hindutva” as the founding principle of a Hindu nation. At a time when there was a fragmenting of Hindu identity at multiple levels, Savarkar’s strategy was to build solidarity with the construction of “Hindu” through an argument of common blood, in which all blood was impure. Chaturvedi writes, “Affectively, Savarkar’s claim that Hindu blood was pure had a powerful consequence for uniting all Hindus. It allowed Savarkar to argue that Jains, Buddhist, and Sikhs all shared the same blood as “Hindus,” but so did all “untouchables,” low-castes, and tribals. Needless to say, this was a radical assertion that challenged the essence of social hierarchies encompassed within the existing caste system. It allowed Savarkar to establish a bloodline between all Hindus – across time – and thus the argument that historically all individuals sharing Hindu blood were responsible for creating a unified race or jati. In fact, Savarkar suggested that his turn to Hindutva was to create a new Hindu universal that conceptualised caste and class differences in ways that were inclusive for all Hindus. To accomplish this goal, Hindus only needed to feel that they shared their blood with all other Hindus.” Savarkar’s interpretation of blood did technically allow Hindu converts to Islam and Christianity to claim that Hindusthan was their motherland (as they also lived between the Indus and the seas) and their fatherland (as they still possessed the blood of Hindus), says Chaturvedi. “How then were Muslims to be shown as not really belonging to the land of the Hindus – Hindusthan? Savarkar’s solution to this problem was that Muslims did not consider Hindusthan their ‘holyland’. This was a key point.”
Mohsin Hamid’s new book, The Last White Man (Penguin), is the story of Anders, a white man, who wakes up one morning to find he has turned a “deep and undeniable brown.” The novel about race and difference takes a closer look what transpires when more and more people lose their whiteness. In his review, Andrew Whitehead writes that the book is written in the style of a fable. In the time of a movement like Black Lives Matter, it speaks to “centuries of white privilege; of building social status and identity on not being the other; of the deeply ingrained racism that continues to blight even the most economically advanced democracies.”
Review: Mohsin Hamid’s new book ‘The Last White Man’ is just a touch insipid
In Jewish Portraits, Indian Frames (Seagull Books), Jael Silliman traces the lives of four women in her mother’s family who were part of the Baghdadi diaspora that spread from Basra to Shanghai in the 19th and 20th centuries. Being a feminist, she wanted to write an intimate story about the women, who are often overlooked and forgotten, but provide keen insights into the lives and values of the community. The first portrait is of her great grandmother, Farha, who landed in Calcutta towards the end of the 19th century. Silliman also profiles her grandmother Mary, mother Flower and writes about herself. First published 20 years ago, Jewish Portraits has been reissued with a new preface. With barely a handful of Jews left in the city, Silliman’s social and cultural history is a great way to celebrate both a community and a city with a rich and cosmopolitan heritage. “The Calcutta Jewish community never experienced anti-Semitism and was able to thrive in every sphere of life as India. We prospered as did India,” says Silliman. Minority histories are critical to the story of India, and that is one reason why the book is important.
Akkai Padmashali’s memoir A Small Step in a Long Journey (Zubaan Books), as told to Gowri Vijayakumar, is a candid narrative which conveys the cesspool of emotions of Akkai’s life, as also tracing the history of the transgender movement. In her review, Soma Basu says that Akkai faced egregious sexual violence but by narrating how she overcame the humiliation, she shows that by not allowing herself to be seen as victim gives the strength to take on challenges. Akkai kept breaking stereotypes once she took off as an activist with LGBT rights group Sangama in Bengaluru in the 1990s. She has worked tirelessly for the community and says that it is the failure to accept gender diversity, in legislation, judiciary and society, which hurts it the most.
Spotlight
David Davidar, veteran editor and current publisher of New Delhi-based Aleph Book Company, has curated a new anthology, A Case of Indian Marvels: Stories from the Country’s Finest New Writers, a collection of short fiction by 40 writers, all of whom were 40 years or younger in 2020. In an email interview with Mini Kapoor, he says that the stories of these writers belonging to the millennial generation and Gen Z are very diverse. “Some of them are cast in the classical social realist mode; others are written as fables or with dollops of magic realism or mythology or fantasy woven in. The range is impressive.” Asked whether it is a worry that Indian publishing, especially in English, is driven by non-fiction, Davidar says, “Big, ambitious, eye-opening non-fiction is the most exciting thing about the Indian writing and publishing scene at the moment. I am not worried about the lack of stunning literary fiction; if a decade or so passed without major novels, it’s not a big deal.”
India through a young lens: David Davidar on the new anthology, ‘A Case of Indian Marvels’
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- In a post-pandemic world, can India become a ‘new China’ to serve as a key engine of global growth, overcoming setbacks as well as earlier policy missteps like demonetisation? Saurav Jha examines a transactional, even predatory geo-economic climate, and suggests what India must do to face the challenges in Negotiating the New Normal: How India Must Grow in a Pandemic-Ridden World (Hachette India).
- Lives on the Edge: Tuberculosis in Marginalised Populations (Speaking Tiger) by Radheshyam Jadhav focuses on the lives of the poor affected by tuberculosis. He explains why TB cannot be controlled or eliminated without providing free and accessible healthcare, food security, and safe housing. Though considered a national emergency, TB still lacks the political attention, and people-centred policies, Jadhav points out.
- The sixth instalment of the bestselling series from Robert Galbraith (aka J.K. Rowling), The Ink Black Heart (Hachette), sees private detective Cormoran Strike and his partner Robin Ellacott in pursuit of an online stalker who has murdered one of the creators of a popular British cartoon.
- Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s Before Your Memory Fades (Pan Macmillan) is the third novel in the Before the Coffee Gets Cold series. Four customers walk into Donna Donna, a tiny café on the hillside of Mount Hakodate in northern Japan, to use their ticket to time-travel. Through that, they explore grief, love, ambition and second chances.
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