30 books to add to your reading list in November 2023

1. Another India: The Making of the World’s Largest Muslim Minority, 1947–77 by Pratinav Anil (Penguin Random House India): A fresh take on the history of post- independence India, Another India reveals how Muslim leaders in Congress and the community abandoned those they claimed to represent. Pratinav Anil, a Lecturer in History at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford, argues that Muslims, since 1947, have had to contend with discrimination, disadvantage, deindustrialization, dispossession and disenfranchisement, as well as an unresponsive leadership. He explores the rise and fall of the Indian Muslim elite and the birth of the nationalist Muslim, and emphasizes the importance of class in understanding the dynamics of Indian politics.

2. Bear With Me, Amma: Memoirs of M.T. Vasudevan Nair, translated by Gita Krishnankutty (Penguin): The memoirs as well as the stories in this volume were chosen by M.T. Vasudevan Nair (90) or MT, one of the most illustrious writers and film-makers from Kerala. MT grew up in the village of Kudallur and his writings evoke the landscape of the years he spent there. Many of the characters in his stories are based on people who lived in this region and the stories themselves often retell incidents that happened there. The stories and autobiographical accounts pay homage to his childhood, his craft and most importantly, to his Amma, whose restful presence they poignantly capture.

3. Muslim Politics in India by Hamid Dalwai, edited and translated by Dilip Chitre (Penguin): Born in a lower-middle-class family in rural Maharashtra in 1932, Hamid Dalwai was a Muslim moderniser, who worked towards promoting reason and justice among his community. In Muslim Politics in India, he analysed Muslim politics that appeared in post-Independence India. First published in 1968, it got an enlarged edition as Muslim Politics in Secular India in 1972. This translation, the first of its kind, is a product of several meetings which Dalwai had with poet Dilip Chitre, during which the latter made extensive notes and rendered them into articles in English. It brings together his most evocative and fiery essays which resonate with our times.

4. Adman-Madman: Unapologetically Prahlad by Prahlad Kakar, with Rupangi Sharma (HarperCollins India): In this no-holds-barred memoir, Prahlad Kakar, the enfant terrible of the advertising industry, serves up scoops of his most unforgettable experiences, peppered with viciously funny anecdotes from his personal life and laced with lessons on how to tell a riveting story in thirty seconds. He reveals secrets about the trade to create memorable brands, takes us behind the scenes of celebrated advertisements that launched the careers of models who then went on to become famous Bollywood actors, and shares the genesis of this accidental serial entrepreneur and, above all, tells us how to live life with complete abandon. As the man who wears many hats, literally and figuratively, Kakar tips his hat to life’s incidental wisdom with raucous laughter.

5. The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire by Tim Schwab (Penguin): You know Bill Gates as the founder of Microsoft; the philanthropic billionaire who has donated big funds to good causes around the world. But there’s another side to him. Gates Foundation is not just an innocent charity giving away money. The Bill Gates Problem is a provocative and timely counter-narrative about one of the world’s most widely recognized individuals, portraying him as a bully and monopolist, convinced of his own righteousness and intent on imposing his ideas, his solutions, and his leadership on everyone else. It raises a vital political question around economic inequality and the erosion of democratic institutions: why should the super-rich be able to transform their wealth into political power? 

6. Floor Coverings from Kashmir: Kaleen Carpets, Namdah, Gabba, Ari Rugs and Wagoo Mats by Promil Pande (Niyogi Books): This book focuses on the floor covering traditions of Kashmir, known as a producer of pashmina shawl. However, the region also produces a variety of floor coverings that are an essential part of its households and its handicraft industry. The variety of floor coverings produced differs in design, their mode of production, the raw material used and the region of production. It identifies significant cultural units in design to showcase the age-old craft traditions in production that are integral to regional tangible and intangible cultural practices. It enables an understanding of the cultural context of Kashmir that has a strong influence on the production of floor coverings, lending a unique identity to its kaleen, which is otherwise often associated with Persian carpets.

7. The Greatest Malayalam Stories Ever Told: Selected and translated by A. J. Thomas (Aleph): Selected and translated by poet, editor, and translator A. J. Thomas, this collection of 50 short stories translated from the Malayalam includes established masters such as Karoor Neelakanta Pillai, Vaikom Basheer, Lalithambika Antharjanam, Ponkunnam Varkey, Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai, SK Pottekkatt, Uroob, OV Vijayan, MT Vasudevan Nair, and Paul Zacharia, as well as accomplished new voices such as N. Prabhakaran, CV Balakrishnan, Aymanam John, Chandramathi, and others. These stories portray the complex tapestry of the Malayali experience down the ages, with brilliance and nuance. Thomas, former editor of Indian Literature, the Sahitya Akademi’s bi-monthly journal, has more than twenty books to his credit.

8. M.K. Nambyar: A Constitutional Visionary by K.K. Venugopal, with Suhrith Parthasarathy and Suhasini Sen (Penguin): Written by legal luminary K.K. Venugopal (senior advocate and former Attorney General of India) — the son of one of India’s greatest constitutional lawyers, M.K. Nambiar — this biography provides a fascinating account of Nambiar’s life. It not only tells the story of the man but also recapitulates Indian legal history dating to pre-Independence times, including some of the landmark cases Nambiar fought in his legal career. Some of these cases have contributed to the development of constitutional law in India. For example, A.K. Gopalan v. State of Madras resulted in the basic structure doctrine, which continues to guide and inspire lawyers and judges.

9. The Assamese: A Portrait of a Community by Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty (Aleph): An enquiry into the diverse cultures and peoples of the state, The Assamese is a comprehensive and nuanced portrait of one of India’s oldest and most distinctive communities, which delves into all the varying aspects of the land and its people — the diverse physical appearance of the Assamese and what it reveals about their origins; the multiple kingdoms and rulers of the region from antiquity onwards, of whom the Ahoms are the best known; the Assamese language and its rich linguistic provenance; the folk beliefs and celebrations of Assamese culture, such as the three Bihu festivals, which cut across boundaries of caste and religion; the significance of the mighty Brahmaputra, the Red River, in the lives of the people; the quintessential food, drink, and cooking techniques to be found across the region; the many distinctive forms of cultural expression; and, finally, the politics of the state and how it informs the nature of contemporary Assam.

10. Camouflaged: Forgotten Stories From Battlefields by Probal Dasgupta (Juggernaut Books): This book by the author of Watershed 1967 India’s Forgotten Victory over China excavates and presents hidden stories — tales of undaunted courage, loyalty and sacrifices made in the cauldron of war — from India’s military past. Compiled from personal interviews and a wealth of archival material, Camouflaged, spanning over a century of conflicts — from the ravaged terrains of Italy and France during the World Wars to the icy summits of north India’s borderlands and to Indian cities gripped by terror attacks — is plotted alongside the arc of India’s journey in the last hundred years. These fascinating stories from battlefields near and far have been lost and forgotten, or rarely recorded for the history books. 

11. H-Pop: The Secretive World of Hindutva Pop Stars by Kunal Purohit (HarperCollins): From catchy songs with acerbic lyrics to poetry recited in kavi sammelans to social media influencers shaping opinions with their brand of ‘breaking news’ to books rescripting historical events, ‘Hindutva Pop’ or H-Pop is steadily creating societal acceptability for Hindutva’s core beliefs. By cleverly inserting Hindutva into popular culture, H-Pop normalises Islamophobia, demonises minorities and vilifies its critics each day, without ever making headlines. Independent journalist Kunal Purohit investigates H-Pop’s popularity as he travels through India, profiling some of its most prolific and popular creators — its stars and celebrities. He interrogates whether the creators are driven by ideology or commerce, and what motivates the audience to consume their daily dose of bigotry. In doing so, Purohit uncovers the frightening face of a New India — united by hate, divided by art.

12. Living the Beatles Legend: The Untold Story of Mal Evans by Kenneth Womack (HarperCollins): The first full-length biography of Malcolm Evans, the Beatles’ long-time roadie, personal assistant, and devoted friend, who was an invaluable member of the band’s inner circle. A towering figure in horn-rimmed glasses, Evans loomed large in the Beatles’ story, contributing at times as a performer and sometime lyricist, while struggling mightily to protect his beloved “boys.” For decades, his diaries, manuscripts, and memorabilia was missing, seemingly lost forever...until now. With access to unpublished archives, Beatles’ scholar Kenneth Womack tells Mal’s unknown story at the heart of the Beatles’ legend. Living the Beatles’ Legend is the missing puzzle piece in the Fab Four’s incredible story.

13. Shimmering Details, Volume I: A Memoir by Péter Nádas, translated by Judith Sollosy (Pan Macmillan): In his illuminating memoir, Hungarian writer playwright, and essayist Péter Nádas, considered to be a strong contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature, probes the history of his family from the late 19th century to his birth in 1942 and beyond. He investigates what it means to reconstruct a life without recourse to the techniques and embellishments of traditional storytelling. Taking his firmly embedded memories — the ‘shimmering details’ that give this work its title — as his starting point, Nádas dissects them using a method inspired by Freudian dream interpretation. Sounds, scenes, smells, feelings — all are probed for details that might allow him to reconstruct what happened, and when and where. He deconstructs the stories of others, too — moving in concentric circles toward cause and effect, until their meaning and significance come to light.

14. The Gallery by Manju Kapur (Penguin): Six years after her last novel, Brothers, Manju Kapur is back with her seventh novel. Set in Delhi and Nepal, The Gallery surveys the lives of two families over three decades, becoming, in the process, an exploration of sexual freedom and the world of art. It pursues the question of what it takes for a woman to stand up for herself, through the intertwined lives of Minal and Ellora Sahni, wife and daughter of a successful New Delhi lawyer, and Maitrye and Tashi, wife and daughter of the office peon at the Sahni law practice. As the women navigate their own desires, they are forced to re-examine marriage, as well as to consider the role of art as property, value and self-expression. The titular gallery that Minal opens becomes a powerful symbol of both autonomy and constraint.

15. The Patient In Bed Number 12 by Raj Kamal Jha (Penguin): Raj Kamal Jha, Chief Editor of The Indian Express, teases out novels from the newsroom that force us to reflect on the society we inhabit. In his 2019 novel, City and the Sea, Jha delved into violence against women, exploring how we are all complicit in the culture that supports it. In his latest novel, The Patient in Bed Number 12, he treads a similar territory. This time, however, he frames his narrative as a confession from parent to child, from child to parent, and links fragile strands of individual lives into a mosaic of hope and heartbreak. It’s a novel steeped in the horror of the here and now: a ghost comes to life in an abandoned fridge; children fill empty jars with the night’s darkness; a young couple plan how to seek permission for their love; and three men with a phone camera turn a family’s world upside down. 

16. A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? by Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith (Penguin): Space technologies and space business are progressing fast, but we lack the knowledge needed to have space kids, build space farms, and create space nations in a way that doesn’t spark conflict back home. In a world hurtling toward human expansion into space, A City on Mars — from the bestselling authors of Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That'll Improve and/or Ruin Everything (2017) — investigates whether the dream of new worlds won’t create nightmares, both for settlers and the people they leave behind. In the process, the Weinersmiths answer every question about space you’ve ever wondered about, and many you’ve never considered. It’s an investigation into the benefits (and hazards) of becoming multiplanetary that takes a look at what needs to be done before we consider leaving earth.

17. Absolution by Alice McDermott (Bloomsbury): Set during the earliest days of American involvement in Vietnam, the ninth novel by one of America’s most observant and affecting writers focuses on narrator Tricia, a Navy spouse, and her friendship with Charlene, an American businessman’s wife. After Charlene’s daughter Rainey gets a miniature ao dai for her Barbie doll from the family seamstress, Charlene cooks up a scheme that will ultimately push Tricia to her limit. A firmly feminist accounting of the era’s sins against women from both West and East, Absolution is an account of women’s lives on the margins of the Vietnam War. American women ― American wives ― have been mostly minor characters in the literature of the Vietnam War, but in Absolution they take center stage.

18. Day: A Novel by Michael Cunningham (Penguin): Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Michael Cunningham (known for novels like A Home at the End of the World, Flesh and Blood, and The Hours) is back with his first novel in a decade. Set during the pandemic, but not a pandemic novel, Day — which unfolds in three acts, each set on a single day in April over three successive years — is a story about love in a changing world. Cunningham said in an interview that it’s a story about people dealing with something terrible, and about survival, but more centrally about love: “I’m deeply interested in love — a sense of happiness, of living the life that one has hoped to live. And love is most interesting when it has survived terrible tests.”

19. So Late in the Day: Stories of Women and Men by Claire Keegan (Penguin): Booker Prize finalist Claire Keegan (author of Small Things Like These and Foster) is known and celebrated for her powerful short fiction. So Late in the Day — a triptych of succinct tales — showcases her skill with three stories of love, betrayal and gender dynamics: ‘So Late in the Day’, ‘The Long and Painful Death’ and Antarctica. Newly revised and expanded, these stories also from an arc from Keegan’s earliest to her most recent work, with each story probing the factors that corrupt what could be between women and men: a lack of generosity, the weight of expectation, the looming threat of violence.

20. To Free the Captives: A Plea for the American Soul by Tracy K. Smith (Penguin): A revelatory journey of family, love and history by former US Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith, To Free the Captives is a long and loving look at life in America as it continues to struggle with racism. In 2020, heartsick from constant assaults on Black life, Smith found herself soul-searching and digging into the historical archive for help in navigating the “din of human division and strife.” In her latest, she draws on several avenues of thinking — personal, documentary, and spiritual — to understand America as a nation and what it might hope to mean to its citizens. It’s a call to action focused on “tending to America’s oldest wounds and meeting the urgencies of our present.” 

21. Question 7 by Richard Flanagan (Penguin): Winner of the 2014 Booker Prize for his novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Richard Flanagan’s latest — which begins at a love hotel by Japan’s Inland Sea and ends by a river in Tasmania — is about the choices we make about love and the chain reaction that follows. By way of H. G. Wells and Rebecca West’s affair through 1930s nuclear physics to Flanagan's father working as a slave labourer near Hiroshima when the atom bomb is dropped, this daisy chain of events reaches fission when Flanagan as a young man finds himself trapped in a rapid on a wild river not knowing if he is to live or to die. At once a love song to his island home and to his parents, this blend of dream, history, place and memory is about how our lives so often arise out of the stories of others and the stories we invent about ourselves.

22. The Little Liar: A Novel by Mitch Albom (Hachette India): Bestselling author Mitch Albom returns with a novel that moves from a coastal Greek city to America, where the intertwined lives of three survivors are forever changed by the perils of deception and the grace of redemption. Set during the Holocaust (his first with such a setting), The Little Liar follows the journey of eleven-year-old Nico Krispis, who must confront a heart-wrenching decision that forever changes his life. Nico and his companions, Sebastian and Fanni, survive the death camps and search for each other. Narrated by the voice of Truth itself, it’s a parable that explores honesty, survival, revenge and devotion, the harm we inflict with our deceits, and the power of love to redeem us.

23. His Majesty’s Headhunters: The Siege Of Kohima That Shaped World History by Mmhonlümo Kikon (Penguin): The siege of Kohima is considered a game-changing event that altered the course of world history during the Second World War. However, surprisingly, precious little is known about the siege. His Majesty’s Headhunters aims to enrich our understanding of this battle and shows how it redefined a whole era. Providing a fresh perspective of Nagaland and its warriors, it uncovers the untold story of the siege, regarded as one of the more celebrated battles of D-Day and often referred to as the ‘Stalingrad of the East’ by Western scholars. Drawing on records left by the officers and soldiers who fought in Kohima, it brings to light the valour and spirit of the Naga ‘headhunters’, who made the supreme sacrifice to protect the honour of their people.

24. The Yellow Book: A Traveller’s Diary by Amitava Kumar (HarperCollins): Amitava Kumar’s The Blue Book (2022), like John Berger’s Bento’s Sketchbook, goaded us to engage with the world around us in a meaningful manner to see better and write better. Like his works of fiction, the drawings and musings in the book are “a response to our present world—a world that bestows upon us love and loss, travel through diverse landscapes, deaths from a pandemic, fake news and, if we care to notice, visions of blazing beauty.” In The Yellow Book, he shows us, yet again, how we can ‘assemble a life’; and, in our troubled times, why we must ’plant memories and continue to believe in spring.’ This time, he writes about his time in London with a group of American students on a study tour — in the midst of the Omicron wave — and in India, in his native Motihari, and other places. A time when Russia attacked Ukraine and Salman Rushdie was assaulted with a knife in upstate New York.

25. Unboxing Bengaluru: The City Of New Beginnings by Malini Goyal and Prashanth Prakash (Penguin): From ed-tech to health-tech, mobility to EVs, Bengaluru is at the heart of the multiple shifts underway in the digital era. In Unboxing Bengaluru, Malini Goyal and Prashanth Prakash capture the city’s journey and the ensuing social, behavioural, technological and consumptive changes. They look at why people are drawn to the city; how the cosmopolitan culture and multi-linguistic society gives it a distinct flavour; the parallel economies that have cropped up; how the influx of young workers have changed the city; and the fault lines of unplanned and poorly managed growth over the decades. Filled with vignettes, reportage and data, Unboxing Bengaluru is an exploration into the city that has been through many avatars ― pensioner’s paradise, PSU capital, garden city, India’s Silicon city and pub capital. 

26. Baumgartner by Paul Auster (Penguin): A tender and taut novel of love, memory, and grief from Paul Auster, best-selling, award-winning author and one of the great American prose stylists (known for expansive novels like 4 3 2 1, Sunset Park, The Book of Illusions, Moon Palace, and The New York Trilogy) Baumgartner revolves around an aging philosophy professor, who struggles to move on after the accidental death of his wife nearly a decade earlier. It shuttles between present and past, between a solitary life of writing and a passionate, decades-long relationship that continues to haunt him.

27. Being Muslim in Hindu India: A Critical View by Ziya Us Salam (HarperCollins): Centred on the ‘othering’ of Muslims, using tactics of both peace and violence, senior journalist Ziya Us Salam’s latest starts from a denial of tickets to Muslim candidates by political parties or missing names from electoral rolls, and goes on to highlight the attempts to wipe out complete passages of the history of medieval India, as if the period from 1206 to 1857 existed in a vacuum. However, it ends on a note of hope, which stems from the fact that even as the community faces political marginalization, the success of many of its young men and women gives India’s Muslims hope for a better tomorrow.

28. Fighting Retreat: Winston Churchill and India by Walter Reid (Penguin): Winston Churchill was closely connected with India from 1896, when he landed in Bombay with his regiment, until 1947, when Independence was finally achieved. No other British statesman had such a long association with the subcontinent ― or interfered in its politics so consistently and harmfully. Fighting Retreat explains why Churchill, who was liberally disposed to Britain’s subjects in general, unscrupulously fought tooth and nail to frustrate every attempt to allow India to gain independence.

29. The Secret City: A Novel of Delhi by Robin Gupta (Speaking Tiger): The tragi-comic story of a Yuvraj Rupinder Singh, heir to the throne of the princely state of Mubarakpur in Punjab, who moves to the palatial Mubarakpur House in the heart of New Delhi after India is free and a democracy. It is narrated by a near invalid whom no one desires, and who is happy to be a voyeur, watching Prince Rupert love, lust and self-destruct. About four decades later, he tells the story of the Prince and the secret world of others like him. Replete with scandal, pathos, tenderness and black humour, The Secret City gives us a glimpse into the gay underground of Delhi in the 1970s and ’80s.

30. The Vulnerables by Sigrid Nunez (Hachette): An inquiry into the nature and purpose of writing itself, this genre-bending novel is a meditation on our contemporary era, as a solitary female narrator asks what it means to be alive at this complex moment in history, and considers how our present reality affects the way a person looks back on her past. It reveals what happens when strangers are willing to open their hearts to each other and how far even small acts of caring can go to ease another’s distress.

(Curated by Nawaid Anjum)