Tabish Khair has a knack for picking the most search-engine optimised titles for his books. They tap directly into whatever aspect of Muslim life most morbidly fascinates us at the moment. In 2012, a year after Osama Bin Laden was killed, he published How To Fight Islamist Terror From The Missionary Position; early this year,… Continue reading Meet the women who love ISIS
When Rana Ayyub pitched the story to her editors at Tehelka in 2010, it was met with enthusiasm. Gujarat’s home minister and current president of the BJP, Amit Shah was in jail at the time in connection with a ‘fake encounter’ case (he was later acquitted by the CBI), one that Ayyub had reported on… Continue reading Book of the week: Gujarat Files – Anatomy Of A Cover Up by Rana Ayyub
CliffsNotes: This peculiar South Korean novel edged out Elena Ferrante’s The Story Of The Lost Child and Orhan Pamuk’s A Strangeness In My Mind to win this year’s Man Booker International Prize; now awarded to a single novel and not an entire body of work. The story hinges on an uninspiring premise: Yeong-hye, a plain woman… Continue reading Book of the week: The Vegetarian by Han Kang
CliffsNotes: ‘The most shocking thriller you’ll read this year’ is the publisher pitch for the first part of LS Hilton’s trilogy. From the novel’s rapid climb on bestseller lists around the world, this isn’t reckless overselling, either. Judith Rashleigh, Maestra’s ambitious, intemperate heroine straddles two realities; her day job keeps her at the unglamorous end of… Continue reading Book of the week: Maestra by LS Hilton
CliffsNotes: Released in 2011, when she was 23, Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth is Warsan Shire’s first full-length work, a poetry pamphlet. She writes as a black woman in the UK, ripped out of a homeland she barely knows ravaged by war and genocide. She deals with themes of violence, identity, infidelity, love and… Continue reading Book of the week: Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth by Warsan Shire
Tahmima Anam didn’t set out to write a love story. The sweeping historical saga that is her Bengal trilogy has grappled with gnarly issues of politics, religion and identity. Over ten years, the author has mined her own family history to chronicle the birth of a nation. When it came to the third and last book, however,… Continue reading Idolise powerful female authors? You’re going to love Tahmima Anam
Cliffsnotes: “Another fucking cancer diary” by prolific author Jenny Diski, which began as a series of columns for the London Review of Books in 2014 after she was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and given “two or three” years to live. The memoir ponders the banality and cliché of living with cancer and Diski’s uneasy, 50-year relationship… Continue reading Book of the week – In Gratitude by Jenny Diski
Publishing house Juggernaut launched its smartphone app yesterday with 100+ titles, most interestingly a collection of erotic short fiction by Sunny Leone. The stories on Sweet Dreams will be published at 10pm every night, starting with ‘Seat 7E’, about a sexual encounter on an airplane. CliffsNotes: Leone uses to the familiar boy-meets-girl set-up in in this… Continue reading Book of the week: Sweet Dreams by Sunny Leone
Family Planning (2008), Karan Mahajan’s debut novel, begins with an explanation for its protagonist’s sizable progeny. The Delhi minister and father-of-13 finds the pregnant body irresistible, for reasons that include the unborn fetus “pleading for another sibling — begging, sobbing, moaning through the parched throat of his wife.” The Delhi native developed the sharp, merciless… Continue reading Name to know: Karan Mahajan
CliffsNotes: In 1996 Delhi, a small bomb goes off in the city’s bustling Lajpat Nagar market and has a lasting impact on two neighbouring families. The Khuranas lose both children in the blast; the Ahmeds’ son Mansoor suffers injuries but survives. As an adult, carrying the physical and psychological burden of the blast, Mansoor is… Continue reading Book of the week: The Association Of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan
At the first meeting of the ELLE Book Club, debut author Rosalyn D’Mello discussed her new erotic memoir A Handbook For My Lover (HarperCollins india) at Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai. As countless glasses of wine by Grover Zampa Vineyards and delicious starters and desserts by Indigo made their way around an intimate gathering, she spoke of love, sex, religion and writing with… Continue reading ELLE Book Club: In conversation with Rosalyn D’Mello
CliffsNotes: With sly humour, magical characters and crisp writing, Helen Oyeyemi ties together nine short stories with a common theme of a lock and key. Characters from certain short stories show up in others to give the book a sense of continuity and let you follow their journey across time zones and geographical locations; but it… Continue reading Book of the week: What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi
CliffsNotes: Through laconic personal narratives, Anjali Joseph shapes the disconnected lives of the novel’s two protagonists – Claire, a 35-year-old single mother employed at a near-extinct shoe factory in Norwich and Arun, a sixty-something chappal-maker from Kohlapur. Only connected by their trade, Claire and Arun navigate the mundane and the tragic, with little bursts of… Continue reading Book of the week: The Living by Anjali Joseph
It feels like cutting off my twenties, putting them in a box and sending them off to sea,” says Molly Crabapple, 32, about her memoir Drawing Blood (HarperCollins). “To write about your past is to make yourself separate from it. I feel adrift after that.” The personal has always tangled with the political in Crabapple’s… Continue reading Name to know: Molly Crabapple
CliffsNotes: A psychiatrist from Harvard and his daughter, a comedy writer, tell you how to eject your emotions—those bossy little monsters with poor impulse control—from the driver’s seat and hand over the wheel to your calmer, more rational side. According to the good doc, sharing your feelings sets you up to expect immediate relief from whatever… Continue reading Book of the week: F*ck Feelings
CliffsNotes: The memoir offers an intimate look at multi-hyphenate Padma Lakshmi’s life – from her immigrant childhood in the United States to her stormy marriage to author Salman Rushdie, and her long-drawn battle with endometriosis. The Top Chef host narrates her story with a startling honesty, and routinely layers personal experience with good food advice.… Continue reading Book of the week: Love, Loss, And What We Ate: A Memoir
