Reviews of latest books and articles on authors - Frontline

New books on the shelves

A Japanese cat book classic in translation, a treatise on shudra nationalism in Indian history, and much more.

Safdar Hashmi in “Aya Chunav”, Janam’s first political play performed in Hissar, Haryana, in 1981.

Safdar Hashmi’s transformative approach to theatre as a democratic force

Through plays like Hatyare and Aurat, Hashmi tackled communalism and gender issues while building an inclusive, collaborative artistic practice.

Korea through Han Kang’s The Vegetarian

Han’s novel critiques Korean society and the violence that lies beneath its surface. This year’s Nobel Prize honours her statement of resistance.

Love in the time of ‘love jehad’: The complex lives of Hindu-Muslim couples in India

Ashis Roy explores the everyday challenges of urban middle-class Hindu-Muslim couples even as it deftly challenges toxic generalisations.

Chintan Girish Modi

The “Terrific Ten” who in 1997 were assembled by The New Yorker for the “Group Shot”: (top to bottom, first column) Amit Chaudhuri, Arundhati Roy, Vikram Chandra, (middle row) Kiran Desai, Amitav Ghosh, Ardashir Vakil, Salman Rushdie, (last column) Rohinton Mistry, Anita Desai, and Vikram Seth.

A photograph captured ten novelists who transformed Indian writing forever—and marked the end of an era

Revisiting The New Yorker’s iconic 1997 photograph of 10 “original gangsters” of the Indian English novel.

Shivendra Singh

What defines ‘Odia literature’?

Is it the language, the land, or the cultural identity that makes literature truly Odia?

Stories that are close to the bone

From menstrual taboos to interfaith marriage: Shahina K. Rafiq’s unabashed collection reveals intimate truths of Indian women’s lives.

Chittajit Mitra

More stories from Books

Fresh piper nigrum on the tree.

Pepper trail

Anusua Mukherjee

Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, the second sarsanghchalak of the RSS (right), with Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, leader of the Hindu Mahasabha and fellow Hindu nationalist thinker, in Pune. Nathuram Godse, the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi, was a member of both the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha and was obsessed with the idea of making India a Hindu Rashtra.

What was the role of RSS chief Golwalkar in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi?

It was only about three weeks after Golwalkar threatened to “silence” Gandhi on December 8, 1947, that Godse set out to work on an assassination plan.

Dhirendra K. Jha

Dharavi, Mumbai, 2010.

Death at a discount

In Baburao Bagul’s collection of gut-wrenching stories, Mumbai’s graveyards, brothels, and slums form the backdrop to a theatre of desperate poverty.

Janhavi Acharekar

Mir Taqi Mir in 1786.

Mir in Americanese

Ranjit Hoskote’s translations of Mir’s poetry feel hurried and stiff and do not cohere as a collection.

Amitabha Bagchi

New books on the shelves

A genre-bending novel translated from Malayalam, a first-hand account of Kashmir’s geopolitics translated from Hindi, and much more.

The restless traveller was still following the tune of the entrance-flute, overflowing from the land of freedom.

The restless traveller: A vignette

Translated from Bengali by Dhrubajyoti Sarkar

Kazi Nazrul Islam

Exotic Landscape (1910), oil on canvas by Henri Rousseau.

Tragedy and folklore write a star-crossed love in The Distaste of the Earth

Longlisted for the 2024 JCB Prize for Literature, Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih’s novel, is epic in scope but suffers from a lack of editorial care.

A container vessel with a full load of cargo sailing from Kochi port, a file photograph. The western Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea have long offered sea routes for trade between regions dotting their shores.

A nuanced view of pre-colonial maritime networks

Sanjay Subrahmanyam scans the intricate links between trade, politics, and cultural exchange in the western Indian Ocean from 1440 to 1640.

Han Kang giving a speech in Gwangju, South Korea, in 2023.

Why has literature Nobel winner Han Kang turned down celebratory events?

Han’s refusal stems from her conviction that writers must bear witness to global suffering, prioritising collective anguish over personal achievement.

Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee

Prime Minister Morarji Desai presenting the National UNESCO Award for 1977 to Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay in New Delhi on December 18, 1977.

Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay: The rebel who saw tomorrow

Nico Slate highlights how much of today’s feminist dialogue echoes feminist freedom fighter Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay’s ideas from decades ago.

Uma Mahadevan-Dasgupta

Supporters of Imran Khan at a rally in Karachi on August 23, 2014. In Fallout, “The Project”, which Salman Masood claims was the Pakistan Army’s design to bring Khan to power, gains momentum in 2014, which is where the book begins.

Salman Masood’s Fallout throws readers into the thick of Pakistan’s political turmoil

The book recaps the country’s past decade with a focus on the civil-military power struggle as manifested through Imran Khan.

Jerry Pinto: “What led you to the bhakti poem is its mutability, its subtlety, its multivalence.”

Bhakti is a matter of fire and blood: Jerry Pinto

Translator of Marathi saint-poets’ abhangs talks about the passion and peril of devotional poetry, and why it demands new interpretations across time.

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