By Ankur Lekhak Samuh. Illustrated by Allen Shaw

Written by young writers, the stories are full of keen observations and lively details. We see the world through their eyes, endowing it with familiarity, attentiveness, compassion and often humour. The book doesn’t follow a main singular narrative. Instead, each story opens a door into the past, present and future that lives on in the oral accounts of the people of Khichdipur. Under the shadow of the monstrous landfill, we are introduced to the worlds existing in Khichdipur’s blocks—Dhobighat, Dairy Farm, Murga Mandi, Bangali Basti, and Indra Camp, etc.


Reviewed by: Ragini Lalit
Written and Illustrated by Siddhi Vartak

A bustling urban basti greets on the first page. Intricately detailed roofs and fixtures, water tanks and antennas, herons perched on the pillars, the mosque top with loudspeakers and orange flying festoons leave one transfixed…


Reviewed by: Bansi
By Ray Bradbury. Translated from the original English by Laltu. Illustrated by Akshay Sethi

On a fundamental level, the book would push the young reader to question humanity’s invincibility and technological advancement in times of climate change, artificial intelligence and COVID-19. Though this book will not answer all the questions, it puts forth more complex questions for readers to follow and explore. It can be an excellent classroom book experiment with varied pedagogical methods for different age groups.


Reviewed by: Asfia Jamal and Kaniska.
By Michael Mandelbaum

Regardless, the book’s framework still makes the following speculations possible.
First, even as the societal consensus around America’s ruling ideology of democracy, capitalism and freedoms has collapsed at home, the number of its takers internationally has dwindled, including within the West, as the rise of inward looking, nationalist and far-Right forces across the West indicates.


Reviewed by: Atul Mishra
By Stephen Maher

The first section of Part Two deals with Trudeau’s foreign policy, Canada’s failure to win a non-permanent seat in the UN Security Council and his challenges in dealing with US President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.


Reviewed by: Uma Purushothaman
By Vyjayanti Raghavan

The book is structured imaginatively in two sections, A and B. Section A deals with Northeast Asia and B with South Asia. In Section A, there are three sub-chapters which discuss extensively the countries in the region, such as North Korea, Japan and South Korea and their relationship with China, in particular under Xi Jinping, and separately the influence of Donald Trump in Northeast Asia. In Section B, relations of the US with three countries of South Asia, namely, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan are studied in detail followed by the developments in these countries under President Trump.


Reviewed by: Sudhir T. Devare