By Appadurai Muttulingam. Translated from the original Tamil by Kavitha Muralidharan

Most of these stories are those of survival and not lofty heroism. Put in vulnerable and helpless situations, where solutions lie beyond their control, the courage and maturity of the characters come across in their resilience, tolerance and acceptance, despite their flaws. As readers, we witness a growth in our own empathy and understanding of the conditions of being a refugee.


Reviewed by: Aazhi Arasi
By Qurratulain Hyder. Translated from the original Urdu by Fatima Rizvi and Sufia Kidwai

The mouse offers the following response: ‘My Dear Lady, you will have to carry out a lot of research to write about them.’ This feels like an evasion to me. After all, the equally Ashraf Rahi Masoom Raza didn’t need to do a lot of research to write Aadha Gaon and the Hindu Khatri Krishna Sobti—whose Zindaginama, while centring her own caste, didn’t exclude anyone—explicitly rejected the need for research, arguing, much like Proust himself, that the writer just needed to notice and internalize what was around them. In a recent article on the Pasmanda experience, Khalid Anis Ansari says that he is ‘…attempt[ing] to capture the experience of the Muslim caste, not by unearthing the hidden secrets of everyday routines, but by shedding light on what is right in front of us and for which nothing more is required but “to take notice”.’


Reviewed by: Amitabha Bagchi
By Sopan Joshi

The book is a repository of information of the numerous varieties that are cultivated in the country. Thanks to poor shelf-life most varieties do not make it beyond their area of cultivation. There are varieties restricted to specific orchards and trees. Melodious names like Kohitoor, Mankurad, Imam Pasand and Neelum are still common, but Ratna and Sindhu are niche varieties of specific areas of Maharashtra. Rani Pasand in Murshidabad, Bengal and Champa in Champaran Bihar rarely make it beyond their territory.


Reviewed by: Sohail Akbar
By Tabinda Jalil-Burney

The intimate style of Jalil-Burney’s writing is like walking through the several rooms of her house from within which one can hear Ruqaiyya Khala’s hearty laughs in one corner to Abba’s serious recitation of Urdu poems in another, as each chapter narrates a life story about a family member, seamlessly tied to a culinary memory or a dietary choice peculiar to that incident.


Reviewed by: Suman Bhagchandani
By Swadesh Singh

Needless to say, Modian Consensus: The Rediscovery of Bharat remains an appropriate intervention in the growing plethora of relevant analyses of current politics in India. The recently concluded general elections and the results thereof, however, appear to have put a spanner in the works of the developing Modian Consensus! Not only has the BJP suffered quite a noteworthy electoral setback, the role of coalition partners—and therefore, coalition politics in general—has emerged stronger and more robust


Reviewed by: Roshni Sengupta
By Ruby Lal

Ruby Lal, immersed in the themes of oblivion and erasure to understand the past, and particularly to investigate why certain persons, including women, could not take centre stage in Mughal history, dwells on the practice of erasure of the extraordinary literary prose work of Gulbadan, the only woman Mughal memoirist.


Reviewed by: Meena Bhargava