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The book is set against the backdrop of the rise of insurgency in Kashmir, when what began as a conflict between rival political groups escalated into youth crossing the border into Pakistan to return with kalashnikovs. The brutality with which the army responds turns the valley into a war zone. Kashmir is virtually under siege. The novel provides an insider’s view of how political apathy coalesces with mindless military brutality to wreak havoc on the lives of ordinary people by focusing on one woman’s desperate and futile search for her missing son.

Crimson City, the fourth Muzaffar Jang mystery by Madhulika Liddle, is a whodunit set in mid-seventeenth century Dilli with the Mughal court as its backdrop. Emperor Shah Jahan’s grandiose plans have begun to deplete the exchequer dangerously. A Mughal army is besieging the fort of Bidar, as a first step towards conquering the Bijapur kingdom with its enormous wealth.

Writings by Adivasis (ecriture) which have emerged in India during the last three decades mark an important milestone in the context of the cultural expression of Adivasis hitherto found only in the oral-performative tradition (orature). These writings are markers of identity assertion and cultural activism by educated Adivasis who want to write about themselves in their own words to combat their degraded or exoticized depiction by non-Adivasi writers. One needs to read Narayan’s interview (Kocharethi, OUP, 2011, 208–16) to realize why educated Adivasis are prompted to pick up their pen.

Rohith Vemula’s hanging body; Soni Sori’s swollen face; Kawasi Hidme’s ejecting uterus; Monisha, Priyanka and Suranya’s floating bodies—all have one thing in common—these are Dalit bodies. Living or dead, their faces, uterus, eyes, hands and feet are first Dalit, then parts of a human body. This raises a crucial question: how can a human body, an anatomical subject formed of cells that are always dissolving, regenerating and growing, embody something as non-biodegradable as caste?

There is hardly any doubt that Kannada has one of the richest traditions of literary writings and debates, reflecting a largely uninterrupted continuity from pre-colonial to modern times. For whatever awards are worth, it is perhaps not accidental that its writers have received the highest number of Jnanapith awards in post-Independence India. Assured of their bedrock of literary output and open always to literatures across the world, Kannada writers have written their own works and translated from the best writing available, always evolving as the social context changed, in terms of literary form and content.

Ashapurna Debi is one of the first Bengali women writers to bring to the fore the condition of Bengali women in the larger part of the 20th century. She was known as one of the first Bengali writers to write realistically about the life these women faced within the four walls of the house, in the midst of complex family relationships, petty jealousies and other experiences. The stories in this collection The Matchbox, translated from the Bengali by Prasenjit Gupta are part of this same mosaic, delineating the emotions of the ordinary middle class Bengali, whose outward lives seem devoid of sensationalism, to the extent that everyday is like the previous one, or even the next one, yet these same lives contain within them a psychological and emotional terrain that is far more complex than the external image.