Upamanyu Chatterjee

In 1988 Upamanyu Chatterjee, a Patna born career bureaucrat, published English, August: An Indian Story. The novel, Chatterjee’s first, was a literary sensation. Turning into a cult novel, it transformed the Indian English writing space forever. Very few novels, we must admit, have played such a significant part in our literary scene as Chatterjee’s English, August did; indeed, Agastya Sen is a young man impossible to forget and so is Madna, the small town tucked away somewhere in the vast Indian landmass.


Reviewed by: Nabanipa Bhattacharjee
C.T. Indra and R. Rajagopalan

In late 2018 both The New York Times and The New York Review of Books carried long reviews of Tamil writer Perumal Murugan’s One Part Woman following its reprint for the American trade book market by Grove Atlantic. Controversy following the murderous threats to the author no doubt played a part in the attention it received. But it was also a symptom of changed times.


Reviewed by: AR Venkatachalapathy
Rakhshanda Jalil

‘How is one supposed to look like one’s religion?’ With these opening lines, the author, Rakhshanda Jalil sets the premise of her book which questions the common imagination of Muslims as a community. Through various essays, Jalil stresses that all the Muslims are not cut from the same cloth. The book is divided into four broad themes of identity, culture, literature and religion containing ten essays in each chapter.


Reviewed by: Sabah Hussain
Shashi Tharoor

Notes from the Hinterland belongs to the Olio series of Aleph Books. It a miscellany of fictional and non-fictional texts, including short stories, extracts, reportage and opinion pieces. The collection aims at projecting the multiple hues of life in small towns and villages. Narrated from a humanistic point of view, the selections hold pointers towards development of societies in states of transformation and/or present the problematic of societies in transition.


Reviewed by: Fatima Rizvi
Kumkum Chadha

‘This book is for a generation that has very few memories of the Seventies’ India.’ This is the opening line of the preface of Kumkum Chadha’s new book The Marigold Story: Indira Gandhi & Others, comprising eleven profiles of personalities largely belonging to the world of politics and stardom. The basic idea is to make the present generation aware of the human side of these larger than life personalities with all their weaknesses and vulnerabilities.


Reviewed by: Suraj Thube