The Cauliflower
by Nicola Barker
The book revolves around the great guru Sri Ramakrishna and his apocryphal nephew and dedicated guardian Hriday, who saves him from devotees and enemies. Haikus, questionnaires, playlets and forgotten documents intersect the chapters. This whimsical novel upends the concept of the literary novel with panache, almost mocking the genre with a surreal satirist’s whimsy.
Disgraced
by Gwen Florio
War is the obsession of many 21st century writers, especially American. Vets returned from Iraqistan suffering from PTSD, facing their demons and damage, change the atmosphere of small towns where most of them come from to feed the great Americian military machine. In this novel, Lola Wikks, a laid-off journalist, discovers how dangerous and painful the aftermath is. A war reporter herself, who else but Florio can say it better?
Journey to Munich
by Jacqueline Winspear
Another war thriller, but this time it is set in Nazi Germany. Back in London as a nurse in the Spanish Civil War and traumatised by the deaths of her husband and unborn child, Maisie Dobbs joins the Secret Service to go to Dachau in this story of impersonation and intrigue.
Swing Time
by Zadie Smith
Two friends growing up in a poor neighbourhood of multiracial London take separate paths when they become adults in the 1990s. Both have big dreams to turn professional dancers—only the talented Tracy makes it while the other has to be content with being the personal assistant to a pop star. The setting varies from North West London to West Africa
The Sialkot Saga
by Ashwin Sanghi
A time travel saga from the Indian Dan Brown, the book travels from the violence of Partition to Pataliputra in 250 BC when Ashoka was the emperor of Magadha. The book occupies much of the rivalry and rage between two businessmen of humble origins—Arvind Bagadia from Kolkata and Arbaaz Sheikh from Mumbai. They plot, conspire and act to defeat the other in a doomed power game which can have only one winner. A book that weaves drunkenly through the traps of love, the agony of loss and the darkness of conspiracies, it hosts everyone, from Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Nehru and Huen Tsang, in a smorgasbord of endless action, along with a mysterious Bhutanese company searching for the secret of everlasting life.
Quiet Flows the Una
by Faruk Šehić
Translated into English by Will Firth
The title may remind you of Mikhail Sholokhov’s And Quiet Flows the Don, but the similarity ends there except for the fact that Yugoslavia was part of the Soviet Union before its tragic severance. Šehić, a Bosnian poet and writer, left veterinary studies in Zagreb to fight in the Bosnian war. The novel is an offshoot of his traumatic experiences of great loss, casual killings and violence, which is the stigmata of war.
Before We Visit the Goddess
by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
As family sagas go, you cannot beat the Indian writer who has rediscovered the joy of generation jumping. Banerjee’s new book is about three generations of mothers and daughters caught in a complex web of emancipation, compassion, anger and self-examination. Rustic Bengali girl Sabitri’s wish to study is fulfilled by an influential woman from Kolkata. But the relationship sours because of an act of the girl. Decades later, Sabitri’s daughter, Bela, flees to the US with her lover who is a political refugee, but finds that America is not the land of her dreams. The recipient of Sabitri’s lessons of a ruined marriage and cultural complexities is her US-born daughter Tara.
The Night Train at Deoli and Other Stories
by Ruskin Bond
There are no ghosts or Raj era twists and turns in this collection of 30 short stories—living up to their name: each one is only 2-3 pages—by the chronicler of Mussoorie. It is autobiographical, drawn from the incidents and people in Bond’s life as a child and teenager in Dehradun and Mussoorie. His lucid style draws up pictures of a time long past and forgotten.
What is Not Yours is Not Yours
by Helen Oyeyemi
This collection of short stories is built around keys—to a house, a heart, a secret. A special key opens a library, a garden, and secret clues to lovers’ fates. Another is about a house of locks, which can be closed only with a special key.
The High Mountains of Portugal
by Yann Martel
The winner of the 2002 Man Booker Prize for The Life of Pi returns with his fourth novel. In the early 20th century, Tomas, a young man from Lisbon, finds a magical manuscript that sends him in an early-make European automobile to search for a long-buried secret. Here we meet a grieving Canadian senator with a pet chimpanzee and an Agatha Christie-obsessed Portugese pathologist; they all make up a story that is haunted and also a modern fable.