All books are like cookbooks, and use the ingredients of love, life, pain, joy, friendship, light and darkness with the right recipes. This year, the trend is the desire to achieve the perfect balance between improvisation, pushing the envelope and a planchette with the past.
Books with Indian topics (lingering tastes of colonial piquancy) such as exploring Hindu saints or going native in an alien culture coexist with dark stories about war and retrospection. As usual, the obssession of writers with World War II and Nazi noir continue, with Philip Kerr relaunching the world weary Bernie Gunther in The One From the Other and Journey to Munich by Jacqueline Winspear about a widowed nurse becoming a secret agent.
My Choice Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Mahabharat: A classic filled with unforgettable characters and life lessons. The Home and the World by Rabindranath Tagore: Sensitive to history and women emancipation. The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien: The best fantasy world that I would like to get lost in. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: The most romantic hero and heroine. Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich: Native American life in all its harsh beauty |
The narrative of humanity is the terrible responsibility of storytellers, who relentlessly bring it under the harsh glare of contemporary history. Fiction is the anaesthetic which makes the horrors of the Holocaust and civil wars, consuming populations exterminated without reason, but with senseless savagery continue to haunt writers about how innocents bear the nightmares thrust upon them.
An Auschwitz survivor in denial takes cyclical refuge in old memories to escape the shame of being a passive participator; a famous Bosnian poet who fought against Serbs writes a fictional account of death and its multitudinous forms of cruelty. It’s not just allegories that show redemption in the face of death lies in the courage of real-life stories; the account of Bollywood actor Emraan Hashmi’s son, who won the fight against cancer and how the family coped with it, is both moving and funny.
In another tribute to courage, a posthumously published, emotionally excoriating autobiography of a young neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi, written when he was dying of lung cancer, has become an international bestseller for its profound treatment of philosophical questions on the nature of life and time, told without any trace of self-pity or fear.
The nature of life and time, however, is also measured today in the way people deal with change such as the power of the Internet and the theoretical layers of time and space.
The cyber turbocharge to reach the final face of its sweeping advance has been socio-scientifically predicted by Steve Case, who foresees the Third Wave as a consolidation of web power, with the Internet poised to become an overarching tool for the good of man—in health, education and other mainline social sectors.
The good side coexists with negative; a much unexamined epidemic of the late 20th century is sleep deprivation, caused by changing work routines and entertainment.
If books are about the freedom of discovery and expression, women have been at the forefront of examining them ruthlessly. Verse written by famous Afghan women poets and a biography of a Nobel Prize-winning Iranian feminist stand out against the dark backdrop of repression.
All in all, 2016 promises to be a good read.
BOOK BUZZ
My Choice Ruskin Bond Little Women by Louisa May Alcott: As a child Ruskin Bond seized upon almost any print matter that came his way, be it a girls’ classic like Little Women or the works of Edgar Allan Poe and O Henry. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome: As a child, Bond found this book and read it the same day. Love Among the Chickens by P G Wodehouse: This is his first experience of Wodehouse. Other favourites include David Copperfield, The Complete Plays of John Barrie and, of course, Peter Pan. |
LIKE WATER FOR DHANKSAK: Parsis are an exclusive lot and authors of exotic cuisine. Anhita Dhondy’s forthcoming cookbook is part romance novel and part cookbook: garnered with handwritten family recipes and pot glory from handwritten guides, this cookbook published by HarperCollins is likely to see an Indian Laura Esquivel make her fragrant debut.
THE BIOGRAPHY OF THE YEAR: After Sunny Leone’s kiss-and-tell story, publishing wunderkind Chiki Sarkar has scored another coup for her publishing house Juggernaut—Rajat Gupta’s memoirs. The Indian American, who rose to become the head of McKinsey&Company, will reveal his rise from a humble background to founding the Indian School of Business, philanthrophy and the eventual disgrace of going to jail for insider trading, which he is still contesting in court.
ARTIFICiAL INTELLIGENCE AND HUMANS COLLABORATE TO WRITE A BOOK: Future University Hakodate professor Hitoshi Matsubara and his team, which includes a computer, has churned out a novella that passed the first round of the Nikkei Hoshi Shinichi Literary Award. It did not win, but we don’t know what the next book might do.
DAUGHTER TELLS IT ALL: Aishwarya Rajinikanth Dhanush’s second book on her famous father— Standing on An Apple Box, subtitled ‘The story of a girl among the stars’—is an anecdote ridden biography of Rajinikanth, jokes apart.
NOT LOST IN TRANSLATION: Indian book lovers were so far denied the pleasures of London-based Pushkin Press books, which has been doing readers the singular service of bringing them the 20th century’s iconic foreign writers such as Stefan Zweig, Marcel Aymé, Antal Szerb, Paul Morand and Yasushi Inoune and Andrés Neuman. Now, a deal with Penguin Random House will make them available in India.
Chicklit
If We Were a Movie
by Kelly Oram
When music meets movie, can romance be far behind? In this sweet college love story, Nate Anderson meets his quirky roommate Jordan, a girl from Los Angeles, and soon sparks start flying. Jordan, a movie buff, believes that there is nothing new in life that hasn’t been done in movies. Nate learns to take life one movie at a time after he meets Jordan.
A Silver Dawn
by Leena Varghese
The story revolves around Clarissa Milagres, a talented choreographer. With a violent marriage behind her, she is determined to be independent. Adding new dimensions to the narrative are Leon Rodriguez, a hotelier tycoon who has been drawn to her since he was a teenager, and the sadistic mafioso Igor Chekanov, who is eyeing Clarissa’s family estate.
The Leaving Season
by Cat Jordan
Middie Daniels finds love in the most unexpected of times which she calls the ‘Leaving Season’—a time when everyone leaves home for the first time after graduating from high school. When her boyfriend Nate leaves home, tragedy strikes and she finds support in Lee Ryan, Nate’s best friend.
e-books
Forbidden Outpost
by Tony Rubolotta
The book starts from where the 1956 American science fiction film Forbidden Planet ended. After the United Planet cruiser departed, the characters, Commander J J Adams, Altaira and Robby the robot, discover the new secrets of Krell, the alien they encountered on the planet Altair 4.
Story of a Secret Heart
by Cassi Ellen
Love and break-up are the best ingredients for a romance. But this plot takes the usual love story to the next level when a heartbroken girl steps into a world of drugs, prostitution and millionaires. Unrequited love pushes the protagonist to open the door to a new world that changes her life.
All Against All
by Nathan Allen
A sci-fi with a not so unfamiliar plot. As a part of a social experiment, a group of random strangers are invited to take part in a lottery, which promises them very interesting outcomes. But the experiment turns sinister and all the contestants are left in the lurch.
My Choice Preeti Shenoy The Orphanage for Words by Shinie Antony: Riveting stories about ordinary people, written in her trademark style— dark, almost bordering on cruel. The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto by Mitch Albom: I have been a fan of Mitch Albom for years, one of my favourite books being Tuesdays with Morrie and The Time Keeper. In his latest book, Albom is at his best. Her Fearful Symmetry and The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger: Exemplary writing coupled with exploration of issues between siblings, set against a backdrop of London’s High-Gate symmetry made this book a great read for me. |
Bookstores Recommend
Mathrubhumi Books
Kochi
Ananda Lahari by Sadhguru
Scion of Ikshvaku by Amish Tripathi
Incarnations: India in 50 Lives by Sunil Khilnani
Strangeness in My Mind by Orhan Pamuk
Numero Zero by Umberto Eco
Blossom Book House
Bengaluru
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri
Cometh the Hour by Jeffrey Archer
The Last Mile by David Baldacci
Fool Me Once by Harlan Coben
Crossword Book Store
Chennai
Mossad by Michael Bar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal
Our Impossible Love by Durjoy Datta
Rogue Lawyer by John Grisham
Reckless by Sidney Sheldon and Tilly Bagshawe
The Secret by Rhonda Bryne
Landmark Bookstore
Hyderabad
The Last Mile by David Baldacci
Chanakya in You by Radhakrishna Pillai
Inferno by Dan Brown My Gita by Devdutt Pattanaik
The Sialkot Saga by Ashwin Sanghi
Faqir Chand & Sons Delhi
Incarnations: India in 50 Lives by Sunil Khilnani
The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan
In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Last Mile by David Baldacci
A Handbook for My Lover by Rosalyn D’Mello