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As this year comes to a close, I have curated a list of the ten most thought-provoking, unputdownable prose that you should carry with you to the new year. A mix of novels and memoirs, the indelible quality of writing have contributed to making these books not only the best of this year but perhaps […]
His third nomination proved the charm for South African author and playwright Damon Galgut, who was awarded the 2021 Booker Prize for Fiction for his novel The Promise. Galgut had made it to the Booker shortlist in 2003 for his novel The Good Doctor and in 2010 for his novel In A Strange Room. In […]
Philosophy as a subject is proof of the evolution of human beings beyond hunters and gatherers to becoming the most powerful organisms in the world. This title was not won by brawn but by brainpower. The idea that humans can think, analyze and use these thoughts to govern their decisions overriding their primal instincts, is […]
To write a memoir isn’t just about opening up one’s life to the readers, but it serves as a map to one’s soul. It is their account of the incidents that punctuated their life. Memories forgotten, dusted off and then recounted in a way utterly endemic to them. Below are the memoirs that encompassed the […]
The Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to the novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents”. Gurnah, who grew up on the island of Zanzibar but arrived in England as a refugee in the […]
Over time the perception of self-help/ self-improvement books has changed substantially. What started as an impulse purchase at an airport stall has now become the source of people’s life philosophies and mantras. Nuggets of wisdom are readily available through the condensation of the author’s life or astute observations. It offers an alternative path and often […]
I had spoken about Elias Canetti’s novel, Auto Da Fe, in my earlier column about marital relationships. In fact, Elias Canetti, Nobel laureate, has another fascinating small book in his oeuvre. This is Kafka’s Other Trial. In this rivetting read, Canetti talks about the problems between Franz Kafka and his fiancée, Felice. Canetti traces how […]
Book review by Ashutosh Kumar Thakur Most people would claim reading and traveling are two of their hobbies, but reading a travelogue is not exactly a cup of tea for most people. And expectedly, most readers were skeptical to read the book when recommended. ‘I started the book expecting only to get through the first […]
Is it elitist to talk in terms of India and Bharat? Are Bharat and India merely two names and one nation or is the divide between the politically, economically and socially haves and have-nots more visible in practical terms? Devdutt Pattanaik, one of my favourites, has often tried answering in his simple, yet scholarly fashion. […]
It is an aspect of the human condition – the need to be enthralled, to have adrenaline coursing through the veins, to have the heart skip a beat. For most of us, fortunately, our lives are pretty humdrum, so we search for this excitement elsewhere. Be it by jumping out of a plane mid-air or […]
Days before her assassination, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had apparently communicated to then President Giani Zail Singh to have Rajiv Gandhi sworn-in “if anything happened” to her. In his riveting, soon to be published autobiography, A Rude Life — The Memoirs (Penguin Viking), author-columnist Vir Sanghvi has written that Zail Singh told him that Indira […]
What makes a novel a classic? It’s the stories that stand the test of time. That can be read decades later and still hold significance. Some prose holds relevance momentarily but can feel dated later, but a classic transcends this. It has its brand of universality and readability. The truly challenging part of curating this […]
You can never start reading too early with your kids. As a newborn, it ensures one-on-one bonding time with the baby and exposes their brain to accelerated cognitive development. Your child’s brain is like a sponge; the younger they are, the quicker they can soak in information. Reading introduces rhythm, vocabulary, inflections of tone and […]
