Tag: books
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Books That Uncover the Truth About Caste in India
Two books I’d like to recommend are Coming Out as Dalit by Yashica Dutt and Anti–God’s Own Country – A Short History of Brahminical Colonisation of Kerala, A. V. Sakthidharan Coming Out as Dalit by Yashica Dutt is a memoir in which the author narrates the burden and struggles of hiding her dalit identity and her tumultuous journey of […]
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The Three-Body Problem Captivated Me—But The Dark Forest Lost Me
I read The Three-Body Problem and its sequel, The Dark Forest both masterfully translated into English. One drew me in, thanks to a recommendation from a fellow book club member, while the other left me adrift—like a ship lost in the vastness of timeless space. The Three-Body Problem is a sharp, unflinching story. It talks about science and survival, […]
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Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? in the Age of AI
Rereading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? after years feels like stepping into a familiar yet altered dream. The world Philip K. Dick envisioned—bleak, desolate, drained of life—hits differently now. Maybe because AI has arrived, or maybe because it hasn’t—not in the way we imagined. And yet, its presence lingers, an inevitable force reshaping the boundaries of […]
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Beautiful Star- Yukio Mishima
“Here sleeps the human species.They ended up lying all the time,They offered up flowers for both good and bad fortune, They often kept small birds,They were frequently late getting to appointmentsAnd they often laughed.May they rest forever in eternal peace.” Yukio Mishima’s Beautiful Star has a girl on its cover in a splattered red kimono […]
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The Unwanted- Stories of the Syrian Refugees
A Graphic Novel | Written & Illustrated by Don Brown(Not the Angels & Demons guy. That’s Dan Brown) Don Brown’s illustrations are bleak much like the life of Syrian refugees. The colours are muted and pale. The writing is simple in style and narration straight with no frills again like the refugees who carry no […]
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American Spy- Lauren Wilkinson
I came across Lauren Wilkinson’s debut novel American Spy while searching for something to read for the Cold War theme set by our little book club. American Spy is hugely different from the cold war spy thrillers I have read in the past. And it’s been a while since I picked up a spy thriller. […]
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Writing on Shaky Ground
Draft No. 4 On the Writing Process- John McPhee I have always envied the prose and eloquence of The New Yorker. Every piece comes with carefully crafted sentences by writers who are masters at the craft, with commas and periods scrutinized by editors who don’t leave anything to chance lest they come to life and […]
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Empires of the Indus- The Story of a River by Alice Albinia
In Empires of the Indus- The Story of a River, Alice Albinia explores the regions around the Indus from its end point in the Arabian sea near Karachi to its source high in the Tibetan plateau. She criss-crosses across countries, sometimes on foot, at times through illegal border crossings, trekking with outlanders exploring the diversity […]
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Why You Should Care About Public Policy
Kotasthane & Jaitley’s Missing in Action- Why You Should Care About Public Policy is one of the rare books by academics written for everyone, those who are not academics but have a keen interest in public policy and how the state runs and manages itself the way it does. The book itself is proof that […]
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The Absurdity of War
Slaughterhouse-Five draws our attention to the deathly effects on the soldiers and the cataclysmal impact on them post-war. What stands out here is the unwonted nature of war relative to the combatants and non-combatants. There are no winners in the war, no kings nor queens in the battlefield, only pawns.