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The People of the Indus
The People of the Indus by Nikhil Gulati with Jonathan Mark Kenoyer begins with a quote by Ursula Le Guin - “History is not a science, it's an art”. And, history, the account of an enigmatic &...
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The Birth Lottery and Other Surprises
Shehan Karunatilaka begins The Birth Lottery and Other Surprises with a note ‘How to read the collection?’ and advises ‘never in sequence’. Still, he guides us through the broad categories his stories...
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Mansur
Mansur was an early 17th century Mughal nature painter who rose to limelight under the aegis of emperor Jahangir. Known for his realistic paintings of flora & fauna, his mastery earned him the...
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Taniya
Cotton candy, Cadburys Gems, rose-coloured mint bricks, gold coin chocolates, all things simple and sweet come to our mind as we read Taniya, the story of a 'Tibetan' spaniel who travels from the foot...
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Pankaja
“This novel wrote itself. I only provided the ink”, writes the author Vasanth Kannabiran about her book ‘Pankaja’, one that paints a vivid picture of the lives of upper caste women of Tamil society in...
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Fifty-five Pillars, Red Walls
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote Money often costs too much was my WhatsApp status message for a long time and Fifty-five Pillars, Red Walls by Usha Priyamvada, translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell...
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Dead-end Memories
My first read for the year 2023 was Dead-end Memories, a collection of five stories by Banana Yoshimoto, translated by Asa Yoneda. "This was what it took, I realized, to be something that survived. Not...
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The Buddha in the Attic
"One by one all the old words we had taught them began to disappear from their heads. They forgot the names of the flowers in Japanese. They forgot the name of the water goddess, Mizu Gami, who...
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Marquez, EMS, Gulam and others
This splendid collection of 15 stories let me travel to Doha, Jerusalem, Baghdad, Dublin, Djibouti, Ethiopia, America, Nainital, Solapur and of course, to a few towns in Kerala. In the author’s note,...
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Dakshin - South Indian Myths and Fables Retold
Aren't folktales like rivers, crossing the barriers of borders and languages, flowing for years down generations? As a spring in the mountains, gushing down gorges, cascading down cliffs, flowing...
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Who's Afraid of a Giant Wheel?
Noorie, the protagonist of Who's Afraid of a Giant Wheel by Zainab Sulaiman, replies'I want to have a happy family when I grow up' when her classmate Seema questions her what she wants to become when...
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Password and Other Stories
Password and other stories is a collection of 19 stories by Appadurai Muttulingam, translated from Tamil by S.Thillainayagam. The collection begins with 'The Black Squirrel', the story of an illegal...
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An Order from the Sky and other stories
Vasantha Surya, the translator of the book in her introduction quotes a journalist - 'Write what you see, not what you want to see'and Imayam, the author, does the same in this collection of 11...
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Taatung Tatung
Taatung Tatung and Other Amazing Stories of India's Diverse Languages by Vaishali Shroff works like a porthole offering a view of the vast sea of languages from across the length and breadth of India....
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The Dalit Brahmin and other stories
The Dalit Brahmin and other stories (a collection of 28 stories) by Sharankumar Limbale, translated from Marathi by Priya Adarkar, grabbed my attention due to the introduction penned by Anand...
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The Joy Luck Club
Amy Tan's debut novel, first published in 1989, The Joy Luck Club, a widely read and appreciated classic, needs no introduction. Still for the sake of completion, here is a line on what the book is...
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The Stepmother and other stories
Education for women, their freedom to choose, like any other freedom, came after a long and hard struggle. And still, it remains elusive to many.The eight stories in Laxmibai Abhayankar's The...
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Some Thoughts After Reading Kalki's Works
Kalki R Krishnamurthy wrote Parthiban Kanavu (Parthiban's Dream in translation), the sequel to Sivakamiyin Sabatham (Sivakami's Vow in English) first. Serialized in his magazine in 1941, Parthiban...
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A Fine Thread and Other Stories
A collection of sixteen stories, A Fine Thread and other stories by Tamil author Jeyamohan, translated by Jegadeesh Kumar, stands as a testament to the author's opinion that a writer shouldn't have a...
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Maria, Just Maria
“It's not a question of belief, Appacha. It's a question of belonging. It's about being with people we know, in a place we are familiar with. A place where we belong because of who we are, no matter...
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Books read in January 2024
Below are the books/titles I read in January 2024 - For January in Japan, a hashtag, a beautiful initiative on Instagram, (I have been reading for the last few years), I read the four titles below...
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Eden Abandoned - The Story of Lilith
“I am Lilith. Made not with commonplace, pedestrian sperm and egg, but by God’s own hand. I am the very first woman, before even Eve’s time.” Eden Abandoned by Shinie Antony is the story of Lilith,...
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Books Read in February 2024
My February reading began with a graphic novel, The Pig Flip by Joshy Benedict, translated from Malayalam by KK Muralidharan. An Indian graphic novel, translated from an Indian language makes it one...
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Sakina's Kiss
“Who knew what unsaid things deep inside found expression in a vote?” With the 2024 Indian general election in sight, reading Sakina’s Kiss by Vivek Shanbhag, translated from Kannada by Srinath Perur...
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Books Read in March 2024
Two books for young readers, four novels and four short stories collections - these make my tally for March 2024 reads, definitely more than what I thought I would manage at the start of the month....
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