The Hindu On Books newsletter: Books to read post Pahalgam, Abdulrazak Gurnah's new novel and more

The Hindu

13-05-2025

Welcome to this edition of The Hindu on Books Newsletter. A full-scale war between India and Pakistan may have been averted after the Pahalgam terrorist attack, but there is no better time to read books on how to deal with India-Pakistan ties.
In an essay, Suhasini Haidar lists several tomes written by experts, including former diplomats who have served in Islamabad. They give a view of policy-making with the added advantage of personal experience, archival documents and research.
From A.S. Bhasin's Negotiating India's Landmark Agreements (Penguin), A.S. Dulat's The Chief Minister and the Spy (Juggernaut), to Sharat Sabharwal's India's Pakistan Conundrum, they are 'superbly written accounts' about ground realities, including the Kashmir conflict.
In reviews, we read Abdulrazak Gurnah's new novel, his first since he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2021, a collection of contemporary Tamil stories, true love stories from Kashmir and more.
Books of the week
Set in Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam, Abdulrazak Gurnah's Theft (Bloomsbury) revolves around the trio of Karim, Badar and Fauzia as they transition from teenage to early adulthood in the 1990s. What they have in common is a love of books and thirst for knowledge. Their circumstances, however, are vastly different, writes Chintan Girish Modi in his review. 'Through their intersecting lives, Gurnah explores the human heart's wonderful capacity to embrace people beyond the call of duty or obligation.'
Read the novel, says Modi, to find out how it ends. 'It is a journey worth undertaking because the author makes one feel deeply for his characters and root for their happiness.'
Tamil: The Best Stories of Our Times (HarperCollins) is a collection of 22 stories that explores Tamil society over the last three decades.
Edited by Perundevi, it has some of Tamil literature's most acclaimed voices, including Jeyamohan, Perumal Murugan, Ambai, S. Ramakrishnan, and Charu Nivedita.
They have been translated into English by six translators, N. Kalyan Raman, G.J.V. Prasad, Suchitra Ramachandran, Nandini Krishnan, Janani Kannan, and Yashasvi Arunkumar. The stories, writes the reviewer Sudha G. Tilak, unfold with an elegance that preserves the soul of the original while making them accessible to a wider audience.
Mehak Jamal's debut collection, Lōal Kashmir: Love and Longing in a Torn Land (HarperCollins), hopes to ensure love conquers all odds, but is that really possible in conflict-ridden Kashmir?
'Lōal' is the Kashmiri word for love and longing. The idea of this book was born after the abrogation of Article 370 when Kashmir came under a complete communication lockdown.
Jamal, a documentary filmmaker, set out to collect stories of love, longing and loss, and received an overwhelming response.
People shared their stories; and as she writes in the Introduction, 'They wanted the world to remember how bravely they had fought, but equally how fiercely they had loved.'
In her review, Pranavi Sharma points out that the stories are potent with cross-border love, cancelled weddings, exiled lovers, migration as an ongoing negotiation with loss. 'To tell the story of love in a place where love and violence are inseparable is to risk either sentimentalising suffering or diminishing love. Jamal's stories live in this paradox, sometimes they succeed in capturing it, sometimes they evade it.'
Spotlight
Amid a challenging time for the judiciary, Tareekh Pe Justice: Reforms for India's District Courts (Simon & Schuster) by Prashant Reddy T. and Chitrakshi Jain pushes for meaningful judicial reforms which they say must begin at the level of the district courts, the first and often the only point of contact for most Indian litigants.
In an essay, Aaratrika Bhaumik writes that the authors echo a concern once voiced by former Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud — that district judges operate under the looming threat of retribution, acutely aware that delivering a verdict perceived as unpalatable to the ruling dispensation could invite Kafkaesque disciplinary proceedings.
Making justice truly accessible requires not only institutional reforms but also a concerted effort to cultivate greater awareness of legal rights. This is particularly crucial for women, who are increasingly vulnerable to violence, even within the confines of their homes. Legally Yours (HarperCollins) by Manasi Chaudhari serves as a beacon of hope, offering women a comprehensive resource to understand and assert their legal rights.
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Srinath Raghavan's Indira Gandhi and the Years That Transformed India (Allen Lane) appraises the prime ministership of Indira Gandhi and its implications for the country. It's as much a biography of her political career as it is a history of the momentous changes India experienced when she served as Prime Minister for 15 years.
(Allen Lane) appraises the prime ministership of Indira Gandhi and its implications for the country. It's as much a biography of her political career as it is a history of the momentous changes India experienced when she served as Prime Minister for 15 years. High Altitude Heroines: Four Early Explorers in the High Himalayas (Speaking Tiger) is the account of four pioneering women who defied the odds – and stereotypes – to explore and conquer the high Himalayas. In this volume, the 'high altitude heroines', Alexandra David-Néel, Fanny Bullock Workman, Henrietta Sands Merrick and Lilian A. Starr, write about their daring journeys.
(Speaking Tiger) is the account of four pioneering women who defied the odds – and stereotypes – to explore and conquer the high Himalayas. In this volume, the 'high altitude heroines', Alexandra David-Néel, Fanny Bullock Workman, Henrietta Sands Merrick and Lilian A. Starr, write about their daring journeys. The Second Book of Prophets (Simon & Schuster) by Benyamin, translated by Ministhy S., reinterprets the life and times of Jesus Christ. Besides Christ, it reimagines the lives of other characters like Mary Magdalene, Lazarus, Judas and John the Baptist. It revisits the suffering of Jews and the divisions within the community. While Benyamin's novel Goat Days was shortlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, his Jasmine Days won the JCB Prize for Literature.
(Simon & Schuster) by Benyamin, translated by Ministhy S., reinterprets the life and times of Jesus Christ. Besides Christ, it reimagines the lives of other characters like Mary Magdalene, Lazarus, Judas and John the Baptist. It revisits the suffering of Jews and the divisions within the community. While Benyamin's novel was shortlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, his won the JCB Prize for Literature. Water Days (Westland Books) by Sundar Sarukkai is set in a fast-changing neighbourhood in Bangalore and what follows the untimely death of a young woman. As speculation mounts about what really happened, muted conversations are heard in Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu and Hindi, and many stories are shared. A former security guard, Raghavendra, is dragged into the middle of it to find out the truth.