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Welcome to this edition of The Hindu on Books Newsletter. In a happy coincidence, activists Aruna Roy and Bela Bhatia’s memoirs have just been published, chronicling their lives of speaking truth to power and representing some of India’s most marginalised communities. Aruna Roy (The Personal is Political: An Activist’s Memoir) was named after Aruna Asaf Ali, the leftist firebrand leader, and like her, says Gopalkrishna Gandhi in his Foreword, she has “the elegant flair of cocking a snook at the arrogance of power” – and more. Aruna Roy resigned from the IAS in 1975 and left Delhi for Tilonia, a village in Rajasthan, to join a non-profit NGO to work for the rural poor. She is candid about the challenges she faced initially and the things she had to learn to be able to communicate, especially with women. What a life of working in villages taught her is that “the so-called vulnerable, oppressed, marginalised and deprived never lost their affection, humour, common sense, wisdom and sense of fun even in the direst of circumstances.” Bela Bhatia (India’s Forgotten Country), who has also worked with the poor and marginalised in Gujarat, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Kashmir, writes about her experiences, observing how too many people in India are living on too little. But, she writes, that lack of money is only one aspect of it; there are other worries like indebtedness, illness, powerlessness, humiliation and violence that “follow them around like shadows.”
In reviews, we read Neel Mukherjee’s new novel, Peace Adzo Medie’s Nightbloom, longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, 2024 – the winner will be announced on June 13 – Salim Durani’s biography and more. We also talk to economist Karthik Muralidharan about his new book on India’s growth strategy, and read about a new audible version of George Orwell’s 1984, read by Andrew Garfield, Cynthia Erivo, Andrew Scott and others.
Books of the week
If Neel Mukherjee’s Booker Prize-shortlisted The Lives of Others (2014) traces the repercussions of a son’s extreme political choice on his family, his new novel Choice (Penguin), a collection of three novellas, looks at the impact of economics on lives – “of teachers, farmers, soldiers, mothers.” In his review, Anil Menon says the novel contains a sharply intelligent critique of the literary-industrial complex, as bitter as the gooseberry and just as darkly comic. “I found the novel thoughtful and carefully written, but it failed to hold my interest throughout. There are of course many novels about choice, but Mukherjee’s is about economic choice, which is quite a different matter. The story is told with sincerity and finesse, but it still felt like a performance in the orchards of the unreal.
Peace Adzo Medie is a scholar and a writer out of Ghana who, in her new novel, Nightbloom (Oneworld), explores the lives of two cousin sisters of a joint family. Medie’s intergenerational family saga, says the reviewer Geeta Doctor, is nestled in the crook of the fabled gold coast of Western Africa, thrusting Ghana into the literary limelight. She studied in America and is currently an Associate Professor of gender politics at the University of Bristol. In Nightbloom, longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2024, Medie creates parallel lives for her characters, Akorfa and Selasi. They are cousins born on the same day in 1985, one in the rural city of Ho, the other in the capital of Accra – and explores their life trajectories. “Medie refers only once to ‘Ubuntu’, the epigrammatic term that Nelson Mandela used to explain his philosophy of inclusiveness, or the oneness of humanity. ‘I am because of who we all are’,” says Doctor. Towards the end, Akorfa reflects: “While being in America had cracked open the cage, it had not freed me from the prison of Ghanaian expectations... I was I, but I was also them’.”
In Sri Lankan author Appadurai Muttulingam’s novel Where God Began, translated from Tamil by Kavitha Muralidharan, a young man, Nishant, is sent off by his family to get him out as a freedom movement takes root in the island nation. Nishant gets to Canada by way of Colombo, Moscow, Ukraine, Slovakia, and Germany, and is handled by several agents. Having got there, it takes him years to gain honest employment. In her review, Latha Anatharaman writes that Muttulingam’s “style of writing does not aim at novelistic realism, but builds in a chance to tell half-told tales and anecdotes, as the pilgrims do in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. Many of the pilgrims in this novel make little progress.... Occasionally, a person miraculously breaks through. The scattered storytelling takes away from what might have been a deeper understanding of the protagonist, who emerges as an unformed character who still has a long journey ahead of him.”
In his new book, Salim Durani: The Prince of Indian Cricket (Rupa), Gulu Ezekiel profiles the larger-than-life cricketer Salim Durani, who lived and played on his own terms. In his review, Suresh Menon says the biography is an overdue one of one of India’s most colourful and talented players. “Ezekiel has chosen his colours well to give us a portrait of a man with movie star looks who filled stadiums, but was easily misunderstood and often dismissed as wayward or temperamental.” In all, Durani played 29 Tests.
Spotlight
India must invest in building the capacity of its government to deliver services in order to reach its full economic potential, argues Karthik Muralidharan, Tata Chancellor’s professor of economics at the University of California San Diego and the author of Accelerating India’s Development: A State-led Roadmap for Effective Governance, in an interview with Prashanth Perumal. Asked what is the core argument he makes in his book, he says: “The biggest obstacle to meeting challenges in education, health, child development, police, courts, welfare, jobs etc. is the effectiveness of the government machinery itself. Until you invest in strengthening the capacity of the Indian state, we will not reach our full potential as a country.”
Audible’s new adaptation of George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 is written by Joe Wright, and the adaptation features an original score co-written by Muse singer and lead guitarist Matthew Bellamy and composer Ilan Eshkeri, and performed by the London Metropolitan Orchestra, writes Aditya Mani Jha in his column. The all-star cast is led by Andrew Garfield and Cynthia Erivo as Winston and Julia, respectively, “the young lovers whose relationship is also an act of rebellion against the all-seeing Big Brother (Tom Hardy) and ‘the Party’.” Andrew Scott, says Jha, is smooth and terrifying as Mr. O’Brien, Winston’s Party colleague who he suspects is secretly a part of the rebellious ‘Brotherhood’.
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- Exploring Hindu-Muslim intimacy, Ashis Roy talks to couples, all from the urban middle class, about their experiences. The two communities have a history of coexistence and conflict. He finds out about the challenges they face in holding on to diverse faiths and cultures in Intimacy in Alienation: A Psychoanalytic Study of Hindu-Muslim Relationships (Yoda Press).
- Dilip Sinha, a former ambassador, guides readers through Tibet’s complex geopolitics, tracing its history from the rise of Tibetan Buddhism, through the Great Game, to its invasion and annexation by China in 1950. He explores the Dalai Lama’s escape to India in 1959, and its aftermath too, in Imperial Games in Tibet: The Struggle for Statehood and Sovereignty (PanMacmillan).
- Anita Desai is coming out with a new novel in July, her first in over a decade. Rosarita (PanMacmillan) tells the story of Bonita, who is a student studying in San Miguel, Mexico, and enjoying her efforts to learn Spanish. Till, a woman walks up to her, claiming that she looks like her mother who had made the same journey from India to Mexico. It will be published in July. A new novel by Desai, shortlisted thrice for the Booker Prize and who has been often compared to Chekov, “is a gift,” says Kamila Shamsie.
- 1990 Aramganj: A Novel (Westland Books) by Rakesh Kayasth, translated by Varsha Tiwary, is set in small-town India and he explores how people got polarised by Advani’s rath yatra, which saw the ushering in of a militant Hindutva. Ashiq Miyan lives in Mohalla Aramganj. He is a tailor and also a skilled Dussehra procession dancer, and a devotee of Ram. But Ashiq will find himself caught in a web of politics and communal tension.
Published - June 11, 2024 10:48 am IST
