The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny explores loneliness, relationships, family dynamics, and literary realism across India and America, along with thoughts on pacing, class, and detailed storytelling.
Book Reviews
Phantom Plague
Vidya Krishnan’s Phantom Plague traces the history and present crisis of tuberculosis, showing how stigma, poverty, drug resistance, pharma patents, and public-health failure continue to shape the disease.
India: 5,000 Years of History on the Subcontinent
A sweeping overview of five thousand years of the Indian subcontinent’s history, Audrey Truschke’s book explores the evolution of civilizations, empires, and social ideas while challenging many commonly held historical myths.
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Maggots, Murder, and Men
Maggots, Murder, and Men by Zakaria Erzinclioglu, exploring forensic entomology, real crimes, and the science of insects.
Faith and Fury
Jyoti Yadav’s Faith and Fury documents the human cost of Covid in India’s villages and small towns, focusing on migrant workers, rural distress, state failure, and lives left out of the national narrative.
Forensics
Forensics – What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA, and More Tell Us About Crime by Val McDermid is a fascinating exploration of the science behind criminal investigations.
The Inconvenient Indian
Thomas King’s The Inconvenient Indian is a book that examines the history of Indigenous peoples in Canada and the USA, highlighting colonialism, displacement, and the struggle to preserve identity.
The Making of Canada
A concise and engaging review of The Making of Canada by Greg Koabel, tracing the country’s formation from early European exploration to Confederation through the lives of the individuals who shaped its history.
Somanatha – The Many Voices of History
Romila Thapar’s Somanatha – The Many Voices of History dismantles the popular myths surrounding the Somnath temple, showing how medieval chronicles, colonial historians, and modern narratives have shaped its story. A deeply researched work, the book reveals multiple perspectives, from Turko-Persian accounts of Mahmud of Ghazni’s raid to Sanskrit inscriptions and Jain texts, offering readers a nuanced view of history beyond simplistic binaries of conqueror and victim.”
The Vegetarian
The Vegetarian by Han Kang—an unsettling novel about patriarchy, silence, and the cost of saying no.