I thought I’d do a book list for you this time. The book descriptions are from the publisher and are not my personal opinions. I've added the links that lead to the seller. I don't earn any commissions from this. All for the love of books and reading. So, without further delay, here goes:
- Fatty Fatty Boom Boom by Rabia Chaudry (Alongonquin Books, 8 November, 2022)
From the bestselling author and host of the wildly popular Undisclosed podcast, a warm, intimate memoir about food, body image, and growing up in a loving but sometimes oppressively concerned Pakistani immigrant family.
"My entire life I have been less fat and more fat, but never not fat." According to family lore, when Rabia Chaudry’s family returned to Pakistan for their first visit since moving to the United States, two-year-old Rabia was more than just a pudgy toddler. Dada Abu, her fit and sprightly grandfather, attempted to pick her up but had to put her straight back down, demanding of Chaudry’s mother: “What have you done to her?” The answer was two full bottles of half-and-half per day, frozen butter sticks to gnaw on, and lots and lots of American processed foods.
And yet, despite her parents plying her with all the wrong foods as they discovered Burger King and Dairy Queen, they were highly concerned for the future for their large-sized daughter. How would she ever find a suitable husband? There was merciless teasing by uncles, cousins, and kids at school, but Chaudry always loved food too much to hold a grudge against it. Soon she would leave behind fast food and come to love the Pakistani foods of her heritage, learning to cook them with wholesome ingredients and eat them in moderation. At once a love letter (with recipes) to fresh roti, chaat, chicken biryani, ghee, pakoras, shorba, parathay and an often hilarious dissection of life in a Muslim immigrant family, Fatty Fatty Boom Boom is also a searingly honest portrait of a woman grappling with a body that gets the job done but that refuses to meet the expectations of others.
Chaudry's memoir offers readers a relatable and powerful voice on the controversial topic of body image, one that dispenses with the politics and gets to what every woman who has ever struggled with weight will relate to.
- The War Diary of Asha-san: From Tokyo to Netaji’s Indian National Army by Lt. Bharati ‘Asha’ Sahay Choudhry, translated by Tanvi Srivastava (HarperCollins India, 28 October, 2022)
In June 1943, seventeen-year-old Bharati 'Asha' Sahay, a headstrong Indian teenager living in Japan during the Second World War, decides to join the Rani of Jhansi Regiment of the Indian National Army after meeting Subhas Chandra Bose. She starts to jot down her thoughts in a diary, and thus begins one of the most significant personal accounts of the Indian freedom movement.
Together with her father, Anand Mohan Sahay--a close companion of Bose--and others committed to the cause of Indian independence, Asha forges a path that takes her from war-torn Tokyo to the jungles of Thailand. She learns how to hold a rifle and shoot the enemy, and she discovers what it means to be a patriot fighting for the liberation of a country she has no memories of but carries deep in her heart.
Written in Japanese between 1943 and 1947, and translated into English for the first time by Tanvi Srivastava, The War Diary of Asha-san is a memoir of courage, honour and love, by a young girl who must grow up quickly in the midst of war.
- The Living Road by Ajit Harisinghani (Vintage Books, 21 November 2022)
A solo motorcycle ride across India, and into Bhutan, becomes much more than just a test of physical endurance when 57-year-old, Pune-based, speech therapist Ajit Harisinghani decides to go in the pursuit of that most elusive of all human desires-happiness.
With the idea of Bhutan's gross national happiness on his mind, he traverses a potpourri of terrain, riding through landscapes that change daily. From arid land to verdant fields, from jungles with glimpses of elephants and tigers to tea gardens...
Along the way, he meets a yogi and his singing goat, explores ancient caves, is frightened in a wild life sanctuary, sees a Schizophrenic bicycle and helps a police inspector overcome his stammering problem. A variety of experiences later, he is finally in Thimpu where a Buddhist monk reveals the road-map to being happy.
A funny, honest and entertaining real-life adventure story that promises to surprise, shock and perhaps even liberate!
- Caveman’s Secret Sauce by Nimish Dayalu (Penguin Ananda, 31 October 2022)
What if, one day, you find yourself in a Himalayan cave, far away from the world? For Jeet, this is a choice he made after leaving city life behind.
One evening, a strange man called Adi, who does mysterious things, makes his way into Jeet's cave. The two develop a friendship that will help Jeet unravel the secrets of the wild. In his pursuit to grow, Jeet travels to a mountain village that has been untouched by time and then up a sacred mountain, meeting some fascinating characters along his journey. On this quest from the surreal to the supernatural, Jeet untangles some of the most complex mysteries of the world, which often kept him awake at night in the city.
Intriguing, adventurous and containing the pearls of forgotten ancient Indian myths and legends, Caveman's Secret Sauce has the right ingredients that are missing in society today.
- Here and Hereafter: Nirmal Verma’s Life in Literature by Vineet Gill (Vintage Books, 30 September 2022)
(This book is by a classmate of sorts. Vineet and I were together at the University of East Anglia Kolkata workshop way back in 2013. How time flies!)
How is a writer formed? Yes, through labour, commitment, perseverance, grit and various other things that we keep hearing about. But equally, a writer is formed through the workings of a particular kind of sensibility. As Vineet Gill attempts to understand this writerly sensibility in Nirmal Verma's life and work, he finds that the personal and the literary are, on some level, inseparable.
In this masterly deep dive into the world of one of Hindi literature's pioneers, Gill looks at the scattered elements of Verma's life as ingredients that went into the making of the writer. The places he lived in, the people he knew, the books he read are all reflected, in Gill's view, in Verma's stories and novels. This is a work of intense readerly analysis and considered excavation- a contemplation on Verma's oeuvre and its place in world literature.
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- The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell (Hachette 19 September 2022)
'Someone swore that, as a little girl, he once saw you touch a tiger. And that the tiger didn't harm you, it let you stroke it. It was always said that you had charmed the beast.'
Winter, 1561. Lucrezia, Duchess of Ferrara, is taken on an unexpected visit to a country villa by her husband, Alfonso. As they sit down to dinner it occurs to Lucrezia that Alfonso has a sinister purpose in bringing her here. He intends to kill her.
Lucrezia is sixteen years old, and has led a sheltered life locked away inside Florence's grandest palazzo. Here, in this remote villa, she is entirely at the mercy of her increasingly erratic husband.
What is Lucrezia to do with this sudden knowledge? What chance does she have against Alfonso, ruler of a province, and a trained soldier? How can she ensure her survival.
The Marriage Portrait is an unforgettable reimagining of the life of a young woman whose proximity to power places her in mortal danger.
- Everything the Light Touches by Janice Pariat (HarperVia 25 October 2022)
In Everything the Light Touches we meet many travellers: Shai, a young Indian woman who journeys to India's northeast and rediscovers, through her encounters with indigenous communities, ways of living that realign and renew her. Evelyn, an Edwardian student at Cambridge who, inspired by Goethe's botanical writings, embarks on a journey seeking out the sacred forests of the Lower Himalayas; Linnaeus, botanist and taxonomist, who famously declared "God creates; Linnaeus organizes" and led an expedition to Lapland in 1732. And Goethe himself, who travelled through Italy in the 1780s, formulating his ideas for a revelatory text, that called for a re-examination of our propensity to reduce plants - and the world - into immutable parts.
Everything the Light Touches brings together, with startling and playful novelty, people and places that seem, at first, removed from each other in time and place. Yet all is resonance, we discover; all is connection.
- Barabanki: The Professor, the Pandit and the Policeman by Anuj Tiwari (Rupa 5 November 2022)
Superintendent of Police Naveen Mishra and his storyteller colleague Sub-Inspector Awasthi are called to investigate the death of a student at the Indian Engineering College, Lucknow. Little do they expect their investigation to uncover a connection with a crime nexus in the heartland of Uttar Pradesh. As the plot thickens, Jayanti, who is a student at the college, and Raghav, an alumnus of the college and now successful author, find themselves entangled with the investigation. Their reunion after three years is overshadowed by the mysterious death of Jayanti’s father and linked to the seemingly harmless professor at the college, Ansari.
Follow Naveen and Awasthi as they navigate a corrupt system, enemy bullets and a racket based out of Barabanki that can jeopardize the health of the entire nation.
- Trinoyoni: The Slaughterer of Sonagachi by Moitrayee Bhaduri (Rupa 5 November, 2022)
‘Someone is stalking the streets of Sonagachi.’
It’s the 1870s, and Calcutta is bustling with commerce and colonialism. A sea of changes has been ushered in by the relatively new British Raj, which has led to migrants from all over India filling up the city with their hopes and dreams.
Amongst these struggling masses is a serial killer on the prowl. Corpses of sex-workers start turning up at ponds and in the by-lanes of Sonagachi, Calcutta’s famed pleasure district, choked to death and stripped of all their ornaments. Fear has gripped the city and the nascent police department seems to be chasing shadows.
This is the story of Trinoyoni Debi: a sensuous seductress with a silver tongue and a love for all things shiny. But behind those eager eyes lurks a savagery that has made Trinoyoni the stuff of legends. How could such a breath-taking beauty be so terrifying? How many more will she kill before she is satiated? And is there anyone who can stop her? Follow her life as she transforms from a child widow to a famed courtesan and merciless murderer, becoming India’s first-ever serial killer.
- Tejo Tungabhadra: Tributaries of Time by Vasudhendra, translated by Maithreyi Karnoor (Penguin Viking, 3 October 2022)
Tejo Tungabhadra tells the story of two rivers on different continents whose souls are bound together by history. On the banks of the river Tejo in Lisbon, Bella, a young Jewish refugee, and her family face daily threats to their lives and dignity from the deeply antisemitic society around them. Gabriel, her lover, sails to India with General Albuquerque's fleet seeking wealth and a secure future for themselves. Meanwhile, on the banks of the Tungabhadra in the Vijayanagara Empire, the young couple Hampamma and Keshava find themselves caught in the storm of religious violence and the cruel rigmarole of tradition. The two stories converge in Goa with all the thunder and gush of meeting rivers. Set in the late 15th and early 16th century, Tejo Tungabhadra is a grand saga of love, ambition, greed, and a deep zest for life through the tossing waves of history.
- The Dreams of a Mappila Girl: A Memoir by B. M. Zuhara, translated by Fehmida Zakeer (Sage Publications, 4 July 2022)
‘I grew up at a time when Muslim girls did not even have the freedom to dream.’
As a young Muslim girl growing up in the 1950s in a small South Indian village, B. M. Zuhara had simple dreams―to go to the newly opened ‘talkies’ in town and watch a movie, play with her brothers in the rice fields, learn the ancient martial art of Kalari Payatu with them, stand on the bridge and listen to the songs sung by the farmhands as they worked. But she soon realised that even being the pampered, youngest child of her family would not help her in realising some of her dreams because of her gender.
Set at the time when Independent India was embracing its new identity as a free nation, Dreams of a Mappila Girl provides a wide lens for the reader to view life in a semi-rural Kerala village. Zuhara recounts the social mores of the society she lived in and offers glimpses into the secluded lives of Muslim girls and women who, despite obstacles, made the best of their circumstances and contributed positively to their communities.
That's all from me this time. Until next time then. Hit the reply button if you want to tell me about any interesting book you've read or if you've an opinion to share about one in the list above.
Warmly,
Veena
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