Reader\'s Digest India - 09.2019

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could have been pen friends, I think to
myself every time I read him—writing
to one another about distances, home,
love and loss, about borders (both
man-made and invisible), about the
sky and paper and soil and music and
the malleable nature of language.

An Atlas of
Impossible Longing
BY ANURADHA ROY,
Hachette India, `350.
To me, Roy is the greatest
living Indian novelist. This
book builds on the history
of modern India through
the secret histories of its characters.

India, Empire, and First World
War Culture: Writings, Images,
and Songs
BY SANTANU DAS, Cambridge University
Press, `2,145. Going far beyond the
grand narrative of the First World
War, this book recounts—through
letters, songs and intimate oral
histories—the sheer extent to which
Indian soldiers were indispensable
to the victories of the Allied forces.

Everything is Illuminated

BY JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER,

Penguin,` 682. As an introvert, enclosing

myself within my own world comes natu-

rally. But whenever that world feels over-

whelming, I find myself reading Foer’s

words out loud—“This is my heart ...

What you are feeling is the beating of

my heart. It’s what keeps me alive.”

A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments

BY ROLAND BARTHES,

Vintage Classics,`499.

A speculative and

melancholic book,

Barthes lays himself bare

in it. It’s painstaking,

detailed and poignantly

sensuous in a way that

archives the cavernous

realm of romance.

In Freedom’s Shade

BY ANIS KIDWAI, Penguin,`450. Originally

written in Urdu as Azaadi Ki Chhaaon

Mein, this personal memoir about the

Partition is a sincere and empathetic

study of nation, refugee and ‘the other’.

—COMPILED BY VANYA LOCHAN

The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance

BY EDMUND DE WAAL, Vintage Books, `499. It’s perhaps the only book

close to my own understanding of material culture and memoir.

De Waal follows the untold story of 264 netsuke (little Japanese

carvings) to create a masterpiece, transforming a set of family heir-

looms into a collective understanding of history and humanity.

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