The Caravan — February 2018

FEBRUARY 2018 93

Japan’s first Nobel Prize

winner in Literature,

Yasunari Kawabata,

committed suicide in

1972, leaving behind an

unfinished novel, which is

finally available in English translation. Dandelions is a book

about a young woman whose vision becomes so impaired

that objects or people that she sees a moment before vanish

into thin air—similar to a real medical condition called

“somagnosia.” Kawabata’s work explores the loss and trauma

of seeing countless loved ones die in the Second World War

and the survivors’ guilt of the generation that remained.

new directions, 128 pages, S 994

THE BOOKSHELF

Over the past two dec-
ades, roughly 40 percent of
foreign investment to India
has been directed through
Mauritius, a nation off the
southeastern coast of Africa,
where a majority of the
inhabitants are descendants
of Indian indentured labourers. Today, Mauritius is notori-
ous as a tax haven. This work of investigative journalism
shows how the business elite in India have used the country’s
historic links with Mauritius to reroute investments in India
through legal and illegal means—on both sides of “the thin
dividing line” between legal tax avoidance and illegal tax
evasion—to avoid paying corporate taxes in India.

penguin random house, 304 pages, S 599

Thin DiviDing line

inDia, mauRiTius

anD global illiCiT

finanCial floWs

by Paranjoy Guha

Thakurta with Shinzani

Jain

The Darjeeling-based novel-
ist and critic Indra Bahadur
Rai is an acclaimed writer
in the Nepali language. In
this novel, he provides a panoramic view of the political and
social transformations which took place in North Bengal
and neighbouring Nepal after the end of British rule. Set in
Darjeeling in the 1950s, it foreshadows the ways in which
identity constructed political demands for independence and
autonomy in the region in the decades to come.

speaking tree, 248 pages, S 350

TheRe’ s a

CaRnival ToDay

Indra Bahadur Rai

Translated by

Manjushree Thapa

The islamiC

ConneCTion

souTh asia

anD T he gulf

Edited by

Christophe Jaffrelot

and Laurence Louër

This collection of essays by

leading scholars of Islam

in South Asia and West

Asia explores how the

regions are unified by transnational political Islam. This

book particularly emphasises the ideological, spiritual and

educational connections between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan,

through the funding of militant groups and religious

institutions, as well as universities, foundations and even

cable TV channels.

penguin random house, 320 pages, S 699

DanDelions

Yasunari Kawabata

Translated by Michael

Emmerich