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Welcome to this edition of The Hindu on Books Newsletter. Writer and Booker Prize-winner Arundhati Roy has been honoured with the prestigious Pen Pinter Prize 2024 for her “unflinching and unswerving” writings. The prize, established in 2009 by the charity English PEN, defends freedom of expression and celebrates literature in memory of Nobel-Laureate playwright Harold Pinter. English PEN chair Ruth Borthwick said Roy told “urgent stories of injustice with wit and beauty.” Pointing out that Roy is truly an internationalist thinker, writing on human rights and other issues, Borthwick said that India is an important focus in her work and “her powerful voice is not to be silenced.”
“I am delighted to accept the PEN Pinter prize. I wish Harold Pinter were with us today to write about the almost incomprehensible turn the world is taking. Since he isn’t, some of us must do our utmost to try to fill his shoes,” the 62-year-old Roy, who is facing prosecution over comments on Kashmir made in 2010, said.
There’s some sad news from the literary world – Albania’s master novelist and poet Ismail Kadare has passed away at 88. One of his most well-known novels is The General of the Dead Army, published in 1963, which has a chilling contemporary relevance. It tells the story of an Italian general, who was sent to Albania to find and repatriate the bones of thousands of his compatriots killed there during World War II, and who reflects on the futility of the task -- and of war. He won the inaugural International Booker Prize in 2005 for his body of work, and was longlisted for the 2024 edition for A Dictator Calls, translated by John Hodgson.
In reviews, we read biographies of Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay and Soumya Swaminathan, and new novels by Colm Tóibín and Saikat Majumdar. We read a retrospective of the work of C.J. Sansom, who passed away in April, just before an adaptation of his popular historical crime fiction Dissolution was to air on television. Also, do try The Hindu’s weekly books-themed crossword puzzle.
Books of the week
Urvashi Butalia says that she approached Nico Slate’s Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay: The Art of Freedom (HarperCollins) with curiosity. She has been much written about, and indeed she herself was a prolific writer. But Slate, says Butalia, weaves together a story that is both old and new. In doing so, he reopens interesting key questions about biography writing. “Fiercely private, politically committed, strongly nationalist and yet with an acute sense of the need to address class, caste and gender discrimination within India, Kamaladevi also remained outspoken (sometimes at considerable cost to herself) and true to her beliefs. This, and so much more, made her one of the most unusual women of our time.” He begins the story with Kamaladevi setting up, despite considerable opposition, a planned city to house the thousands of displaced Partition refugees who flooded Delhi. “The city of Faridabad was a daring and visionary experiment led by a woman (and her team) that testified to being able to think, in a moment of complete upheaval, of what is needed for rehabilitation in the long term.” Slate “brings her vividly and elegantly to life.”
At the heart of At the Wheel of Research (Bloomsbury) is an attempt to capture the multifarious personality of Soumya Swaminathan, who much of the world became acquainted with while she was at the WHO, helming it as Chief Scientist during the pandemic, writes Ramya Kannan in her review. Dr. Soumya was always famous in the scientific circles in India, having pushed boundaries, and glass ceilings; and standing for ethical, yet compassionate care, but during COVID, the world too got a glimpse of how she worked. Some of her values has “definitely been absorbed as she grew up, ensconced in the liberal and progressive, scientific atmosphere of a home built by her parents — renowned agricultural scientist and father of the Green Revolution M.S. Swaminathan and educationist Mina Swaminathan.” But, as Kannan says, Dr. Soumya has gone much further since – and the book tries to capture a life that must be chronicled.
Writers usually do follow-up novels if they know they can access different characters in the original and embellish their stories. Irish writer Colm Tóibín decided to write Long Island, the sequel to his celebrated novel, Brooklyn, published 15 years ago (2009), when an image came to his mind. Long Island starts with a big bang. Eilis Lacey, married to Tony Fiorello for two decades, is seemingly happy in their Long Island home with two children, till an Irishman comes knocking and drops a bombshell. Eilis’s husband, a “very good plumber”, has had an affair with the stranger’s wife; she is pregnant and he threatens to drop off the newborn at the Lacey-Fiorello home. Actions have consequences, and the rest of the novel, set in the 1970s, traces the aftermath. The sequel is a terrific standalone novel, but Brooklyn completes it.
Saikat Majumdar’s new novel, The Remains of the Body (Penguin), tells the story of three people: Kaustav, and Avik, “the apple of his eye”, who is married to Sunetra. Within its pages, writes the reviewer Joshua Muyiwa, Majumdar speaks to the homo (social and sexual) nature of the Indian man and its particular patriarchy. It speaks to heterosexual relationships too, where wives keep the friendships fed. “Arranging their husband’s social calendar; making sure like a plant, he spends enough time in sunlight. It speaks to the inability of Indian men to find a language to express their desires that don’t always sound like a diktat. It addresses Indian men weaponising their silences. But, it doesn’t illuminate the ways for us — Indian men, both straight and queer — to find ourselves outside of these shames.”
Spotlight
Mini Anthikad Chhibber re-reads the crime fiction of C.J. Sansom and explains why his rich legacy of work will endure. “We first meet Matthew Shardlake in Sansom’s Dissolution (2003), in which the 35-year-old lawyer is disillusioned with the direction the reform is taking. Over seven novels of increasing girth, that does not sacrifice an iota of pace or thrills, we see the idealistic Shardlake stubbornly try and make sense of his violent world where one could be killed for one’s religious beliefs as easily as for a penny.” The novels, spread over 12 years from 1537 in Dissolution to 1549 in Tombland, evoke the public and personal, says Chhibber. “The crime novel has often been held up as the perfect way to study society and the Shardlake novels do that elegantly. Shardlake, the reluctant player in the ‘gilded sewer pit’ that is politics in Tudor England, provides a millennial perspective, which does not come across as anachronistic. There is no reason why 16th century England could not have a forward thinking person as much as say ancient Greece or Bengaluru circa 2024!”
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- In The Company of Violent Men: Stories from the Bloody Fault lines of the Subcontinent (Penguin), Siddharthya Roy takes readers through some of the most turbulent regions in South Asia, presenting stories of ordinary people caught in conflict. From Rohingya camps in Bangladesh, to the forests of Chhattisgarh and the Kashmir valley, Roy writes despatches from the “war” zones.
- A Brief History of the Present: Muslims in New India (Viking) by Hilal Ahmed looks beyond attempts to envision Muslim identity is as a one-dimensional phenomenon in contemporary politics. He delves into the complexities of Muslim identity and its role in everyday life and also views the Muslim communities through a historical lens, to understand where they stand in present day India.
- A.P. Firdaus’ Remember, Mr Sharma (Hachette) revolves around the story of 12-year-old Adi who encounters a big problem when his mother goes missing in Delhi in 1997. When an officer from the Department of Historical Adjustment opens up the archives and gives him access to his family’s files, harking back to India’s independence and Partition, Adi embarks on a journey to the past to understand the present – and his mother’s absence.
- Carnival: A Novel (Aleph) by Sayam Bandyopadhyay, translated by Arunava Sinha, transports readers to 1857 and colonial Calcutta where Rajaram Deb awaits the arrival of two men who will escort him to a transcendental celebration set to begin at dawn. Past and present come together and the mysteries of an ancient city unfold as Rajaram prepares to cut off all worldly ties.
