Advs #3 HOT NEW RELEASES IN BOOKS TO BUY ON AMAZON

1. A Death in Shonagachhi

Author: Rijula Das

Publisher: Picador India

Print length: 312 pages

Release date: 28 July 2021

Price: ₹453.00 (price may vary)

Review

'A Death in Shonagachhi, through its finely developed characters and settings, takes us deep into the hidden and harsh universes of the layered city of Calcutta. Using her fly-on-the-wall method, Rijula Das accomplishes a level of interiority that can compare itself to Upton Sinclair’s seminal novel, The Jungle' – Sarnath Banerjee, author of Corridor and All Quiet in Vikaspuri

‘Rijula Das surprises you with everything in this book – the writing, the scenes, the characters, the story. A debut you cannot stop reading’ – Arunava Sinha, award-winning translator of Chowringhee and Tiger Woman

About the Author

Rijula Das received her PhD in Creative Writing in 2017 from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, where she taught writing for two years. She is a recipient of the 2019 Michael King Writers Centre Residency in Auckland and the 2016 Dastaan Award for her short story ‘Notes from a Passing’. Her short story ‘The Grave of The Heart Eater’ was longlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2019. A Death in Shonagachhi is her first novel. Rijula is from West Bengal and lives in Wellington, New Zealand.

2. Written in the Stars

Author: Divya Anand

Publisher: Penguin eBury Press

Print length: 288 pages

Release date: 16 August 2021

Price: ₹239.20 (price may vary)

When all her efforts at political maneuvering, sucking up and even doing her job fail to land her that elusive promotion, Sitara decides it's time to use the new marketing head Abhimanyu's obsession with his horoscope to her advantage. Soon, she's rescheduling meetings, pitching ideas and picking launch dates based on his horoscope. Except, Sitara is so focused on manipulating Abhimanyu with the career section of his horoscope that she doesn't pay attention to the personal section. Hilarity ensues when these star-crossed signals result in Abhimanyu pursuing Sitara romantically, without realizing that the 'signs' are engineered coincidences in her quest to get promoted.

Soon, Sitara is faced with choosing what she really wants-a career progression or true love. She must chart her own course even if what she has in mind may not be what the stars ordained. Written in the Stars is a romantic comedy about life, love and whether the biggest things in life are the choices you make or what destiny has in store for you.

About the Author

Divya, often called 'baal ki dukaan', struggled with unruly, thick, curly hair for over two decades before she realized her hair looks best when it's left uncombed! She loves using her curls to hold the numerous pens, pencils and paintbrushes she needs while she's writing, doodling or working. She gets her best creative ides when she's hanging upside down, doing anti-gravity yoga. If you're in Bangalore, you might spot her (and her distinctive curls!) with her husband Vivek. Their quest to eat bizarre foods from around the world features in her first book, Dare Eat That. Follow her at: www.divyaanand.in 

3. The Maidens

Author: Alex Michaelides

Publisher: W&N

Print length: 368 pages

Release date: 12 July 2021

Price: ₹450.00 (price may vary)

Review

A stunning psychological thriller ... The intelligent, cerebral plot finds contemporary parallels in Euripides's tragedies, Jacobean dramas such as The Duchess of Malfi, and Tennyson's poetry. The devastating ending shows just how little the troubled Mariana knows about the human psyche or herself. Michaelides is on a roll. ― Publishers Weekly

The greatest campus novel since The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Packed to the dreaming spires with mystery, murder, emotion and a yearning, heart-aching nostalgia for all that we leave in the past - places, lovers and ourselves when we were young. The millions who loved The Silent Patient will be delighted to hear that Alex Michaelides once again mugs you with a climatic twist that you will NEVER see coming. ― TONY PARSONS

4. Malibu Rising: A Novel

Author: Taylor Jenkins Reid

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Print length: 384 pages

Release date: 1 June 2021

Price: ₹1,796.00 (price may vary)

Review

“There’s an impeccable sense of balance in Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Malibu Rising, a natural order in which every action meets its equal and opposite reaction. . . . Reid’s sense of pacing is sublime as she introduces and dispenses with a revolving door of characters to approximate the chaos of a rager where sloshed A-listers couple up in the closets and waiters pass trays of cocaine.”—The Washington Post

“Malibu Rising isn’t merely a window into fame and wealth. Reid is exploring how strong family bonds can overcome tragedy, financial hardship and sibling rivalry. Sometimes, they can even set you free.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune

About the Author

Taylor Jenkins Reid is the New York Times bestselling author of seven novels, including Daisy Jones & The Six and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their daughter.

5. The Art Of Conjuring Alternate Realities: How Information Warfare Shapes Your World

Author: Shivam Shankar Singh & Anand Venkatanarayanan

Publisher: HarperCollins India

Print length: 292 pages

Release date: 2 August 2021

Price: ₹479.00 (price may vary)

HOW DO POLITICIANS IN TODAY'S world attain power? How do nations become powerful? Why do human beings follow others unquestioningly, even if it is to their own detriment? What factors determine which politicians, nations and organizations will dominate the modern world?

Through much of human history, societal control was determined by militaristic strength. Individuals and tribes fought to control vital resources and land. In the next part of evolution marked by colonialism and the emergence of mega-corporations, money determined power. In the recent decade, the key to supremacy has shifted again. The power and control individuals, leaders and nations have is now determined by their ability to mould the information environment.

In The Art of Conjuring Alternate Realities, Shivam Shankar Singh and Anand Venkatanarayanan dive into the operations of political parties, cyber criminals, godmen, nation states and intelligence agencies from around the world to explain how the power to manipulate your thoughts is being harnessed, and how information warfare is shaping your life and world.

About the Author

Shivam Shankar Singh is a data analyst, campaign consultant and author of the bestseller, How to Win an Indian Election (2019). He started out in politics as a legislative assistant to a Member of Parliament Fellow and went on to witness the process of conjuring political realities while managing data analytics for some of India's largest political parties. He is a panelist on national television and writes for several news publications on data and politics. He is also a 2021–22 Schwarzman Scholar at Tsinghua University, Beijing.

Anand Venkatanarayanan is a cyber security and privacy researcher who also dabbles in financial modelling. He has over twenty years of experience in designing and developing system software. He was called as an expert witness before the Supreme Court of India for the Aadhaar case and has deposed before the Kenyan High Court for the country's digital identity project. He writes extensively on cybersecurity and was one of the first to break the story on the hacking of the Kudankulam nuclear reactor in 2019. He studies reality creation techniques deployed at population scale.

6. A Begum and A Rani: Hazrat Mahal and Lakshmibai in 1857

Author: Rudrangshu Mukherjee

Publisher: Penguin Allen Lane

Print length: 256 pages

Release date: 23 July 2021

Price: ₹611.00 (price may vary)

Exploring the lives of two remarkable women who chose to enter a field of activity which, in the middle of the nineteenth century, was seen a male domain, this book brings to light how unusual circumstances catapulted Begum Hazrat Mahal of Awadh and Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi into the rebellion of 1857. Both of them sacrificed their lives trying to overthrow the British rule, which they considered to be alien and oppressive. Their resistance and their deaths are heroic and poignant.

The book captures the different trajectories of their lives and their struggles. In different but adjacent geographies these two women, both married into royal houses, decided to uphold traditions of ruling and culture that their husbands had established. These traditions had been subverted by the policies of Lord Dalhousie who had annexed both Awadh and Jhansi. While noting these similarities, it should be highlighted that Awadh was a large and sprawling kingdom with a long history whereas Jhansi was a small principality.

About the Author

Rudrangshu Mukherjee is the chancellor and professor of history at Ashoka University, of which he was the founding vice chancellor. He was educated at Calcutta Boys' School, Presidency College, Calcutta, JNU and St Edmund Hall, Oxford. He was awarded a DPhil in Modern History by the University of Oxford. He taught in the department of history, Calcutta University, and held visiting appointments at Princeton University, Manchester University and the University of California, Santa Cruz. From 1993 to 2014 he was the editor, Editorial Pages, of the Telegraph. He is the author of many books, which include Nehru & Bose: Parallel Lives; Awadh in Revolt 1857-58: A Study of Popular Resistance; Spectre of Violence: The Massacres in Kanpur in 1857; The Year of Blood: Essays on 1857, Dateline 1857: Revolt against the Raj.

7. Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency

Author: Michael Wolff

Publisher: The Bridge Street Press

Print length: 336 pages

Release date: 9 August 2021

Price: ₹754.00 (price may vary)

Review

Michael Wolff's third Trump book is his best - and most alarming ... Fire and Fury infuriated a president and fuelled a publishing boom. Its latest sequel is required reading for anyone who fears for American democracy. ― Guardian

If Donald Trump seems like a distant, bad dream, Michael Wolff's pacily readable account of his last months as president warns that we shouldn't write him off yet. This is the US journalist's third book on the Trump administration - after Fire and Fury and Siege - and it uncovers new depths of dysfunction there. ― Evening Standard

About the Author

Michael Wolff has received numerous awards for his work, including two National Magazine Awards. He has been a regular columnist for Vanity Fair, New York, the Hollywood Reporter, British GQ, USA Today and the Guardian. He is the author of seven books, including the international phenomenon Fire and Fury, the bestselling Burn Rate and The Man Who Owns the News. He lives in Manhattan and has four children.

8. Things Are Against Us

Author: Lucy Ellmann

Publisher: Picador India

Print length: 170 pages

Release date: 1 July 2021

Price: ₹396.00 (price may vary)

Review

"This book has its face pressed up against the pane of the present; its form mimics the way our minds move now toggling between tabs, between the needs of small children and aging parents, between news of ecological collapse and school shootings while somehow remembering to pay taxes and fold the laundry."―Parul Sehgal, New York Times

“Ellmann captures the pathos of the everyday, how one might use pie crusts and film synopses to dam in pain ... [her] commitment to compilation and description suggests a resistance to hierarchies. It also flickers with tenderness. The time and care that she lavishes on her narrator seem like their own form of political speculation―that every individual is owed an unending devotion, and that such devotion, applied universally, might change the fate of the world."―New Yorke

About the Author

Lucy Ellmann’s first novel, Sweet Desserts, won the Guardian Fiction Prize. It was followed by Varying Degrees of Hopelessness, Man or Mango? A Lament, Dot in the Universe, Doctors & Nurses, Mimi. Her short stories have appeared in magazines, newspapers and anthologies, and she has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, Independent, Independent on Sunday, Times Literary Supplement, Telegraph, New Statesman and Society, Spectator, Herald, Scottish Review of Books, Time Out (London), Art Monthly, Thirsty Books, Bookforum, Aeon, The Evergreen, and The Baffler. A screenplay, The Spy Who Caught a Cold, was filmed and broadcast on Channel 4 in the UK. She edits fiction for the Fiction Atelier (fictionatelier.wordpress.com), and abhors standard ways of teaching Creative Writing, which she considers mostly criminal. Though American by birth, she lives in Scotland.

9. Space. Life. Matter.: The Coming of Age of Indian Science

Author: Hari Pulakkat

Publisher: Hachette India

Print length: 336 pages

Release date: 25 April 2021

Price: ₹488.00 (price may vary)

Review

‘Pivoting on a few important national projects and outstanding scientists, this book weaves a stunning tapestry of post-independent India’s story of research in science and engineering. The audacity of vision of the pantheon of Indian scientists should inspire every Indian interested in science.’ – N.R. Narayana Murthy, co-founder of Infosys

‘A riveting narrative of the trying circumstances in which people worked and built Indian science after independence. The profiles of scientists are mixed with crystal-clear description of the science they did.’ – Vijay Kelkar, economist and former finance secretary, Government of India

About the Author

Hari Pulakkat is a science journalist based in Bengaluru and the winner of the Indira Gandhi Prize for Popularization of Science, 2020. He has spent three decades of his career writing for the Economic Times and Businessworld. He is the editor of a science and technology magazine published by IIT Madras

10. The Marginalized Self : Tales of Resistance of a Community

Author: Rahul edited by Ghai (Author), Arvind K. Mishra (Author), Sanjay Kumar (Author)

Publisher: Primus Books

Print length: 172 pages

Release date: 1 February 2020

Price: ₹985.50 (price may vary)

The marginalized self questions The century-old perception of the Musahar community as rat-eating, pig-rearing, habitually drunk, lazy and unmotivated; a perception fostered by the dominant discourse of development, and the historically prevalent hierarchical social system. This collection of essays argues that these victims of the dominant model of development acquire a different kind of power and critical consciousness due to their marginality, which helps them to examine the processes, practices, and institutions that give rise to and justify poverty, displacement, corruption, greed, competition, and violence in the name of development. Ethnographic studies focussing on the Musahar have demonstrated that the people of this community are capable of offering resistance to the might of the development regime in terms of a comparative critique of modern civilization.They can assert the value of their own world view and epistemology, and in doing so, they subvert the superiority that is generally assigned to the logical and formal schema in understanding the world, and which often speaks in contradictory, evasive, ambiguous, and metaphorical terms. The book offers insights into marginality, culture, and development in India, and will be of interest to students, scholars, practitioners and policy-makers associated with the disciplines of development studies, social Work, social anthropology, critical social psychology, history, and public policy.

About the Author

Rahul Ghai is Associate Professor, School of Development Studies, IIHMR University, Jaipur. His broad areas of work are understanding marginality and human well-being in a transforming India. Arvind Kumar Mishra is Assistant Professor, Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies, JNU, New Delhi. His prime interest is in social psychology, marginality and alternative development. Sanjay Kumar is a researcher, development practitioner and founder of the Deshkal Society, Delhi. He specializes in apprehending marginality, change and development of oppressed and marginalized communities in India.

11. ON CITIZENSHIP

Author: Romila Thapar (Author), N. Ram (Author), Gautam Bhatia (Author), and Gautam Patel (Author)

Publisher: Aleph Book Company

Print length: 172 pages

Release date: 10 January 2021

Price: ₹339.00 (price may vary)

The essays in this volume give the reader a proper understanding of what Indian citizenship means, the threats to it, and what each citizen of this country needs to do, in the words of N. Ram, ‘to reflect on and reset perspectives on what secular, democratic, rights-bearing citizenship means in the contemporary world and what needs to be done to find a way back to the core values of the Indian republic as set out in the preamble to the constitution—justice, liberty, equality, and fraternity’. In On Citizenship, four of India’s finest public intellectuals go deep into key aspects of what constitutes citizenship in India, an issue that has lately been the subject of furious public debate, as a result of controversial decisions by the government in power. In the lead essay in this volume, ‘The Right to be a Citizen’, the historian Romila Thapar explores how citizenship evolved in India and the rest of the world. In addition, she examines the rights of citizens and analyses the state’s duties towards its citizens.

About the Authors

ROMILA THAPAR is Professor Emerita of History at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She was elected General President of the Indian History Congress in 1983 and a Fellow of the British Academy in 1999. In 2008, she was awarded the prestigious Kluge Prize of the US Library of Congress which complements the Nobel in honouring lifetime achievement in disciplines not covered by the latter. 

N. RAM, a director of The Hindu publishing group and former editor-in-chief of The Hindu, is a political journalist with literary interests. He has written on a range of socio-political subjects and specialized in investigative journalism. Along with Susan Ram, he is the biographer of the great Indian writer R. K. Narayan, whom he knew well. Ram was awarded the Padma Bhushan for Journalism (1990). He also received the Asian Investigative Journalist of the Year Award from the Press Foundation of Asia (1990); Raja Ram Mohan Roy Award for contributions to journalism from the Press Council of India (2018); and a Columbia J-School Alumni Award (2003). 

GAUTAM BHATIA graduated from the National Law School of India University. He has BCL and MPhil degrees from the University of Oxford and an LLM from Yale Law School. At Oxford, he won the Herbert Hart Prize for the best essay on jurisprudence and political theory, and his essay on the jurisprudence of Ronald Dworkin was published in the Australian Journal of Legal Philosophy. His essays have appeared in the Oxford Handbook for the Indian Constitution, Max Planck Encyclopedia of Comparative Constitutional Law, and in journals such as Constellations and Global Constitutionalism. He has published three books—Offend, Shock, or Disturb: Freedom of Speech Under the Indian Constitution, The Transformative Constitution: A Radical Biography in Nine Acts, and a novel, The Wall. As a lawyer, he has been part of legal teams involved in contemporary constitutional cases such as the challenge to criminal defamation, the nine-judge bench right to privacy case, the Section 377 challenge, and the Aadhaar challenge. His work has been cited thrice by the Indian Supreme Court, and once by the High Court of Kerala. He founded and writes the Indian Constitutional Law and Philosophy Blog (http://indconlawphil.wordpress.com). 

JUSTICE GAUTAM PATEL began practice in 1987 at the Bombay High Court, working in civil litigation and environmental public interest matters. He held positions in the Bar Association, taught briefly at the Government Law College, wrote regularly for a local newspaper, and contributed articles to journals. He was appointed a judge of the Bombay High Court in June 2013. He has delivered several public lectures including the T. K. Tope Lecture (February 2018), Charles Correa Memorial Lecture (September 2018), the first J. B. D’Souza Memorial Lecture (June 2019), Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy Annual Lecture (December 2019), the 27th Bansari Sheth Memorial Lecture for the Asiatic Society of Mumbai (August 2020), and an address at the Manthan Samvaad 2020 (October 2020). He is passionate about books, law, music, photography, fountain pens and stationery, cinema, science, computers, technology, art, travel, and dogs, not necessarily in that order.

12. Baby Doll: Stories

Author: Gracy (Author), Fathima E.V. (Translator)

Publisher: Harper Perennial India

Print length: 244 pages

Release date: 26 February 2021

Price: ₹230.00 (price may vary)

Review

Gracyis one of the finest practitioners of the short story in modern Malayalamliterature. Complex, compelling and shocking, her stories grip you by their narrativeenergy even as they stand your world on its head by their eerie, unsettlingvision. With unerring perception, she captures the Indian woman as she fliesthrough nothingness and with nothing to hold on to. These translationsdexterously transport into English the startling, surreal and beautiful worldof Gracy’s writing. – PAUL ZACHARIA

Gracyis easily one of the most engaging fiction writers in Malayalam, dealing withan astonishing range of themes, in a variety of voices from the tragic to the ironic.She can be endlessly playful, cleverly mischievous, enchantingly magical, andat times even scarily nightmarish. The pangs of growing up, theunpredictability of desire, the fragility of relationships – Gracy deals withall of them in her uniquely nuanced narratives that laugh at the follies of menand women, their self-love and the anxieties it generates, without ever lookingdown on them, biblical resonances often contributing to their depth. Hercharacters are unforgettable, and the situations strange and familiar at thesame time. Fathima E.V.'s selection in Baby Doll reflects the author'srange, while her translation captures the subtle twists in these intenselyhuman tales, making them perfectly faithful and yet highly readable. –K.SATCHIDANANDAN

About the Author

Gracy is a Malayalam short-story writer, whose first collection of short stories, Padiyirangippoya Parvathi, came out in 1991. It was followed by nine more short-story collections. She has published three memoirs and a short autobiography. She has also made her mark in writing for children. Her work has been translated into Tamil, Kannada, Hindi, etc. Some of Gracy's stories have also been translated into English and Oriya. She has been the recipient of many awards, including the Lalithambika Antharjanam Award (1995) instituted for women writers, the Thoppil Ravi Award (1997), the Katha Prize for the Best Malayalam Short Story (1998) and the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award (2000).

Fathima E.V. is a writer and translator. Her translation of Subhash Chandran's A Preface to Man (2016) won the V. Abdulla Translation Award in 2017 and the 2018 Crossword Book Award for Fiction in Translation. She is a co-translator of Delhi: A Soliloquy by M. Mukundan. Fathima is currently working as an Associate Professor at KMM Govt. Women's College, Kannur, Kerala. She did her MA and PhD from the University of Calicut, and her CertTESOL from St Mary's University, Twickenham. Her poems have appeared in international journals and anthologies.