Published by Penguin, 1939, 208 pages. “No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for …
Continue reading The Haunting of Hill House: Shirley Jackson
Published by Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019, 576 pages. William Dalrymple’s The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire is a chronicle of greed, ambition, and the machinations that put a vast geographical territory under the East India Company (EIC). The book’s epigraph offers a succinct summary of the book’s central theme: “Corporations …
Continue reading The Anarchy—The Relentless Rise of the East India Company: William Dalrymple
Published by Fourth Estate India / Penguin, 2019, 240 pages. Note: This book was published as Girl in White Cotton in India and under the title of Burnt Sugar elsewhere. Caregiving in the best of circumstances is a fraught business. One that is made more so when it involves a relationship that is itself threadbare, …
Continue reading Girl in White Cotton/Burnt Sugar: Avni Doshi
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash The year 2020 is coming to a close, finally. And what a year it has been! For weeks on end we stayed confined to our homes, unable to lead normal lives, listening to grim news of the pandemic. But throughout all this, books have opened a door to other …
Published by Jonathan Cape, 2020, 272 pages. How do you cope with being the daughter of a famous actress? What does it mean to live with someone for whom performing is not just something she does on stage? Norah’s mother is Katherine O’Dell, the famous Irish stage and screen actress. Katherine was a single mother, …
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