The year 2023 is almost at an end—where did it go? But the community of readers always seem to find time to read—or to listen to books. So, as always, my request for the best books you read this year has yielded a long and varied list.

There are overlaps. I was pleased to find that you had picked some of the books that were also on my list: Tan Twan Eng’s The House of Doors, Shehan Karunatilaka’s The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, Andrey Kurkov’s Death and the Penguin, and Maggie Shipstead’s Great Circle, to name a few. There were also some overlaps in your lists, such as Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead (which I now have on my TBR pile), Andrey Kurkov’s Grey Bees, Tan Twan Eng’s The House of Doors, Aasheesh Pittie’s The Living Air, and Abraham Verghese’s The Covenant of Water, which was on three lists. In these cases, all the reviews are included.

In fiction, we have novels from Argentina, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, India, Malaysia, Syria and more. Books published long ago have their place here too: the oldest novel we have this year is Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South, first published in 1854. Crime fiction includes books set in Australia, Ghana and Iceland. We also have a work of horror—Stephen King’s The Shining—and of science fiction—Hervé Le Tellier’s L’Anomalie.

Subjects covered in the non-fiction list are: the cat in Indian art, the Black diaspora, the opioid crisis in the US and the history of opium; and biographies of Emperor Ashoka, Genghis Khan, Eileen O’Shaughnessy (George Orwell’s wife) and General Alexandre Dumas. There are also books on nature, including one by David Attenborough. Travel books take you on the monarch migration, in the footsteps of a group of Mennonites in the late 19th century, and along Russia’s border.

In short, there is something here for everyone.

The books are arranged by category, year of publication (for works read in translation, I have used the year of publication in English), and author. In the case of a series of books, I’ve picked the publication date of the most recent book. Audiobooks have been included in the appropriate section. In the case of overlaps, both reviews have been included.

Links lead to reviews on this blog or to my reviews of travel books for the website Women on the Road.

A big thank you for your lists! The 2023 contributors are: Aurea Fagel, Caroline Dommen, Chanis Fernando-Boisard, Imran Ali Khan, Jo Grin-Yates, Jenifer Freedman, Joannah Caborn Wengler, Kamakshi Balasubramanian, Kareen Jabre, Kat de Moor, Kristine Goulding, Leslie Jones, Mohan Raj, Naheed Bilgrami, Nandini Mehta, Nora El Qadim, Paddy Torsney, Pamela Amira, Rishad Patell, Sadhana Ramchander, Sally-Anne Sader, Sita Reddy, Sonia Francis, Suroor Alikhan, Susan T. Landry, Syeda Imam and Usha Raman.

To help you navigate this long list, I have added links that take you directly to various sections: Fiction  /  Crime fiction/Horror/Science fiction  /  Non-fiction  /  Memoirs, Auto/biography  /  Nature  /  Travel.

Fiction

Love Marriage: Monica Ali (2023)
Yasmin, training to be a doctor as she fulfils her immigrant father’s dreams, is engaged to Joe, the son of a wealthy, radical artist. The story weaves through the past and the present of the two families. The novel finds its surprising heroes in Harriet, Joe’s feminist mother, and Anisha, Yasmin’s tradition-steeped mother, whose complex backstories create undercurrents in the young couple’s search for honesty and intimacy.

L’amour: François Bégaudeau (2023)
A love story about a couple who have been together for 50 years, who have lived their lives without any major crisis. A touching story about an ordinary couple.

Two Sherpas: Sebastián Martínez Daniell (2023; translated from Spanish by Jennifer Croft. Original version published in 2018.)
A beautifully written, unusually structured book that takes the reader on a potentially deadly hiking expedition on Everest. The prose is spare, and there is a mysterious aura to the book that quietly draws the reader.

Enter Ghost: Isabella Hammond (2023)
A rendering of present-day Palestine. A story of diaspora, displacement, and the connection to be found in family and shared resistance.

History’s Angel: Anjum Hasan (2023)
Contemporary Delhi, its discontents, its chaos and violence, brilliantly portrayed in Anjum Hasan’s novel, through the story of a middle-aged Muslim teacher of history, caught up in the city’s growing religious intolerance. Poignant, darkly funny and beautifully written.

Western Lane: Chetana Maroo (2023)
Capturing the adolescent voice in all its complexity and vulnerability is challenging, but Maroo does it well in this story told from the point of view of an 11-year-old dealing with the loss of her mother and the consequent falling apart of her grieving father. Gopi and her sisters have been playing squash ever since they were little, but after her mother’s death, her father takes it upon himself to use the game to give his daughters focus and purpose. Of the three, Gopi is the talent, and the game becomes the site of discovery, loss, and healing as she navigates her own feelings and the minefield of extended family expectations.

Brother and Sister Enter the Forest—A Novel: Richard Mirabella (2023)
A story of siblings that is—as the title suggests—a journey that centres on the ties that bind two brothers and a sister; the desire to bond and the desire to push away.

Our Missing Hearts: Celeste Ng (2023)
Set in the near future, the novel builds on a growing distrust of Asian-Americans that is seeded during an all-too-familiar pandemic and then takes increasingly malevolent directions. At the core of the story is a young boy searching for his missing mother, a poet and activist whose work becomes the inspiration for resistance.

A Little Luck: Claudia Piñeiro (2023; translated from Spanish by Frances Riddle. Original version published in 2015.)
A woman flees the little town in Argentina where she lives with her husband and son because of something that happened there. Twenty years later she returns, changed enough not to be easily recognized. But the past has a way of catching up.

The Seven Sisters series: Lucinda Riley (2023 / 2021 / 2019 / 2018 / 2017 / 2016 / 2015 / 2014)
Seven Sisters, seven books, seven stars of the Pleiades. Set on Lake Geneva, each sister has a book that explores her past. There is also an eighth book explaining Pa Salt’s story: Riley died before finishing it so it was posthumously completed by her son Harry Whitaker. I really enjoyed reading the series, which takes you around the world.

Victory City: Salman Rushdie (2023)
It’s been so long since I lost myself in a book. Rushdie’s latest novel is an epic adventure that crosses over time and memory, reaching back to a poem discovered centuries later about a nine-year-old girl called Pampa Kampana who hears the voice of a goddess. With all of Rushdie’s powerful writing and magic, the story takes us through generations in a city that Pampa creates and a people she manifests. As the city rises and falls, Pampa remains constant, recording and remembering the passage of time. The book, as so many of Rushdie’s works, explores the shadow lines between politics and religion, power and the other, class and society. Or as he writes “Fiction could be as powerful as histories, revealing new people to themselves, allowing them to understand their own natures and the natures of those around them, and making them real.”

The House of Doors: Tan Twan Eng (2023)
A historical novel about Somerset Maugham’s sojourn in Malaysia and the secrets discovered there. A novel about love and betrayal, colonialism and revolution, storytelling and redemption.

Set in Penang at the turn of the 20th century, the story is rooted in the two-week period when a forty-something Somerset Maugham (Willie) is hosted by Lesley Hamlyn, a British Malay. Their conversations and reflections yield a story for the writer (“The Letter”) that chooses as its plot the trial and conviction of a young British woman accused of murder. But the real story is what Lesley tells Willie over the course of the two weeks—her own involvement with the Chinese nationalists in Malaya, led by Sun Yat Sen, and her brief but intense affair with a young Chinese member of this group.

The Covenant of Water: Abraham Verghese (2023)
Set in Kerala on South India’s Malabar coast, three generations of a family suffer a peculiar affliction; in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning.

(Audiobook, read by Abraham Verghese) Undoubtedly my best book of the year. Beautifully written and minutely observed (and compellingly read by Verghese), this saga unfolds over seven decades in the lives of a Malayalee family and its intersections with a Scottish surgeon, a tea planter’s daughter, and a strange “condition” that appears across generations. The 12-year-old Mariyama comes to Parambil as a young bride, and is forever after referred to as “Big Ammachi”. Her son, Philipose, marries the beautiful Elsie, and soon after, misfortune strikes. Redemption and hope revive in the figure of their daughter, the younger Mariyama, whose curiosity about the “condition” leads her to many unexpected truths.

I’ve loved most of Verghese’s books, especially Cutting for Stone, but none as much as this one. The novel tells the story of three generations, spanning most of the 20th century, of an Indian Christian family in the small town of Parambil, Kerala. A gentle and well-narrated saga of marriage, medicine, and affliction—“the condition”—because of which each generation loses family members to drowning deaths—which is the eponymous “covenant” with and of water. It’s a tome; but a beautifully written, riveting, even lyrical read. If anything, the book it recalls—with that touch of magic realism, rooted in empirical reality—is Gabriel García Marquez’s 100 Years of Solitude. Parambil and Macondo are continents apart, but they could also be place-cousins.

Independence: Chitra Banerji Divakurni (2022)
A story of three sisters around the time of India’s independence and who are separated when India is partitioned.

Glory: NoViolet Bulawayo (2022)
NoViolet Bulawayo has taken the premise of Animal Farm and set it in Zimbabwe during the end of Mugabe’s regime. It is so thinly disguised that I knew immediately what she was writing about. The book is brutal, funny, uplifting and quite unlike anything that I’ve read. The Defenders—the regime’s thugs—are dogs, Mugabe and Mnangagwa are horses, and Gladys Mugabe is the donkey Marvellous. Fantastic. Probably my best read of the year.

Never Did the Fire: Diamela Eltit (2022; translated from Spanish by Daniel Hahn. Original version published in 2011.)
A claustrophobic book about a couple who were once revolutionaries and are now old and living below the radar in a tiny apartment in an unnamed city, probably Santiago, Chile. The woman, who narrates the book, mourns the death of her child, a two-year-old who died because his parents could not take him to hospital for fear of being arrested. They have nothing left: their ideals are gone as has their love, their companions have either been arrested or are dead. This is a book about old age and loneliness, and how our aging bodies betray us. Strangely compelling.

Lessons in Chemistry: Bonnie Garmus (2022)
Great feminist perspective with a quirky smart woman scientist set in an interesting time in the US. Many laugh-out-loud moments and a very good read all around.

Blue Sky, White Cloud—Three Novellas: Nirmal Ghosh (2022)
One of the most sensitive pieces of nature writing I have ever read. Ghosh is passionate about nature, and has a good understanding of the creatures of the Earth and environmental issues. There are three stories in this book: one of an elephant journeying through the verdant hills of northeast India and Burma, even as the landscape is slowly being taken over by humans. The second is of a leopard who is facing shrinking forests in the hills that are her home. The third is about Nadia, a wildlife biologist researching geese; she tags two of them and calls them Blue Sky and White Cloud. Her discussions with Vivek, India’s minister of state for environment, whom she meets at a conference abroad, influences his thinking. He must make a decision that will impact all those around him.

Matrix: Lauren Groff (2022) (audiobook, read by Adjoa Andoh)
Loosely based on the character and life of medieval poet Abbess Marie du France, the novel follows the transformation of a rebellious 17-year-old hopelessly in love with her queen, into a formidable provincial power. Banished from the court of Henry II to a remote nunnery, Marie embarks on a journey that transforms both the Abbey and its women, creating an island of prosperity and creativity in what was a bleak country—the nuns garden, cook, write, make wine, and find love within the walls of the Priory. A feminist fable from the 12th century.

Discretion: Faïza Guène (2022; translated from French by Sarah Ardizzone. Original version published in 2020.)
The life of Yamina, an Algerian woman living in Paris: her family, her childhood in French-occupied Algeria and her father’s fight for independence. But how did the spunky Yamina become this woman who ignores all slights from the French and tries to persuade her children to do the same? Well-observed novel about Algerian immigrants navigating contemporary France.

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida: Shehan Karunatilaka (2022)
Not for the faint-hearted, this dark and grisly satire is set in the Sri Lanka of the 1980s where violence was perpetrated by a number of state and non-state actors. It follows the adventures of Maali, a dead, gay photographer hovering in a sort of purgatory in which he has a limited amount of time to try and lead his best friend and his lover to a cache of negatives that he hopes will expose the villains of the age.

Trespasses: Louise Kennedy (2022)
Louise Kennedy’s novel—a dark romance—addresses complicated problems that seem to be permanent features of the Irish landscape. The religious and political tensions are portrayed without cliché, and the power of desire to ignore the never-ending restrictions is beautifully portrayed.

Demon Copperhead: Barbara Kingsolver (2022)
A gripping, savage reimagining of David Copperfield. Packed with vibrant characters and narrated in a unique voice, the story follows one boy’s struggle to survive in the midst of America’s opioid crisis. Beautifully written (co-)recipient of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and the 2023 Women’s Prize for Fiction.

Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead reimagines Dickens’s David Copperfield in a modern-day rural America contending with poverty and opioid addiction. Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia as the seeds of the opioid crisis blossom, the story follows Damon Fields, nicknamed Demon Copperhead, from young childhood through early adulthood as he battles poverty, hunger, loss and opioid addiction in his attempt to survive. Without giving too much away, suffice to say that this is a heavy book; poor Demon just cannot catch a break, ever. And yet the novel is anything but trauma porn. We’re rooting for Demon and his loved ones hard the whole time.
This is an American, more modern version of the original Dickens—it’s about generational poverty, poor opportunities and education, a cycle of people working mostly low-income jobs and struggling to live week to week. This isn’t always a pretty book to read any more than drugs and poverty are pretty, but it’s sprinkled with a creative boy’s sarcastic southwestern Virginia humour and the beauty of the mountains. Do not let the length of this novel dissuade you—it’s needed for the breadth of the message and the vivid rendering of the story. Typical of a Kingsolver book, the characters are intricate, the tapestry of the environment in which she places them is rich, and the story draws you in. While the story is at times heart-breaking and brutal, the novel is beautifully written and shines a spotlight on a very important social issue of our time.

The Wait and Other Stories: Damodar Mauzo (2022; translated from Konkani by Xavier Cota)
A cab driver, who assumes the identity of whoever his clients want him to be, finds himself in a tricky situation with a passenger. A late-night call leads a doctor down a path of lust and desire, but with unexpected results. A writer gets to know a thief who had broken into his house. A migrant worker falls in love but wonders how he can present himself as a suitor. Set largely in Goa, Damodar Mauzo’s sometimes bizarre, sometimes tender stories, create a world quite different from what Goa stands for. Simple yet complex and many-layered, Mauzo’s stories have a tongue-in-cheek humour. Very enjoyable and a peek into Konkani literature.

Lessons: Ian McEwan (2022; audiobook, read by Simon McBurney)
This is an immensely engrossing read. The novel perplexed me initially: the meandering plot unravelled with some familiar plot triggers, such as the sexual abuse of a minor, a broken marriage, and love shimmering between two sensible, mature adults—each with their own families—alongside historical events of great importance that the protagonist lived through or stood on the sidelines of and watched. I really didn’t make much sense of what was going on, until I began to see my own lived life in those times of monumental historical impact. Many such events have affected the course of my life profoundly. And yet, my own part in those events has been less than negligible.
I wondered if, in fact, novelists are now gradually turning to characters who don’t really achieve much, do much, or strive to change the course of their own lives—much less that of the world—in any significant way, but who live their lives with simplicity and decency, doing the best they can with what they have, and beyond everything, by being true to themselves. If all of this seems like a cliché, then so be it. However, it is the examination of ordinary lives that breathes personal and private meanings into fiction, and makes for absorbing stories that one has experienced but didn’t know how to tell.

Everything the Light Touches–A Novel: Janice Pariat (2022)
This is a set of nested stories about four people in different times. It starts with Shai in the present in Meghalaya, northwest India, who goes to a village to look after her nanny. The story then moves to Evelyn in the early 1900s, who goes to Meghalaya in search of a tree, then to Goethe who escapes Germany to head to Italy in 1780 and finally to Linnaeus in Lapland in the 1730s as he catalogues plants. The stories are linked: the protagonists all travel to search for something bigger than themselves. Central to the book is Goethe’s idea about plants, which is in opposition to that of Linnaeus. Goethe believed that plants, like nature in general, are living, breathing entities and to categorize them is take away something essential from them. Clever, thoughtful, and well-written.

The Education of Yuri: Jerry Pinto (2022)
Yuri is an awkward 15-year-old, an orphan raised by his uncle, Tio Julio. He does not fit in and has no friends in school. When we meet him, he is on the cusp of change: he is about to leave school to start junior college. This is a coming-of-age story, a love letter to 1980s Bombay and to the days of college. It brings back the intense friendships, the banter, and the discoveries as you grow up and start to navigate the world. Pinto has a way of capturing relationships, and the one between Tio Julio and Yuri is particularly touching.

Best of Friends: Kamila Shamsie (2022) (audiobook, read by Tania Rodrigues)
Zara and Miriam are school buddies who grow up in General Zia’s Pakistan, occupying a privileged layer of society that is to an extent insulated from the political violence of the times. An adolescent adventure becomes a defining moment in their friendship, causing one to move to England and become a venture capitalist while the other fulfils her Oxbridge dreams and turns into an immigrant rights activist. But the ghosts of that misadventure reappear and test the limits of their decades-long friendship, calling into question notions of value and loyalty.

Night of the Living Rez: Morgan Talty (2022)
Morgan Talty has the gift of telling stories that you pay attention to. He is engaging, his characters are relatable, and the setting he writes about—the Penobscot Indian Nation in Maine—is fertile ground for humour, pathos, celebration and mourning.

To Paradise: Hanya Yanagihara (2022)
The book takes place in an alternate version of New York City, and has three sections, respectively set in 1893, 1993, and 2093. Each story is set in the same townhouse adjacent to Washington Square Park; characters across the centuries have the same names. An ambitious, sometimes gruelling, puzzle of a read.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow: Gabrielle Zevin (2022)
Two childhood friends bump into each other at a railway station after years, and start to collaborate on creating video games. The boundaries between the real and the virtual worlds blur. Inventive.

Cloud Cuckoo Land: Anthony Doerr (2021)
Five people, separated by time and place, are linked by an ancient Greek text: a seamstress and a young boy in 1453 Constantinople; a radical young man and the translator of the Greek text in Lakeport, Ohio, in 2020; and a young girl aboard a spaceship in the future. Intricate, absorbing: a book about the power of stories and the vital role of libraries.

The Trees: Percival Everett (2021)
Two white men are murdered in Money, Mississippi. They are found wrapped in barbed wire and their testicles cut off. Next to them is the corpse of a Black man, with their testicles in his hand—the same corpse shows up in both deaths. Two Black cops from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation are sent to investigate. But then there are copy-cat murders all over the country. What is going on?

The Sweetness of Water: Nathan Harris (2021)
The Reconstruction period of the southern United States after the civil war. An unlikely bond between two freedmen who are brothers and the Georgia farmer whose alliance will alter their lives and his forever.

Zorrie: Laird Hunt (2021)
A poignant novel about a woman searching for her place in the world and finding it in the daily rhythms of life in rural Indiana. Drifting west, she survives doing odd jobs. She finally ends up at a radium factory where, at the end of the day, the girls glowed from the radioactive material. This has lifelong consequences for all these girls whose trials have just begun. Set against a harsh gorgeous American landscape, it is an empathetic and poetic novel that deserves to be on a shelf with Willa Cather and Marilynne Robinson.

Grey Bees: Andrey Kurkov (2021; translated from Russian by Boris Dralyuk. Original version published in 2018.)
To those of us following the war in Ukraine from afar, words such as human loyalty, friendship or generosity may not be the first that come to mind when thinking about the “grey zone” disputed by Russia and Ukraine. Yet this book brings warmth and permits optimism about relations between people from this region’s different factions. The main character, Sergey, is an endearing and caring man, going peacefully about his life even as the severe tensions around him smoulder.

Although written before the current war in Ukraine, this novel feels quite timely. A beekeeper living in the Donbas between two warring factions decides to take his bees on a road trip to safety. Through his experiences, and the characters he meets, one gets a sense of the complexities of identity and conflict in the region.

The Cat Who Saved Books: Sosuke Natsukawa (2021; translated from Japanese by Louise Heal Kawai. Original version published in 2017.)
A fantasy novel about books—how they are either locked up and not shared; how abridged versions affect reading habits; and how publishers are becoming more and more commercial. Told through the story of a high-school boy, Rintaro Natsuki, whose grandfather dies leaving behind a lovely second-hand book shop, Natsuki books. The magic happens when a tabby cat appears and leads Rintaro and his friend Sayo through various labyrinths. On each adventure, he courageously saves books, through his belief in the power of books—a conviction he inherited from his gentle grandfather.

Ultramarins: Mariette Navarro (2021; in French)
On a cargo ship, the captain decides to let the crew stop and go for a swim in the middle of the ocean. After they come back up, the ship seems to have acquired a life of its own. This very short novel is unlike any other book, with a feeling of surreal mystery as well as psychological narration. It conveys feelings of unease and throws the reader off balance; it is also sublime.

Great Circle: Maggie Shipstead (2021)
This work of fiction is the story of Marian Graves who disappeared in 1950 while attempting a north-south circumnavigation of the earth. Marian and her twin brother Jamie were more or less orphaned in a shipwreck in 1914, and sent as babes to their paternal uncle in Montana who raised them.
During their growing up years, the town is visited by a couple who fly a small plane. Marian becomes obsessed with planes and her only life goal is to fly them. This novel has it all… shipwrecks, the depression, bootlegging, whore houses, world war, and much more. There is a dual timeline: in the present, an actress named Hadley is playing Marian in a film.

Mahmoud ou la montée des eaux: Antoine Wauters (2021; in French)
Mahmoud, an old man, dives in Lake Al-Assad—a man-made lake that drowned his old home—in search of memories. Meanwhile, war rages around him. The book weaves the history of Syria with the story of Mahmoud, a man who chooses a path of non-violence.

Still Life: Sarah Winman (2021; audiobook, read by Sarah Winman)
A fantastic book, well-written and hugely enjoyable. I listened to the audiobook, read by the author who does a great job of bringing it to life. The story has enough quirky characters and twists and turns to keep you interested but is still believable. Zigzags beautifully between working class London and Florence, war-time and peace-time, discovering art and wisdom in unusual places.

Co-Wives, Co-Widows: Adrienne Yabouza (2021; translated from French by Rachael McGill. Original version published in 2015.)
A novel from the Central African Republic about two women married to the same man. When he dies, they have to band together to fight for themselves.  A simple story and very enjoyable because of the feisty woman at the centre.

Three Apples Fell from the Sky: Narine Abgaryan (2020, translated from Russian by Lisa C. Hayden. Original version published in 2014.)
Gentle, lovely book set in a little Armenian village in the mountains, a village where most of the young people have left. Anatolia, a widow, is bleeding heavily, although her periods stopped a long time ago. Convinced she has a terminal illness, she organizes her things and lies down to die. But she doesn’t die. This is the story of what happens to her, and the lives of her neighbours.

Swimming in the Dark: Tomasz Jedrowski (2020)
A story set in the 1980s around the relationship between two boys who meet at a summer camp during the decline of communism in Poland. I found this an interesting premise, but a bit difficult to read. While I enjoyed the story of the friendship between the two boys with their differing and complex relationship around the politics of the time, I found the language too figurative and the characters very difficult to connect with sometimes.

The Shadow King: Maaza Mengiste (2020)
Set during Italy’s 1935 invasion of Ethiopia, this novel highlights the Ethiopian women who went to war, inspired by Hirat who was taken prisoner of war by the cruel Italian soldiers. Years later she reflects on this period through photographs.

Trout, Belly Up: Rodrigo Fuentes (2019; translated from Spanish by Ellen Jones. Original version published in 2017.)
Short stories from a Guatemalan writer. The connecting thread is Don Hendrik, who tries to make a living as a farmer, without much success. Drug dealers and thugs want his land, his brother is a drug addict, and his trout die. Some of the stories end abruptly, leaving it to the reader’s imagination to figure out what happens next. Enjoyed this.

10 Minutes and 38 Seconds in this Strange World: Elif Shafak (2019)
I’d heard a lot about this book before I read it, it beautifully captures a person, a place, a feeling in just a few strokes of the brush. While the story is in itself tragic, the book tells it with a light and tender but unflinching touch. Istanbul itself is as much a character as the people in the book, and I like the way it re-centred my geography as I read it.

The Children Act: Ian McEwan (2018; audiobook, read by Lindsay Duncan)
The book deals with the rights of a child under 18 to decide on intrusive procedures to save their life, and the impact of the case on the judge, who must pronounce a verdict on whether the particular “child” has the right to decline treatment. The judge becomes personally involved in the case. Against the backdrop of the judge’s own marital difficulties in her childless marriage, the plot becomes intriguing. Having seen the film based on this novel before I read it, I kept seeing Emma Thompson’s face as I listened to the words. It was a peculiar sensation to have the film overshadow the novel.
The book raised rather important issues of medical ethics in an exceptional situation, and it affected me profoundly in the way McEwan portrays an older woman, who feels unexpected emotional tugs and involvement with a much, much younger person, who is almost a child. This complex depiction of a woman’s sense of being abandoned in the marriage and feeling lost, while being very much needed in a peculiar, almost forbidden, relationship, is both polished writing and a satisfying read.

Brer Rabbit Retold: Arthur Flowers, illustrated by Jagdish Chitara (2017)
Beautifully produced retelling of the Brer Rabbit stories. When Joel Chandler Harris wrote them, he portrayed them being told by a happy slave (Uncle Remus) to a group of white children, showing slavery in a positive light. Flowers takes the stories back and retells them, using a style that fuses the written word and African story-telling. Stunningly illustrated by Chitara, a folk artist from Gujarat, it comes with a CD of Flowers reading some of the stories (and for those of you who are past CDs, there is a download code).

Pyre: Perumal Murugan (2016; translated from Tamil by Aniruddhan Vasudevan. Original version published in 2013.)A love story with caste-induced hatred. Set in southern India, a newly married couple from different castes suffer humiliation, insults and violence by villagers. An eye-opener about the caste system and the enduring force that it is.

Commonwealth: Ann Patchett (2016) (audiobook, read by Hope Davis)
Ann Patchett, who has mastered the art of excavating the complex dynamics of family, weaves a story around two broken families with five children between them who grow up like siblings, having exchanged a parent between them. There is heartbreak and healing, in true Patchett fashion, but in the end, I found the novel something of a betrayal.

Spill, Simmer, Falter, Wither: Sara Baume (2015)
One of the most original books I have ever read, and yet it masquerades as a potentially ordinary story of a man and his dog. In the course of reading, I left my own world and entered his.

By Night the Mountain Burns: Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel (2014; translated from Spanish by Jethro Soutar. Original version published in 2008.)
Set on an island in Equatorial Guinea, this is about a young boy living through a particularly difficult year. It reads like an oral narrative (which it is supposed to be), without dialogue and with repetition, recounting an incident and then looping back to it much later, adding more detail. This adds layers to the story, and echoes the rhythms of everyday life on the island.

A Brief History of Seven Killings: Marlon James (2014)
James’s take on the shooting of Bob Marley in his home in Kingston, a day before the Peace Concert. Marley survived but the gunmen were never found, and the attempt was supposed to have been politically motivated. Marley hardly appears in the story, which is told by a polyphony of voices: including drug runners, gang members, CIA operatives, a Rolling Stone reporter and a young woman. There is also a section on the Jamaican drug gang that established itself in the US. It is a tour de force, although it gets a little long-winded during the New York section. You get inside the heads of these people (some of whom you really don’t want to know). Not for the squeamish.

The Daughter: Jane Shemilt (2014)
The author is both a doctor and a mother, and the story begins just like any story, a daughter getting ready to act in a school play and all the excitement and tension around it. But that night, after the play, she doesn’t return. As the author goes on to relate the story, all the questions a mother asks herself come to the surface: “Have I been a good mother? How come I didn’t know my own daughter?” As the plot unravels, we see the characters evolving, get to know them better, feel for them, sense their vulnerability and during all that time the tension is maintained. I borrowed this book from my local library and I read it late into the night, I had to know what took place at the end.

We Need New Names: NoViolet Bulawayo (2013)
Written a decade ago, but Bulawayo’s use of language still feels fresh, astringent and innovative in this story about a young Zimbabwean girl’s journey from kicking around with her friends in a shanty town to living with her aunt in the US.

Foster: Claire Keegan (2010)
In 1981 Ireland, a young girl is sent to live with foster parents on a farm while her mother gives birth. She has no notion of when she would return home. In the strangers’ house she finds affection she has not known before, and slowly she begins to blossom in their care.

Palace of Illusions: Chitra Banerji Divakurni (2008)
The Mahabharata, as told by Panchaali, the wife of the five Pandava brothers. A story about a woman born into a man’s world.

Pynter Bender: Jacob Ross (2008)
Pynter is born blind. He recovers his sight but has a way of seeing things that most others can’t. He grows up in a village, Old Hope, surrounded by women: his mother, aunts and grandmother. There is a dictator running the island, and the islanders are getting restive, and Pynter gets involved in the resistance against the dictator. Evocative and rich.

The Uncommon Reader: Allan Bennett (2007)
This slim book is about Queen Elizabeth, who suddenly takes to reading books after 50 years of being queen. Her Majesty’s sudden passion for reading results in her public duties suffering. As she devours works by everyone from Hardy to Brookner, from Proust to Beckett, her equerries conspire to bring the Queen’s literary odyssey to a close. “A gloriously entertaining comic narrative, but it is also much more: a deadly serious manifesto for the potential of reading to change lives.”—Edward Marriot, The Observer

Death and the Penguin: Andrey Kurkov (2003; translated from Russian by George Bird. Original version published in 1996.)
One of my favourite books this year. A darkly comic novel set in post-Soviet Ukraine about a young novelist who lives with a penguin and unwittingly gets drawn into a sinister underworld. I never thought I’d read a novel in which a penguin was the most lovable character!

Fasting, Feasting: Anita Desai (1999)
Intricate family matters play out in two countries; India and the United States. In India, the focus is on the overworked daughter Uma who is put upon by her demanding parents, for whom she prepares food and runs errands. She is made to leave school to serve her parents.
In the US we meet Uma’s privileged brother Arun, who is spending holidays with a well-to-do American family. We learn of his dislike of American cooking and food in general. He is appalled by the family’s bulimic daughter, whom they do nothing to help. He is isolated and sees this experience as different from his family life in India.

Plainsong: Kent Haruf (1999)
Set in the fictional town of Holt, Colorado, it tells the interlocking stories of some of the inhabitants. First in a trilogy, the other two are Eventide and Benediction.

L’Arte della Gioia: Goliarda Sapienza (1998; published in English as The Art of Joy, 2013, translated from Italian by Anne Milano Appel.)
Events in the first half of the 20th century told through the life of a woman, born in a poor family of Sicilian peasants, but who goes on to build her own life, through monastery, marriage, sexual encounters and friendships. Published after the death of its author, if feels like an instant classic, and makes you realize how much the female gaze is missing from so many classics about that period in history. It is also a thoroughly enjoyable read.

Four Letters of Love: Niall Williams (1997)
Niall Williams brings wonderful lyricism into this story of humdrum life in Ireland. The book features civil servants in Dublin, austere life on the Aran islands, thankless work in Galway, unhappy marriages and unfulfilled dreams. But all that is carried aloft by the author’s beautiful writing style, strong imagery, occasional flights of lyricism. White birds flying about in the feathery air, an invasion of flies, and the suspense carried in the four letters of love bring the story to its announced, yet unexpected, climax.

A Heart So White: Javier Marías (1995; translated from Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa. Original version published in 1992.)
A book that loops on itself. A woman, back from her honeymoon, walks into the bathroom and shoots herself. The story is told by Juan, the son of the man she was married to, a man who went on to marry the woman’s sister. Juan is recently married and muses about marriage, relationships, secrets and understanding, until in the end, the story goes back to the shooting. Echoes of Macbeth (including the title) reverberate throughout. Unusual, intriguing.

The Painted Alphabet—A Mythical Story of Bali: Diana Darling (1992)
This novel is loosely based on a very long Balinese poem called Dukuh Suladri. The contest of good and evil is the issue at the heart of the poem. Like its theatrical depiction, the discourse is not pious but full of joyful impudence. The novel follows the epic adventures of two Balinese brothers Siladri and Made Kerti and their offspring after they make very different choices in life. Siladri leaves home to study with a holy man, swaps babies with his brother and sets off with his wife and niece Kusuma Sari. His wife soon dies and Kusuma is raised by two foster mothers—a lioness and a doe. Then there’s the monstrous Klinyar (reminded me of Shurpanaka), and her foster mother Dayu Datu, a powerful witch.
I felt that I was reading something like the Ramayana—there is magic, depravity, spiritual ambition, love, sensuality. Witches co-exist with tourists and talking animals, and after many exciting adventures, there is somehow poetic justice. I found myself finishing the book with a deep sense of satisfaction. This novel would make a great film. Surprised no one has made it yet!

The Secret History: Donna Tartt (1992) (audiobook, read by Donna Tartt)
I finally hunkered down and read this novel that came highly recommended by my daughter, and was not disappointed, though I must admit the setting of an exclusive college in New England for a dark story is getting a tad old. An unintended death, a planned murder, and the strange bonds that make a clique are the interwoven strands of a narrative that occupy this doorstopper of a book. Beautifully written with some sharp and compelling portraits.

The Summer Book: Tove Jansson (1975; translated from Finnish by Thomas Teal, original version published in 1972. Read in the French translation: Le Livre d’un été, translated by Jeanne Gauffin.)
A wonderful little book about a child and her grandmother spending the summer on a Finnish island. At first, it seems to be about the child and the perspective of the child, but as the book progresses, you discover it is as much about aging and the grandmother’s perspective—and ultimately, about freedom and the landscapes of the island and around it.

A Raisin in the Sun: Lorraine Hansberry (1959)
Absolutely brilliant, powerful play about an African-American family and their dreams. Walter is desperate to move up the social scale and invest in a business. His mother is about to receive a check for 10,000 dollars from the death of her husband. But how does she plan to spend the money? A story about Black families, relationships between Black and white, husband and wife, men and women. A classic: timeless, universal and also very specific at the same time.

Maud Martha: Gwendolyn Brooks (1953)
Thirty-four vignettes follow a young Black girl growing up in late 1920s Chicago. The novel follows Maud from childhood to adulthood through experiences in lower, middle and upper class settings and themes of race, class and gender are explored.

East of Eden: John Steinbeck (1952)
Steinbeck’s masterpiece is a symbolic recreation of the biblical story of Cain and Abel woven into a history of California‘s Salinas valley. A depiction of good versus evil.

Cry, The Beloved Country: Alan Paton (1948)
A most important novel about South Africa. Searing, lyrical prose about a Black man’s country under a white man’s law. A deeply moving story of a Zulu pastor and his son set against the background of a land and a people riven by racial injustice. With remarkable lyricism, unforgettable characters and incidents, this novel is a classic work of love, hope, courage and endurance.

Titus Groan: Mervyn Peake (1946)
I reread this after decades and enjoyed it as much as I did the first time. It is wonderful being pulled into another world, a world completely unlike anything I know. Gormenghast is a strange place: a large crumbling castle with age-old traditions and a cast of strange characters: the Earl, lost in his books; the Countess, with her birds and white cats; Fuschia, their daughter, living in her little world; and the twins, the Earl’s sisters, who live in a room with a tree sticking out of it, resentful of their sister-in-law. And into all this comes Steerpike, a 17-year-old kitchen boy, wildly ambitious, clever, cunning and ruthless. A delight.

Vagabond: Colette (first published in English in 1912; translated from French by Stanley Applebaum, 2010. Original version published in 1910.)
Written in 1910, yet a novel with a modern sensibility in which a divorced woman chooses the more difficult and uncertain path of independence (performing as a dancer in music halls to earn a living) over being kept in comfort by an adoring young lover who wants to marry her.

North and South: Elizabeth Glaskell (1854)
Margaret, a young woman from southern England has to move to the north after her father decides to leave the clergy. The family struggles to adjust to the industrial town’s customs. The story explores the issues of class and gender as Margaret’s sympathy for the mill workers clashes with her growing attraction to the mill owner.

Crime fiction / Horror / Science fiction

Night Shadows: Eva Björg Aegisdottir (2022; translated from Icelandic by Victoria Cribb. Original version published in 2020.)
The unusual setting of this whodunnit is a small close-knit community in the middle of Iceland, where dark secrets come to the surface as the plot unravels. Easy to read, with plot twists and turns that keep you going. A bit slow at the beginning but the pace picks up in the latter half.

The Bangalore Detectives Club: Harini Nagendra (2022)
This “cozy” detective series, starring a young couple in 1920s Bangalore (math-loving Kaveri and her doctor husband Ramu), has been compared to Alexander McCall-Smith’s The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency. Don’t be fooled; it’s nowhere in that league. It’s neither as well written nor as beautifully plotted. However, if you’re looking for a light, easy read that’s also a mystery, this book could fit the bill. The second in the series is already out and the author, an ecology professor, says there are more in the pipeline.

Girls Who Lie: Eva Björg Aegisdottir (2021; translated from Icelandic by Victoria Cribb. Original version published in 2019.)
A gripping psychological thriller set in the captivating landscape of Iceland. The author skillfully weaves social and psychological complexities into the narrative, delving into profound themes about Icelandic society. A perfectly constructed plot, unexpected twists, and immersive writing style.

L’Anomalie: Hervé Le Tellier (2020; published in English as The Anomaly, 2022, translated by Adriana Hunter.)
An Air France plane, flying from Paris to New York in March 2021, goes through turbulence near JFK and lands. Then in June, an identical plane with exactly the same passengers tries to land at JFK: something happened during the turbulence and the planes were duplicated. Strange story, intriguing, especially when the doubles come face to face with each other.

The Silent Patient: Alex Michaelides (2019)
The Silent Patient is a shocking psychological thriller of a woman’s act of violence against her husband—and of the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive. This is a truly addictive thriller. I did have my suspicions about the outcome in the middle of the novel but still it was so beautifully written and entertaining that I kept going.

The Dry: Jane Harper (2017)
A crime novel set in Australia’s Outback. The rains have failed Kiewarra: there is severe drought and the river has completely dried up. Things are bad enough, but then Luke Spence’s wife and child are found shot in their home, and he is found dead in his car. The assumption is that he killed his family and then committed suicide. When Luke’s childhood friend Aaron Falk, now with the police, comes for the funerals, he is not convinced that Luke killed his family. But the small town, where Aaron grew up, has its secrets. Will he be able to find out what happened to his friend?

Penance: Kanae Minato (2017; translated from Japanese by Philip Gabriel. Original version published in 2012.)
The story follows the narratives of four girls left with the memory of a schoolyard murder that leaves them scarred and changes the course of their lives in starkly different ways. Even as we learn about the ways in which they deal with the incident and their perceived or experienced roles in it, we see a fifth thread, that of the mother seeking revenge (and penance) for her daughter’s death.

Murder at Cape Three Points: Kwei Quartey (2014)
The bodies of Charles and Fiona Smith-Aidoo are found in a boat drifting near Cape Three Points on the southern coast of Ghana. Darko Dawson is sent to investigate. Were the deaths the result of a family feud? The oil rig that Charles worked on is being targeted by environmental activists, so were they responsible? Excellent, with a strong sense of place. This is the second book in the Darko Dawson series I’ve read, and I’m a big fan.

The Shining: Stephen King (1977)
Jack and Wendy spend winter at the Overlook Hotel with their son Danny, when Jack is hired as the caretaker. They are alone in the huge hotel, cut off by the snow. But the hotel is full of memories and ghosts who have not left. Creepy, insidious and gripping—but then, it’s Stephen King, so I wasn’t expecting anything less. I loved the film and was curious about the book, especially since I know King wasn’t too keen on the film. The book is so much more: Jack and Wendy are more nuanced, and the hotel is actually a malevolent thing, which doesn’t come through in the film. Still love the film but the book is brilliant.

The Mournful Demeanour of Lieutenant Boruvka: Josef Skvorecky (1973; translated from Czech by Rosemary Kavan, Kaca Polackova and George Theiner. Original version published in 1966.)
These are twelve detective stories featuring Lieutenant Boruvka: a policeman who is saddened by the perfidy of humans. A bit tongue-in-cheek, these stories, set in Prague for the most part, are a delight.

Non-fiction

Smoke and Ashes—A Writer’s Journey through Opium’s Hidden Histories: Amitav Ghosh (2023)
The easiest description of this book is a memoir, but it’s so much more than a memoir! It is also a travelogue, a romp through horticultural and political history, as well as a biography of the opium poppy—a plant that transformed history—which was not only at the very epicenter of capitalism and colonialism, dominating world trade among Britain, India and China, but also continues its global impact in the opioid crisis today. Ghosh shows how opium exports from India, engineered by the British colonialists, were important not only for the Empire’s survival but also underlay some of the world’s biggest corporations.  Because of the author’s decade-long immersion in writing and researching the Ibis Trilogy (the fictional series revolving around the opium diaspora in the 19th century), the book also happens to be a mini-ethnography of his writing process. A writer’s journey through opium’s hidden histories, as the subtitle says. Taken together, they make for an endlessly fascinating and gorgeously written book (his sentences are pure gold!) that has something of the flavour of In an Antique Land. Smoke and Ashes is a rich, dense and deeply satisfying mix of history and ethnography. It is nonfiction but what a dramatic story/saga it traces. 

The Indian Cat—Stories, Paintings, Poetry, and Proverbs: B.N. Goswamy (2023)
A delightful book in which India’s most eminent art historian (who sadly died in November 2023 just weeks after this book was published) shows and tells how cats have been portrayed in paintings, stories, poetry and proverbs. Goswamy’s formidable scholarship is lightly worn as his trail of the Indian Cat takes us through miniature paintings, Sanskrit, Persian, Urdu and Hindi literature and poetry, folktales, fables and the great epics. An enchanting read, with beautiful illustrations.

American Breakdown: Our Ailing Nation, My Body’s Revolt, and the Nineteenth-Century Woman Who Brought Me Back to Life: Jennifer Lunden (2023)
This highly acclaimed book delves deeply into a disease or cadre of diseases that plague primarily—but not exclusively—women, a mental and physical health issue that likely has been around for several centuries. (The nineteenth-century woman in the subtitle refers to Alice James, a 19th century diarist and Henry James’s sister.)

Ashes and Stones—A Scottish Journey in Search of Witches and Witness: Allyson Shaw (2023)
This book is part a memoir of the American author who feels chosen by the north-east coast of Scotland where she lives and writes this book. And part is the history of the women who were accused of witchcraft in the seventeenth century. Visiting the beautiful and spellbinding Scottish landscape where they lived and died, Shaw attempts to give a voice to these women and tell their stories. It’s fascinating, as I live in Scotland, to learn more about a part of history that isn’t pleasant. It is also heart-breaking to read the stories as many of these women were vulnerable and confused. Good to remember the plight of so many women, which still continues to be a reality.

Why Women Grow—Stories of Soil, Sisterhood and Survival: Alice Vincent (2023)
This is such a lovely little book of stories from women on why they grow. Vincent follows the lives of several women scattered across the UK. The book is a series of interviews, woven and tied together in gardens and against the backdrop of Vincent’s own garden. Vincent’s aim, which comes through so nicely in these quiet interviews, is reclaiming the space women have occupied but has been overlooked.

Dispatches from the Diaspora: Gary Younge (2023)
A book by the journalist about the Black diaspora and their perspective, be it in Africa, across Europe or the US.

Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh—India’s Lonely Young Women and the Search for Intimacy and Independence: Shrayana Bhattacharya (2022)
This is the book I point to when my students ask how they can communicate research insights in a way that reaches popular audiences. Bhattacharya combines development economics with sociology and an understanding of culture within a feminist framework to offer a picture of how Indian women engage with issues of life, work and leisure. Drawing on a decade-long engagement with women across India, the book delves into the complexities of everyday economic decision-making and its implications on women’s choices, aspirations and relationships.

Uncommon Wealth—Britain and the Aftermath of Empire: Kojo Koram (2022)
The book looks at how a group of British people benefited from the end of the British Empire.

Reading the World—How I Read a Book from Every Country: Ann Morgan (2022)
This is the updated edition of Ann Morgan’s 2015 book, Reading the World: Confessions of a Literary Explorer. Ann Morgan spent a year reading a book from every country in the world. She uses her experience in discovering not just new writers but fresh viewpoints, sourcing books and so on, to think about reading. This is a wide-ranging book, looking at which voices get heard, the role of translation, the unconscious biases we carry within us, and how reading is a solitary but, at the same time, a social occupation.

My Secret Brexit Diary—A Glorious Illusion: Michel Barnier (2021; translated from French by Robin Mackay. Original version published in 2021.)
Who knew Brexit could be so riveting? Michel Barnier’s diary is fascinating, a blow-by-blow account of the Brexit process. It was clear that the Tory party had not thought about what would happen if the UK voted for Brexit, so when the negotiations on Britain’s exit began, the British were unprepared, unlike the EU. The other thing that is really interesting is how intertwined Europe is: leaving Europe has huge impacts, including on aviation, trade, fishing—not to mention Northern Ireland and the Irish border (I finally understood what the Irish backstop is). Also an interesting glimpse into how the EU works.

The World for Sale—Money, Power, and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources: Javier Blas and Jack Farchy (2021)
How a few businessmen enabled an expansion in international trade and connected resource-rich countries to financial centres. The wild west of capitalism.

Empire of Pain: Patrick Radden Keefe (2021)
An excoriating, deeply researched account of the damage done by the invention and relentless promotion by the Sackler family of the deadly opioid OxyContin.

Those Precious Days: Ann Patchett (2021)
A series of essays from different points in the life of the author, in which she reflects on writing, relationships, family, community and place, in an artful yet unpretentious and direct way.

Languages of Truth: Salman Rushdie (2021)
Published soon after the attack in New York, some of the essays in this volume, written between 2003 and 2020 seem to be prescient, speaking to a world in which truths are more often told in story than in “fact”. In some, Rushdie returns to his favourite preoccupations—the nature of narrative and the possibilities of polysemy. In others, he takes on the nature and form of dissent and subversion by examining the lives and works of a range of artists and writers, from Ai Wei Wai to Carrie Fisher. For me, even as I have enjoyed much of Rushdie’s fiction and it remains my lodestone for the discovery of a subcontinental idiom, it is his non-fiction that reveals his true genius.

The Laundromat—Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite: Jake Bernstein (2019)
How the world works—regarding illicit money, political corruption and global fraud.

The Naked Swis—A Nation Behind 10 Myths: Clare O’Dea (2018)
The Naked Swiss provides a detailed view and discovery of Swiss society and its culture, attempting to debunk some common stereotypes. The book breaks it down into 10 myths about Switzerland, such as Swiss neutrality and democracy, Swiss affluence and the Swiss attitude. O’Dea gives us a researched approach and a balanced opinion. She demonstrates the strength and innovativeness of the country but she also doesn’t shy away from addressing its issues.
What I liked about the book is its structure, the way O’Dea simplified it into 10 myths, giving the readers a chance to skip or go to the topic which most intrigues them, without losing the narrative. It could in fact be a handy reference in case you want to debate among your friends or family on what they think Switzerland is! In that sense, I find it also to be educational as I discovered a lot of interesting things about the country, especially ones that are subtle or not too obvious. The author is credible with her journalistic background and also the fact she has lived in Switzerland for some time and her previous job required her to cover news. Overall, worth the money and a handy Swiss manual.

Fireflies: Luis Sagasti (2017; translated from Spanish by Fionn Petch. Original version published in 2011.)
What an amazing book! Sagasti highlights seemingly random incidents and people, and somehow finds the links to pulls them together, like fireflies providing flashes of light.

The Mushroom at the End of the World—On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins: Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing (2015)
Anthropologist Anna Tsing writes about the matsutake mushroom: considered a delicacy by connoisseurs in Japan, it thrives in human-disturbed forests. The mushroom is an entry point to show how globalization, ecological degradation, migration, markets, interactions between humans and forests, are all deeply intertwined. Fieldwork spans the forests and foragers of Japan, Oregon (US), and Yunnan (China), as well as the trade markets for the mushroom and the scientific projects in the forests. It reads very well and makes you marvel at the wonders of the universe as much as it makes you think of how humans interact with each other and the world.

The Politics of Exile: Elizabeth Dauphinee (2013)
The author is an international relations researcher but she wrote this book as a form of half fiction – half auto-ethnography. The narrator is an academic writing about the war in the former Yugoslavia from the perspective of ethics / law, but whose world and research are upset by an unexpected encounter with someone who has lived through the war in Bosnia. The book explores themes of “personal and civilizational guilt, of displaced and fractured identity, of secrets and subterfuge, of love and alienation, of moral choice and the impossibility of ethics,” as per the publisher’s presentation. It also encourages us to re-think the distinction between fiction, the narrative form, and research.

The Missing Ink—The Lost Art of Handwriting (and Why It Still Matters): Philip Hensher (2012)
A lovely book about handwriting, from how someone’s personality used to be assessed by their handwriting, to pens and fonts, and how we have lost the precious habit of writing with a pen on paper.

Eating India—An Odyssey into the Food and Culture of the Land of Spices: Chitrita Banerji (2008)
This book is a mixed bag. It is not a recipe book nor exactly a travel book with a food component. Rather it’s a personal odyssey to more than a dozen regions in India and their cuisines, through the author’s friends’ homes. It is good food writing, and the prose is magnificent in parts, but I wouldn’t say it was ground-breaking like Elizabeth David or even Samin Nosrat. The drawback, for me, is that Banerji seems to look at all Indian cuisines through the Bengali food lens, which seems a tad parochial (which is not what the subtitle promises).

History

Ashoka—Portrait of a Philosopher King: Patrick Olivelle (2023)
A superb portrait of India’s greatest ruler, the Mauryan Emperor whose empire (in the 3rd century BCE) extended almost across the entire Indian subcontinent. In a dramatic change of heart, he renounced violence after victory in a war in which over 40,000 people died. Thereafter, under his rule, he established a system of governance which ensured respect for all living beings and for all religions, developing a philosophy of Dharma or righteousness that remains inspiring and relevant to this day.
In this elegantly written book, based on deep scholarship that is at the same time accessible and engaging for the lay reader, Ashoka comes vividly alive through his own words, as Patrick Olivelle reveals to the reader what the Emperor’s edicts, inscribed on rocks and pillars throughout his empire, reflect about his personality and the world in which he lived.

Genghis Khan and The Making of the Modern World: Jack Weatherford (2004)
A superb work of narrative history about an extraordinary man who has unfairly had a very bad press in the West. Far from being a barbarian, Genghis Khan was an extremely able leader whose reorganization of the Mongol tribes and radically innovative ideas (freedom of religion, meritocracy over aristocracy, etc.) paved the way for an empire that stretched across two continents.

Memoirs, Auto/biography

Wifedom: Anna Funder (2023)
Eileen O’Shaughnessy was a writer herself, and by all accounts a brilliant woman. This book demonstrates the many ways in which Eileen, George Orwell’s wife, directly contributed to his masterpieces and to writing herself out of them. Anna Funder presents an engaging yet distressing story of a strong woman’s decline from self-respect to a sense of worthlessness. She draws on letters from Eileen to a friend and on what is unsaid between the lines of the male-authored biographies of Orwell to craft a compelling account of The Patriarchy—and of how feminine self-effacement is so central to it. Funder blends her own experience as writer and wife to pinpoint the lion’s share of the work of life and love that women carry out, often invisibly. This readable and thought-provoking book touches on many themes and left me with the need to exercise Doublethink to continue to recognize Orwell’s talent.

Land, Guns, Caste, Woman: Gita Ramaswamy (2022)
This is Ramaswamy’s autobiography, mostly about her journey as an activist, working with the downtrodden, from when she was in her 20s. She spent a decade in Ibrahimpatnam near Hyderabad, India, working to better the lives of the Madiga community there. Landless dalits are caught “between a Reddy and a hard place. The wealthy Reddys are like movie villains, brandishing whips and guns”. Ramaswamy lives with the villagers, and together they take on the tyrannical landlords who had brutalized the villages for generations. An honest account of Ramaswamy’s unusual life and her attempts to bring justice to the poor, against all odds.

Komaram Bheem: Bhoopal (2020, in Telugu)
This is the story of Komaram Bheem, a revolutionary born in 1901 in Sankepalli in Hyderabad, India. He was from the Gond tribal community and led a rebellion against the Nizams of Hyderabad.
Bheem, in association with other Gond leaders, led a protracted low-intensity rebellion against the feudal Nizams of Hyderabad in the eastern part of the princely state during the 1930s, which culminated in the Telangana Rebellion of 1946. He was killed by armed police in 1940, subsequently lionized as a symbol of rebellion, and eulogized in Adivasi and Telugu folklore.

Quicksand—What it Means to be a Human Being: Henning Mankell (2016; translated from Swedish by Laurie Thompson with Marlaine Delargy. Original version published in 2014.)
The Swedish playwright—and popular crime writer—contemplates the years gone by while undergoing treatment for terminal cancer. Mankell’s attitude is inspiring. He shares with the reader highlights of both his career and his love-life.

Wave: Sonali Deraniyagala (2013)
This memoir records the devastation of a tsunami that destroyed the author’s family. The loss of her family and the agony of the survivor are horrifying to imagine, but the book is beautifully written. It brings to mind Beckett’s novel, The Unnameable: “I can’t go on.” “I will go on.”

The Black Count—Napoleon’s Rival and the Real Count of Monte Cristo–General Alexandre Dumas: Tom Reiss (2012)
A fascinating biography of the father of Alexandre Dumas, the son of an aristocratic French family and a slave woman from Saint-Domingue (later Haiti). Dumas rose to be a general in the French army, and was admired by his men and by those who knew him. But he fell foul of Napoleon (who does not come off at all well in this: a little man with a super-sized ego). The writer Dumas based The Count of Monte Cristo on his father, who was imprisoned for two years in Italy.

The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street / 84 Charing Cross Road: Helen Hanff (1973 / 1970)
84 Charing Cross Road is a simple story about the love affair between Miss Helene Hanff of New York and Messrs Mark’s and Co, sellers of rare and second-hand books at Charing Cross Road, London. The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street is about Hanff’s visit to London after 84 Charing Cross Road is published and she becomes famous! Light reading. Cute novels.

Nature

The Living Air—The Pleasures of Bird Watching: Aasheesh Pittie (2023)
A collection of thoughts and experiences by a Hyderabadi birder and a passionate naturalist, who is also a very good writer.

Written by one of Hyderabad/Deccan’s eminent senior birders, who happens to have a literary bent, The Living Air (which comes from Wordsworth) is an excellent introduction to the transformative pleasures of birdwatching. In 50-plus short essays, some just two pages long, Pittie gives us an insight into Deccan birds and Deccani birdwatchers.

Black Lion—Teachings from the Wilderness: Sicelo Mbatha (2021)
The story of a South African park ranger and his deep connection with nature. He is passionate about how the relationship between humans and nature can heal and bring something to us that we have lost. I loved it.

Journey to the Other Side of the World: David Attenborough (2018)
I expected this to be a serious book—academic even—but instead this compendium of three earlier novels was a fascinating narrative about a charming man’s travels in Australasia and the Pacific Islands. The stories felt very real and honest—you felt he was there narrating them to you. And who doesn’t love a good story about the natural world we live in by David Attenborough!

Travel

Soundings—Journeys in the Company of Whales: Doreen Cunningham (2022)
The story of two trips, seven years apart, to look for whales. Doreen Cunningham travelled to Alaska as a BBC journalist to understand climate change and its effects on indigenous whaling communities. She lived with an Iñupiaq family in Utqiagvik, the northernmost town in Alaska, and became part of their lives and found a sense of belonging with them. The second journey is some years later as a single mother with her two-year-old son, Max. This is a captivating, honest book.

My Family and Other Enemies—Life and Travels in Croatia’s Hinterland: Mary Novakovich (2022)
Mary Novakovich, a journalist returns with her mother to Lika in Croatia, where her family is from. Her mother is starting to show early signs of dementia (as Novakovich found out later), so the relationship is quite fraught. Because Novakovich writes not only about Lika but also about the relatives they visited (and the food they ate), she takes you into the heart of the region.

The White Mosque—A Silk Road Memoir: Sofia Samatar (2022)
In the late 19th century, a group of Mennonites headed east towards central Asia, looking for a home. Sofia Samatar, a Mennonite with a Swiss-German-American mother and Somali father, joins a group of present-day Mennonites who follow in their footsteps through modern-day Uzbekistan. Weaving the two journeys together, she brings to life this region, and muses on issues of identity and belonging. Evocative writing.

Bicycling with Butterflies— My 10,201-Mile Journey Following the Monarch Migration: Sara Dykman (2021)
Sara Dykman follows the migration of the monarchs from their overwintering spot in Mexico, all the way up to southern Canada. This is enjoyable, uplifting (and at times depressing—what a mess we’ve made of the planet) and informative.

The Border: Erika Fatland (2020; translated from Norwegian by Kari Dickson. Original version published in 2017.)
What a fabulous romp through the countries bordering Russia—a mammoth task and undertaking by Fatland who writes and observes people, culture and places with such ease. A mix of history, archaeology, current affairs—it’s all thrown into the mix, and makes for a thoroughly enjoyable travel book.

The Twice-Born—Life and Death on the Ganges: Aatish Taseer (2019)
I recently re-read this book with renewed interest. Aatish Taseer’s inherent ambivalence—between the search for his deep intellectual and spiritual roots in India and the cultural decadence and political ferment that he encounters on his voyage of discovery—could have easily led to an abstract dialectical treatise. But it doesn’t. His sharp reportorial eye for detail, combined with the serious observer’s awareness of historical ironies, makes for fascinating reading as he serves up a melange of unique place names, picturesque train journeys, and memorable encounters with fellow humans in places like Benares (also Kashi or Varanasi). You need to read it yourself to truly experience his writerly detachment amid the socio-religious frenzy that surrounds him in mob scenes within temple precincts.

The Land Where Lemons Grow—The Story of Italy and its Citrus Fruit: Helen Atlee (2015)
A fascinating account of the history—and present situation—of citrus fruit in Italy, from bergamot to citron, mandarins to sour oranges. It is a story interwoven with politics, the mafia and ancient growing techniques.