Welcome to this edition of The Hindu on Books Newsletter. Last October, following the Hamas attack on Israel and the furious response by the latter on Gaza, the Frankfurt Book Fair “postponed” a prize ceremony it had scheduled for Palestinian writer Adania Shibli. Her book, Minor Detail, translated into English by Elisabeth Jaquette, had won Germany’s 2023 LiBeraturpreis, a prize that honours women writers from Africa, Asia, Latin America or the Arab world. Shibli said she would have reflected on the role of literature in “these cruel and painful times”. Many writers across the world protested the Frankfurt Book Fair’s stance, saying different cultural voices should be heard, not shut out. Well, PEN International has just announced that Shibli will deliver the keynote address to mark its 90th Annual Congress whose theme is ‘Writers in a World at War’. The event to be held at the Weston Library, Oxford, on September 24 will be attended by PEN members and supporters from all corners of the world and Shibli will reflect on “the principle of unhampered transmission of thought,” and the value of literature. Minor Detail (Fitzcarraldo Editions) is based on a true story that happened in 1949, a year after the war that Palestinians call the Nakba, which led to over seven lakh people being displaced.
Israeli soldiers captured, raped and killed a Palestinian Bedouin woman, and buried her in the sand. In Shibli’s novel, this “minor detail” makes up the first part, and the incident is narrated in chilling terms by an Israeli officer. The second part is the story of a woman from Ramallah who has become obsessed with this atrocity — the girl was murdered on the same date as her birthday, another ‘minor detail’ — and wants to find out more about it, and the challenges she faces, not least because of the systematic erasure of Palestinian villages and landmarks over the years.
In reviews, we read Ira Mukhoty’s account of the rise and fall of Awadh, Narendra’s chronicle of living among the adivasis of Bastar, Wendy Doniger’s tales from the Mahabharata and more. We also talk to Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni on her first Hindi audiobook.
Books of the week
Ira Mukhoty’s The Lion and the Lily (Aleph) is a sprawling chronicle of the rise and fall of Awadh, featuring an enthralling cast of characters — the proud Nawab Shuja ud Daula, his formidable wife and mother, Bahu Begum and Nawab Begum, and his eclectic son, Asaf; assorted and increasingly aggressive Governors General of the East India Company alongside an array of adventuring Frenchmen in Hindustan; and, of course, the Mughals in tragic decline. In her review, Parvati Sharma writes that Mukhoty busts several myths about the decline of the Mughal empire. “The fact is that while the Mughal centre was crumbling, states like Awadh, Murshidabad, Hyderabad, Banaras, were all coming up.” The nawabs, Mukhoty says, were intelligent men, using their enormous resources in all kinds of canny ways, building a vibrant culture. “It was not degenerate at all [as portrayed by the British]. I don’t understand how we’ve allowed ourselves to buy into this narrative,” Mukhoty tells Sharma.
Listen to a conversation between Ira Mukhoty and Swati Daftuar in this video.
Landscapes of Wilderness (HarperCollins) by Narendra is an immersive experience of life among the adivasis of Bastar. Narendra spent three decades with them at Abujhmad, and came away with many observations, which he has compiled in this book. In his review, Sudhirendar Sharma says that “there is an undercurrent of interconnectedness btween the 39 short chapters, which explore the ‘alikeness of rhythms, flows and paces’ between humans and nature.” Written with concern and compassion, it is a thought-provoking book, says Sharma, and will appeal to anyone who is interested to look beyond the physicality of what is often referred to as ‘wild’.
Indologist Wendy Doniger’s The Dharma of Unfaithful Wives and Faithful Jackals (Speaking Tiger) fishes out some lesser-known tales from the Mahabharata, looking into the 12 th and 13 th books in which Bhishma and Yudhisthira are holding a discourse on dharma through various stories. In her review, Latha Anantharaman comes away underwhelmed, saying what Doniger has compiled “works only as a collection of curiosities.”
Spotlight
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s 2022 novel, Independence, has been adapted into an audiobook in Hindi, (Azadi/Audible). The historical fiction set in Kolkata in the backdrop of the freedom movement tells the story of the three Ganguly sisters who see India through their own lenses and desires. In an interview with Stanley Carvalho, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni says she was prompted to bring out Azadi because in the times we live in, we often don’t have the time to sit down and read. “Audiobooks fill that need as they can be listened to any time – while commuting, exercising, cooking.”
Feisty Irish novelist Edna O’Brien’s first three novels (Country Girls/1960, The Lonely Girl/1962, and Girls in Their Married Bliss/1964) were banned in Ireland. The writer (1930-2024) showed the way for future generation of writers like Anne Enright and Sally Rooney with her fresh look at family violence, religious hypocrisy, female friendship, defiance of convention, and the interior lives of young Irish women. In a wonderful tribute, Uma Mahadevan Dasgupta writes that “in O’Brien’s work, women fight to express themselves. Sometimes they fight to survive. They come through, wounded but undefeated.”
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- The Indian edition of journalist Antony Loewenstein’s book, The Palestine Laboratory (Pan Macmillan), is out. The book shows how Palestine has become the perfect testing ground for Israel’s military experiments, including surveillance, home demolitions, indefinite incarceration and brutality using hi-tech tools.
- In Unpartitioned Time: A Daughter’s Story (Speaking Tiger), a leading lawyer Malavika Rajkotia tells the story of her father, Sardar Jitinder Singh, who was uprooted from Gujranwala (now in Pakistan) and began life afresh in Karnal (now in Haryana). Rajkotia weaves her memoir around her father, to map the family’s past and present.
- Writer and translator Anton Hur’s debut novel Toward Eternity (Harper) follows literary researcher Yonghun and scientist Dr. Beeko as they explore the future of technology, challenging the notion of what makes us human if immortality is within our grasp.
- V.J. James’ The Book of Exodus (Penguin) was originally published in Malayalam 25 years ago. Translated into English by Ministhy S., it revolves around Kunjootty and the community living in his village, Potta Thuruthu, in Kerala. In his attempt to write the story of a village untouched by modernisation, what truths will he uncover?
