The Hindu on Books | Countdown to the Literature Nobel, an Ambedkar biography and more

This article forms a part of The Hindu on Books newsletter which brings you book reviews, reading recommendations, interviews with authors and more. The Prize will be announced this Thursday, and we will bring you a profile of the winner in the next edition; last year it went to Tanzanian-British writer Abdulrazak Gurnah for “his compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism.” In other news, 10 books covering a wide range of themes from governance, state of Muslims in India today, border politics to nationalism, what the numbers tell about a country like India, a biography of the house of Tatas and the Chipko movement are on the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize 2022 longlist. With climate change a critical issue, Shekhar Pathak’s The Chipko Movement: A People’s History profiles the people who contributed to the extraordinary Chipko movement and why the battle to protect forests and mountains is far from over; Rukmini S. tells the story of India through numbers in Whole Numbers and Half Truths ; Mircea Raianu profiles the long journey of the Tatas in Tata: The Global Corporation That Built Indian Capitalism ; Suchetra Vijayan travels up and down the country’s borders to explore what maps and lines mean to people hastily divided in 1947 in Midnight’s Borders: A People’s History of Modern India ; Usha Thakker looks back in time to write about a unique pre-independence project, Congress Radio: Usha Mehta and the Underground Radio Station of 1942. In reviews, we read a new biography of Ambedkar, the latest novel in Robert Galbraith’s detective series; and talk to Kamila Shamsie about her new novel, Best of Friends, and Vafa Payman, the Asia head of the London-based publishing house Bloomsbury which celebrated 35 years in publishing last year. “My duty is to the novel, to write the best novels I’m capable of writing, and to do that without cynicism.” Asked whether she believes, like one of her characters, that you can’t let politics come in the way of friendship, Shamsie says, “Politics is part of the fabric of life… I don’t think you can separate the two.” ‘A friendship stops being intense, but it doesn’t stop being strong’: Kamila Shamsie discusses her new book, ‘Best of Friends’ Bloomsbury, which completed 35 years in publishing last year, also reached a milestone in India – last month, they turned 10.