Unknown City, Amitabha Bagchi
Arindam Chatterjee – whom we first met in Amitabha Bagchi’s novel Above Average – is now a nearly 50-year-old novelist and professor. He is committed to revisiting the relationships he had in his twenties during his years in America and after graduating from IIT – be it with history student Supriya, who wanted a companion to laugh with, not a partner demanding intellectual gratification; or with the activist Lisa, who sought an anchor, not a man unaware of her struggle with depression; or with the writer Razia, who wished to be desired, not summoned to mend a broken soul.
As Arindam looks back, he realises that the unknown city that’s the human heart felt unknowable to him because he was wearing the blinkers of his masculinity.
The Burnings, Himanjali Sankar
As inexplicable fires rage across the country, Shalini receives a frantic call from her first love, Akshar – a man she hasn’t seen in years. She rushes to his side, only to find him a shadow of his former self: broken, tormented by regret and wasting away in the decaying grandeur of his ancestral mansion in the hills. Soon after Shalini steps through its doors, she senses that something isn’t right. The lonely mansion’s older residents linger in eerie ways, harbouring secrets as oppressive as the smoke in the air, and the few living souls who cross her path – Akshar’s beautiful but peculiar childhood sweetheart, the occasional visitors and even some of the locals – are steeped in menace.
A locked room beckons Shalini, while something haunts the corridors at night, as if listening to her every move. Shalini must confront the mansion’s malevolent legacy and her own dark past – but doing so could come at an unthinkable price. Will she break free, or become another ghost in this house of horrors?
Great Eastern Hotel, Ruchir Joshi
The world is at war. And at the Great Eastern, Calcutta's most luxurious hotel, amidst the feasting, dancing and laughter, we witness the metropolis in the last moments before multiple disasters strike.
The story begins in August 1941, on the day Rabindranath Tagore dies. The city has come to a standstill as thousands of people line the streets to pay their respects. Among them are: Nirupama, a student of history and a volunteer with the Communist Party of India; Imogen, a young Englishwoman whose father is an official with the Raj; Kedar, the scion of a wealthy family, who dreams of painting like Cezanne; and Gopal, a young but experienced pickpocket, who finds himself promoted into a dark, dangerous world.
Their lives intertwine with those at the hotel: an American soldier who plays jazz at the nightclub; a genius French chef; an heiress fleeing from the nightmare in Europe; and a group of military officers running a secret intelligence operation.
Life on Mars: Collected Stories, Namita Gokhale
Two lonely people connect briefly during the COVID-19 pandemic. A woman finds companionship with an unusual young man the same age as her absent sons. A one-night stand in Rishikesh ends in a surprise not once, but twice. Kunti and Gandhari, queens in the evening of their lives, try to cope with their private griefs after the slaughters of the Kurukshetra war. A swan relates the story of the doomed lovers Nala and Damayanti. After one man drowns and another is saved, a stone reflects on the inner lives of men and stones.
These 15 stories, arranged in two sections – “Love and Other Derangements” and “The Mirror of the Mahabharata” – are about women and men who swim or sink in the ceaseless river of life.
Mudritha: A Novel, Jissa Jose, translated from the Malayalam by Jayasree Kalathil
One April day, 30-year-old Aniruddhan goes to the police station with a complaint: a woman named Mudritha has disappeared. He has, however, never met her; only interacted with her on the phone and by email while organising, at her request, a tour to Odisha for herself and nine others – all women. After preliminary inquiries, though, the case is likely to be closed for want of progress. But Vanitha, the policewoman in charge, continues the investigation secretly. What begins as a search for Mudritha soon reveals more about the other women, a diverse group, who want to slip away, travel and touch the world beyond the mundane confines of their existence.
No Place to Call My Own, Alina Gufran
Feeling trapped in a society that’s quick to undermine her – constantly making assumptions about her religion, sexuality, ambition, worth – Sophia plunges headlong into a journey of questionable decisions through her twenties. We follow her through cities and towns as she tries to make sense of the old while confronting the new. But each move trails chaos in its wake.
Restless and acerbic, she struggles to come to terms with the disintegration of her parents’ marriage, eerily mirrored in the political turmoil of 21st-century India. And crucial to Sophia’s story – which unfolds against the backdrop of the #MeToo movement, the 2020 Delhi riots and a global pandemic – is her complex, thorny friendship with Medha, a queer artist with travails of her own.
All information sourced from publishers.
