Best New Books Released in 2022 by Indian Authors

In An Ideal World By Kunal Basu

GENRE : FICTION

SYNOPSIS:

Altaf Hussein, a youthful Muslim pupil, has been abducted from his council hotel. The authorities have washed their hands off the matter and the police are indicted for a cover-up. Rumors claim he has gone to fight the jihad in Iraq. Further minatory rumors have him tortured and boggled for opposing the Nationalist scholars who are in a rage to produce a Hindu motherland in India, driving out Liberal sympathizers like Altaf and their decadent ideals.

The peak between Liberals and Chauvinists invades the Sengupta ménage in Kolkata when Joy, a bank director, and Rohini, his teacher woman - both compassionate humanists- learn the shocking news that their only son Bobby has come to a leader of the Nationalist scholars and is intertwined in Altaf's exposure.

Unbelief turns to anguish when they encounter his truculent testament and his not- too satisfying denial of his part in the Altaf affair. Out to break the riddle of Altaf, Joy and Rohini discover conspiracy and hate, interdicted love and exceptional courage, and come face to face with a world caught between the real and the ideal. But will they succeed in exonerating their son of the heinous crime?

Will Altaf be set up after all? Or will they, and this splintered nation, pay the ultimate price for harboring a cracked heart?

Another work of genius from the author of numerous critically respected novels. A veritably applicable and contemporary book on the state of twenty-first-century India.

Adam By S. Hareesh

GENRE : Fiction - Translation from Malayalam

SYNOPSIS:

Four Belgian Malinois puppies, raised by an ex-serviceman, who ends up in four different life situations; two men who play a game made out of death notices cropped from journals; a man who exploits his friend's disability to satisfy his brutish requirements; a government hand who's intoxicated by the taste of wild meat and sinks deeper and deeper into the poisonous world of stalking; two buffaloes who break away from their botcher, leading an entire will to chase after them; an old man who rejoices in the death of a sworn adversary who was formerly his friend.

Hareesh's Adam explores the more delicate of mortal feelings- lust, wrathfulness, covetousness, revenge, and capacity. Restated from Malayalam, the collection presents nine unusual stories about ordinary people, their heartstrings, and their different fates in a world where humans, creatures, and nature collide. Hareesh's unique style of liar, which mixes canny social observation with an impious and sardonic tone, makes these stories amping, and pushes the craft of the short story to new and stimulating realms.

Restatement of brilliant stories by S. Hareesh who won the JCB Prize for Literature in 2020 for his debut new Moustache.

Suit By Samarth

GENRE: GRAPHIC NOVEL

SYNOPSIS:

Suit is set in a Mumbai of the near future, when Safai Karamcharis have been handed safety outfits, including a full-body safety suit which gives them the moniker of Suitwalas. The story explores smirch, social change, and mobility through the eyes of Vikas, a youthful" Suitwala", as we follow him through a day in his life, darting between incidents at work, moments he catches with his family, and recollections of his father.

The suit is hailed as a great vault in the right direction for the safety and quality of Safai Karamcharis; still, has anything changed in reality, or is the suit just a cover? The book speculates what change could look like in a profession so steeped in exploitation and rejection, where the patient smirch infuses every step towards betterment with a bitter shadow.

Sin: Stories By Wajida Tabassum

GENRE: Fiction - TRANSLATION

SYNOPSIS:

Set in Hyderabad's old-world aristocratic society of the 1950s, this astral collection of stories resurrects and explores the work of Wajida Tabassum, one of the most prominent names in Urdu literature, a heretic and non-conformist frequently appertained to as the' womanish Manto'. In her continuance, Tabassum's intrepid depiction of the realities of the society she lived in met with severe review from the so-called custodians of the culture of the time, and she was reviled to the point that mobs set out to arsonist her publishers' services.

Sin showcases Tabassum's boldest short stories, alongside the story of her own life, restated for the first time in English, in which she captures, in engaging prose, the diapason of depravity among Hyderabad's elite, middle-class forces in the mid-twentieth century, and blurred lines of decency and form.

Featuring lascivious nawabs, lecherous begums, cunning retainers, and unfulfilled marriages marked by peculiar rituals and customs, this volume will surprise, intrigue, and entertain compendiums in equal measure.

To Hell And Back: Humans Of Covid by Barkha Dutt

GENRE: NON-FICTION

SYNOPSIS:

Since 2020, our world has battled a single adversary. In dealing with the epidemic, India has seen its challenges and special tragedies. Two times the epidemic may have formerly claimed anywhere between 3 and 5 million Indian lives.

The lockdown of the first surge caused unknown desolation. And in 2022, Omicron has trigged a new challenge. When India’s lockdown was first blazoned in March 2020, acclaimed intelligencer Barkha Dutt started an extraordinary series of road passages, recording the mortal story of the epidemic, one which she continues indeed moment as we scuffle with the contagion’s rearmost icon.

In this book, she tells India’s epidemic story through the stories of the people she covered – the migratory workers and politicians, businessmen and functionaries, croakers and nursers, plant workers and growers, preceptors and scholars, misters and women, parents and children. And through these accounts, she draws an astounding picture not just of our pest times but the veritable nature of our country with its deep- confirmed inequalities across class, estate, and gender.

Moving, gripping and pictorial, To Hell and Back, is an outstanding work by one of our foremost intelligencers.

The classic book on two times of India’s Covid epidemic.

A Book of New Beginnings By Jerry Pinto

GENRE: SELF-HELP

SYNOPSIS:

This shining florilegium is a treasure of contemplations, cheers, and alleviations from a range of voices through history Rabi’ah, Rumi, Tukaram, Emily Dickinson, Tagore, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Muktabai, Martin Luther King, the Dalai Lama, Alice Munro, Shailendra and obscure, everyday people with an extraordinary gift for stopgap, compassion, courage, and perseverance.

Edited and introduced by one of India’s finest and most admired pens, and beautifully designed and produced, this is a dateless book to retain and to gift.

A shining knockout of contemplations, cheers, and alleviations from a range of voices through history.

Tomb of Sand (International Booker Prize Winner 2022) by Geetanjali Shree

TRANSLATED BY: Daisy Rockwell

GENRE: Fiction - Translation, Hindi to English

SYNOPSIS:

In northern India, an eighty-year-old woman slips into a deep depression after the death of her hubby and also resurfaces to gain a new parcel of life. Her determination to fly in the face of convention- including striking up a fellowship with a bisexual person- confuses her bohemian son, who's used to thinking of herself as the further' ultramodern' of the two.

To her family's consternation, Ma insists on traveling to Pakistan, contemporaneously defying the undetermined trauma of her teenage gests of Partition, and re-evaluating what it means to be a mama, a son, a woman, a positivist.

Rather than respond to tragedy with soberness, Geetanjali Shree's playful tone and buoyant wordplay results in a book that's engaging, funny, and hugely original, at the same time as being a critical and timely kick against the destructive impact of borders and boundaries, whether between persuasions, countries, or genders.

Winner of THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2022.

Inquilab Zindabad: A Graphic Biography Of Bhagat Singh by Ikroop Sandhu

GENRE : GRAPHIC NOVEL

SYNOPSIS:

Far from the gun-carrying, swaggering youthful man represented in pop culture, Bhagat Singh was an intrepid pupil leader who spent his time reading, jotting, debating, strategizing, and executing plans while working alongside his comrades. Detailing the life of a public icon, Inquilab Zindabad maps Bhagat Singh’s trip toward revolutionizing the Indian freedom struggle and the people and events that told this hunt.

While Inquilab Zindabad sheds light on his family members, musketeers, comrades, and secret donors, extracts from Bhagat Singh’s revolutionary jottings on religion, estate and freedom are also present throughout the book. Informing the anthology of his canny compliances on politics and revolutionary life, the assignments from his life and jottings are more applicable moment than ever ahead.

Inquilab Zindabad maps Bhagat Singh’s trip toward revolutionizing the Indian freedom struggle and the people and events that told this hunt.

The Living Mountain by Amitav Ghosh

GENRE : Fiction

SYNOPSIS:

The Living Mountain is an exemplary tale of how we've totally exploited nature, leading to an environmental collapse.

reported as a dream, this is a fable about Mahaparbat, the Living Mountain; the indigenous vale residers who live and prosper in its sanctum; the assault on the mountain for marketable benefit by the Anthropoi, humans whose sole end is to reap the bounty of nature; and the disaster that unfolds as a result.

The Living Mountain is an especially applicable moment when we've been battling an epidemic and are facing a climate catastrophe both of which are products of our inadequate understanding of humanity’s relationship with nature, and our sustained appropriation and abuse of natural coffers. This is a book of our times, for our times, and it'll reverberate explosively with compendiums of all periods.

In The Language Of Remembering: The Inheritance Of Partition by Aanchal Malhotra

GENRE : Non-Fiction

SYNOPSIS:

The Language of Flashing back reveals how Partition isn't yet an event in history and its heritage is threaded into the diurnal lives of posterior generations. Bringing together exchanges recorded numerous times with generations of Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, and their separate diaspora, it looks at how Partition memory is saved and willed, its consequences circulated and manifested within family, community, and nation. With the oldest pollsters in their nineties and the youthful just teenagers, the voices in this living library privately and unfeignedly answer questions similar to Is Partition applicable? Should we still talk about it? Does it define our connections? Does it make our characteristics or compound our fears, without us indeed realizing it?

As the key marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of Partition, In the Language of Flashing back will most importantly serve as a memorial of the price this land formerly paid for not guarding against collaborative strife- and what could be formerly again should we ever choose division over addition.

The Wait And Other Stories by Damodar Mauzo

TRANSLATED BY: Xavier Cota from Konkani

GENRE : Fiction - Translation, Konkani to English

SYNOPSIS:

A hack automobilist, who assumes the identity of whoever his guests want him to be, finds himself in a tricky situation with a passenger. A late-night call leads a croaker down a path of lust and desire, but with unexpected results. A pen acquaints himself with a stealer who had broken into his house. A migrant worker falls in love but wonders how he can present himself as a suitor. An immature man, having lost the love of his life, takes it upon himself to resolve another couple's dilemmas.

Konkani pen Damodar Mauzo's sometimes crazy, sometimes tender stories, set largely in Goa, produce a world far removed from the sun and sand and the holiday resorts. also, you find townies facing moral choices, children waking up to the realities of adult lives, men who dwell on guilt, women who live a life of guilt, and communities whose bonds are growing tenuous in an age of religious polarization. Probing the deepest corners of the mortal psyche with lingo- in- impertinence humor, Mauzo's stories reveal the multitudinous vestments that connect us to others and the ease with which they can be broken. Written in simple prose and yet concentrated in nuances, The stay is a collection that brings to the Anglophone world one of the doyens of Konkani literature.

" Damodar Mauzo's stories present us with pictorial casts of the richly different, smart reality of contemporary Goa. In these perceptive, keenly observed stories Hindus, Catholics, and Muslims all find ways to co-occur, in defiance of partisanship."

Hope On – an anthology of comics by various authors

EDITED BY: Nithin Mathew and Sanid Asif Ali

GENRE : Graphic Novel

QUICK TAKE:

A feel-good, anthology of comics celebrating the lives of women who overcome trying times to find hope. This collection is bound to bring a smile to your face.

Created by 15 independent artists in the middle of a pandemic.