books i love

Our guest today has published a novel that beats with the pulse of here and now. Set in a world, a nation, that finds itself caught up in the many, many complexities of the digital age, that tussles still—as the cliché so suitably goes—with the old and the new. We access this moment through two young characters, Mayank and Nisha, located firmly in post-liberalisation India. Mayank, proud and lovin...

Vauhini Vara’s stories in “This is Salvaged” are wholly unexpected. They are unpretty stories featuring flawed, unpretty characters, marked by loss, grief, addiction. But there is humour here, and lightness too, moments of hope and connection and clarity. In "The Irates" a young woman struggles to deal with the death of her brother, in a most unexpected way. In "I Buffalo" an alcoholic tries to hi...

Today’s guest is Sharmistha Mohanty whose every book I’m tempted to devote an episode to! Everything she has written, I’ve loved, and been inspired by. It was tricky to come up with a bio note for her, if only because some call her a poet, some a prose poet, others a fiction writer. She’s also done translation, and has recently created a poetry installation for the Kochi Biennale. It’s safe to say...

Aanchal Malhotra is a Delhi-based writer and oral historian, author of "Remnants of a Separation", "In the Language of Remembering", and "The Book of Everlasting Things", her first novel that we’ll be discussing today. "The Book of Everlasting Things" tells a story both deeply intimate and widely encompassing of time, place, and history. It follows the lives of Samir, a Hindu perfumer, and Firdaus...

This is who we are, what we do, and what you might find on this podcast...lots of books, lots of questions to authors, and occasional interruptions from kitty, pigeons, and other animals.

On our first episode, we're joined by a very special guest. Someone I’ve long admired for her writing across genres, fantasy, journalistic non-fiction, columns, essays, Instagram posts, and now crime fiction. Nilanjana Roy is a writer who famously, as a child, ate books. Then she grew up though I suspect she still sneaks a nibble or two out of a page here and there. She’s here to talk about her mo...