Shelf life

Zadie Smith

Penguin, Pg 294

Rs.910.29, Kindle price

North West London comes vividly to life in NW, the new novel by the author of the best-selling White Teeth and Man Booker-shortlisted On Beauty. This is the story of a city, its north-west corner. Here you’ll find guests and hosts, those with power and those without it, people who live somewhere special and others who live nowhere at all. And many people in between. Every city is like this. Cheek-by-jowl living. Separate worlds. And then there are the visitations: the rare times a stranger crosses a threshold without permission or warning, causing a disruption in the whole system. Like the April afternoon a woman came to Leah Hanwell’s door, seeking help, disturbing the peace, forcing Leah out of her isolation...

Zadie Smith’s brilliant tragi-comic new novel follows four Londoners—Leah, Natalie, Felix and Nathan—as they try to make adult lives outside of Caldwell, the council estate of their childhood. From private houses to public parks, at work and at play, their London is a complicated place, as beautiful as it is brutal, where the thoroughfares hide the back alleys and taking the high road can sometimes lead you to a dead end. Depicting the modern urban zone—familiar to town-dwellers everywhere—NW is a quietly devastating novel of encounters, mercurial and vital, like the city itself.

Making a Difference

PJ Mathews, editor

Tata McGraw Hill

Hardback, Pg 176

This compendium, recounting NTPC’s CSR activities, the public sector giant’s firm commitment to the nation. Providing scholarships

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