1. India’s Tryst with the World
Edited by Salman Khurshid & Salil Shetty
Penguin Random House
Pp 232, Rs 750
As technology, trade and affordable travel make our planet a more interconnected place, and India’s importance grows, the country’s foreign policy attracts greater interest and scrutiny than ever before. Recognising that India’s foreign policy is ultimately driven by the strength of its people and its economy as a whole, this book prises open the discussion on India’s place in the world, taking it far beyond traditional foreign policy mandarins.
2. The Dismantling of India’s Democracy
Prem Shankar Jha
Speaking Tiger Books
Pp 372, Rs 599
India’s democracy, once celebrated as an unprecedented experiment in pluralism and participatory nation building, now faces a grave crisis. In this urgent and penetrating work, veteran journalist Prem Shankar Jha traces how the country’s hard-won democracy—rooted in diversity and tolerance—has been steadily hollowed out since Independence—slowly at first, and since 2014, with determined ferocity.
3. Charlottesville
Deborah Baker
Penguin Random House
Pp 464, Rs 1,299
In August 2017, over a thousand neo-Nazis, fascists, Klan members and neo-Confederates descended on a small southern city to protest the pending removal of a statue of Robert E Lee. Within an hour of their arrival, the city’s historic downtown was a scene of bedlam as armoured far-right cadres battled activists in the streets. Pulitzer Prize finalist Deborah Baker has written a riveting and panoptic account of what unfolded that weekend.
4. Inner Excellence
Jim Murphy
Hachette
Pp 368, Rs 699
As a professional baseball player, Jim Murphy’s sense of worth revolved around results. He was focused on achievement but also afraid of failure. He became obsessed with learning how the best in the world performed with poise under pressure. After years of research, Murphy had a revelatory insight—that the pursuit of extraordinary performance and the pursuit of the best possible life are the same path.
5. On the Brink of Belief
Edited by Kazim Ali
Penguin Random House
Pp 264, Rs 499
Born from The Queer Writers’ Room, a pioneering literary incubator led by The Queer Muslim Project, this anthology shatters the silence imposed on queer South Asian lives, particularly those shaped by layered experiences of caste, gender, displacement, and inherited silence. The result is a literary document as fractured and luminous as the sub-continent itself—poetry, memoir, speculative fiction and essays that tilt language off its axis and refuse to flatten queerness into performance or protest.