The Eleventh Hour
Salman Rushdie
Penguin Random House
Pp 264, Rs 899
Salman Rushdie turns his extraordinary imagination to life’s final act with a quintet of stories. Do we accommodate ourselves to death, or rail against it? Do we spend our “eleventh hour” in serenity or in rage? The Eleventh Hour ponders life and death, legacy and identity with the penetrating insight and boundless imagination that have made Rushdie one of the most celebrated writers of our time.
Mumbai: A Million Islands
Sidharth Bhatia
HarperCollins
Pp 312, Rs 599
Since the East India Company merged seven islands into Bombay (now Mumbai), change has been constant—but now it is used as a weapon for displacement, disguised as development. Slums are erased overnight to make way for luxury towers priced in tens of crores. The working class is pushed to the margins—literally. Mumbai: A Million Islands is a piercing look
at a city in the throes of relentless transformation.
Island On Edge
Edited by Pankaj Sekhsaria
Westland Books
Pp 266, Rs 499
A Rs 82,000-crore mega project has been given clearance. The plan to build a transshipment terminal, airport, powerplant and an entirely new township comes at great cost to an already fragile biodiversity, the culture of indigenous communities and even their languages. Island on Edge follows up on The Great Nicobar Betrayal in an equally sharp and punchy fashion, covering new grounds to investigate the pitfalls of the Great Nicobar megaproject.
Unmechanical
Edited by Shamya Dasgupta
Westland Books
Pp488, Rs 899
Almost every film Ritwik Ghatak made failed at the box office at the time and his life and family were in a shambles. Unflinching and even ruthless, alcoholic and irresponsible, an irrepressible genius, a master of the craft of film-making and a relentless innovator, the 50 essays in the book—by his collaborators and family, academics who study him and writers who admire him—celebrate Ghatak on his centenary through reflections and expressions of love.
Remain
Nicholas Sparks
With M Night Shyamalan
Pp 352, Rs 499
When New York architect Tate Donovan arrives in Cape Cod to design his best friend’s summer home, he is hoping to make a fresh start. Recently discharged from an upscale psychiatric facility where he was treated for acute depression, he is still wrestling with the pain of losing his beloved sister. But when he takes up residence at a historic bed-and-breakfast on the Cape, he encounters a beautiful young woman named Wren who will challenge every assumption he has about his logical and controlled world.
