Bookshelf
Small things, utmost happiness and not letting it be – the writing...
Arundhati Roy is an Indian Booker Prize-winning writer and public intellectual, a former architect and filmmaker living in New Delhi. Her novels are The God of Small Things (1997) and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017); her most recent book, the memoir Mother Mary Comes to Me (2025), turns to her own life. She has also written essays of political analysis, some of which call out the need for justice, human rights and freedoms in modern India. Her writing is reviewed here by Elaine Furniss.
Broken Threads: A Family From Empire to Independence by Mishal Husain
Mishal Husain became well known in Britain as a presenter of BBC Radio 4’s flagship Today programme and she commentated on major royal occasions, including the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II. In her new book Broken Threads: A Family from Empire to Independence she tells a family story with great historical significance. Published by Fourth Estate, it is reviewed here by Sindamani Subryan Bridglal.
Two women tell of the painful struggle against Iran’s strict Islamic...
For the Sun After Long Nights, by Nilo Tabrizy and Fatemeh Jamalpour, tells the story of life under Iran’s Islamic Republic, especially for women and minority communities. Published by Atlantic Books, it is reviewed here by Shahin Bekhradnia.
Are we ready for another ‘change of the World Order’?
After Nations: The Making and Unmaking of a World Order by Rana Dasgupta, published by William Collins, is reviewed here by William Crawley. We live in an age in which we think in terms of ‘the nation state’ – but what comes next? As globalisation seems to be coming to an end there is no shortage of books written within the same global framework. Rana Dasgupta’s After Nations: The Making and Unmaking of a World Order will rank as one of the most authoritative and entertaining.
How Europe became hooked on Asian spices
The Spice Ports: Mapping the Origins of Global Sea Trade by Nicholas Nugent, published in London by the British Library and in the US by Brandeis University, is reviewed here by Andrew Whitehead.
A Sixth of Humanity: Independent India’s Development Odyssey by Deve...
India is often narrated as two separate stories that only occasionally touch: those of the world’s largest democracy and of a developing economy still trying to provide prosperity on a continental scale. A Sixth of Humanity rejects that separation and argues instead that India’s politics and economics have never been parallel tracks; they are one braided history, each strand tightening or loosening the other, and the knot they form is what the authors want us to see. Rahul Jaywant Bhise has been reading this weighty book.
Jung Chang: a grande dame of China writing
Jung Chang, one of the most celebrated writers in English about China, has produced a sequel to her biographical account of growing up in China, Wild Swans, which brought her fame. Lijia Zhang, who has written about her own early life in China, met Jung Chang to discuss her books.
Unfolding the story of the making of post-colonial Asia
The story of the unravelling of the Raj (as Britain’s Indian Empire was known) has been told time and again: as political history, social history, personal memoir and feature film; as ‘end of Empire’ ignominy, rebirth of India, the making of a new Muslim nation or a tragic episode of communal frenzy.
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