The Hindu On Books newsletter: International Booker Prize buzz, the dangers posed by Laskhar-e-Taiba, talking to Rutger Bregman and more

The Hindu

20-05-2025

Welcome to this edition of The Hindu on Books Newsletter. The winner of the International Booker Prize will be announced later tonight.
Readers all across the world have been voicing their picks from the shortlist of six. This year is special for India particularly with Banu Mushtaq's short stories collection, Heart Lamp (And Other Stories/Penguin), translated by Deepa Bhasthi, about the lives of Muslim women, featuring on the shortlist. If she wins, it will be the first for a writer in Kannada. Read the review. In 2022, Geetanjali Shree won the International Booker Prize for Tomb of Sand, translated from the Hindi by Daisy Rockwell, which was a first for Hindi.
We have a special on the Booker books; we also read Adil Jussawalla's essays on Bombay, two books to understand the terror network based out of Pakistan, and talk to Dutch historian Rutger Bregman about his new book, Moral Ambition.
Booker books
This year, the International Booker Prize has several firsts: all six books in the shortlist are represented by independent publishers; and just two of the shortlisted books, Hiromi Kawakami's Under the Eye of the Big Bird and Heart Lamp (Granta Books), are over 200 pages.
Kawakami's book, translated by Asa Yoneda, is set in the future with human beings in the fierce grip of AI. The narrative changes constantly, and the book slides across people, centuries and continents in what appears to be in a chaotic manner. In her review, Manjula Padmanabhan writes that the sci-fi novel provides such a horrid preview of the future that one can only hope we will never get to know it.
Two of the shortest books are the gut-wrenching Slow Boat (Small Axes/Simon&Schuster) by Vincent Delecroix (translated by Helen Stevenson) about a disastrous Channel crossing by migrants and the devastating implications, and Perfection (Fitzcarraldo Editions) by Vincenzo Latronico (translated by Sophie Hughes), which explores the vacuous social media-driven lives of the modern rich.
Danish writer Solvej Balle's On the Calculation of Volume I, (Barbara J. Haveland/Faber) is the first part of a planned septology to be translated into English. It tells the story of a seller of old books caught in a time loop. Every morning Tara Selter wakes up to November 18.
The judges said though the protagonist is inexplicably stuck in the same day, a familiar narrative trope is transformed into a 'profound meditation on love, connectedness and what it means to exist.'
In Anne Serre's A Leopard-Skin Hat (Lolli Editions), translated from the French by Mark Hutchinson, the unnamed narrator writes about a platonic relationship with Fanny, his troubled best friend, and the impossibility of knowing anyone fully. Written in the aftermath of the untimely passing away of her sister, it's a profound meditation of love and loss.
The jury led by writer Max Porter said the six books 'place a huge variety of human experiences under the microscope.' So who is expected to win? Well, it's a wide open race this time with each book having dedicated readers. Any of the writers and translators can walk away with the top prize.
Books of the week
In an essay, Stanly Johny explores the work of two writers who have analysed Pakistan's use of several proxies to expand its geopolitical interests abroad. Christine Fair's In Their Own Words: Understanding Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (Oxford University Press) offers a detailed picture of the Pakistan-based terror group that has carried out several attacks in India over the years. She explains why the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) is 'the most lethal and most loyal' outfit of the Pakistani establishment.
Supporting militant groups was part of Pakistan's 'strategic thinking' for decades, writes Carlotta Gall in The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001-2014 (Penguin). Pakistan has used this approach not only against India, but also against the U.S.
So how can Pakistan's proxy wars be dealt with? 'Fair lays down three options — maintain the status quo, decapitate the leadership, or escalate tensions.' The problem, writes Johny, is that Pakistan's nuclear capability offers the country some protection for its proxy activities. 'By launching strikes inside Pakistan against terror attacks, India has opted for controlled escalation. It is trying to create room for manoeuvre under the nuclear threshold. And by launching counterattacks, Pakistan is challenging India's resistance against the status quo.'
The Diamond-Encrusted Rat Trap (Speaking Tiger) gathers Adil Jussawalla's prose on Bombay — now Mumbai — written for newspapers and magazines between 1980 and 2002. In his introduction, Jerry Pinto points out that Jussawalla was 'a part of Bombay's literary landscape in a way that few could challenge or would want to'. Besides championing of new voices, the pieces in the collection are 'a way of giving witness to the bigness and the strangeness of the city', charting a relationship 'between man and landscape, man and city, man and nightmare'. In his review, Sanjay Sipahimalani writes that Jussawalla examines Mumbai from multiple, often unexplored, angles. 'When he writes about the city's fabled monsoon, it is not to romanticise it, but to speak about those who leave the city during the season, such as roadside cobblers and itinerant vendors. Similarly, he notes the plight of sewage workers and the homeless without sentimentality.' He notes that a wry, self-deprecating tone runs through the collection, sparing it from becoming elegiac or celebratory. 'Jussawalla's shrewd, ironic approach is especially welcome at a time of grand narratives and inflated rhetoric — about Mumbai or anything else.'
Spotlight
In his books, Dutch writer and popular historian Rutger Bregman has argued passionately for an optimistic, goal-oriented worldview. His latest work, Moral Ambition, outlines the lessons, strategies and objectives suited to those with (as the title suggests) moral ambition. Bregman contends that the most common category of young people is ambitious and not especially idealist.
He says this category ends up occupying the vast majority of corporate jobs, and cites the concept of 'bullshit jobs', as described in the 2018 book of the same name by the late anthropologist David Graeber.
Asked to explain this concept, he tells Aditya Mani Jha: 'As Professor Graeber describes it in his book, a 'bullshit job' is basically a job [corporate, usually] that adds very little perceptible value to the world.
If these people went on strike tomorrow, it would barely make a dent in the world, nothing would stop. In polls conducted among a variety of professionals, it is people in these 'bullshit jobs' that report the most feelings of insignificance and confusion — 'what are we bringing to the table here, really?' that is the predominant feeling or sentiment.
Most of all, BS jobs are BS because they are taking time and energy away from educated professionals who could be using that for much better aims, for themselves and for the world.'
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Audrey Truschke's forthcoming book, India:5,000 Years of History on the Subcontinent (Princeton University Press), tells the story of the region historically known as India—which includes today's India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and parts of Afghanistan—and the people who have lived there. It chronicles the most important political, social, religious, intellectual, and cultural events.
(Princeton University Press), tells the story of the region historically known as India—which includes today's India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and parts of Afghanistan—and the people who have lived there. It chronicles the most important political, social, religious, intellectual, and cultural events. On the Brink of Belief: Queer Writing from South Asia (Penguin), edited by Kazim Ali, brings together 24 LGBTQIA+ writers from South Asia and the diaspora who explore the personal and the political through poetry, memoir, and prose.
(Penguin), edited by Kazim Ali, brings together 24 LGBTQIA+ writers from South Asia and the diaspora who explore the personal and the political through poetry, memoir, and prose. Torrey Peters follows up her Women's Prize-nominated Detransition, Baby with Stag Dance (Hachette India), which puts trans life, past, present and future, under the microscope. In it are restless lumberjacks who attend a winter dance, some dressed as women, other cross-dressers who have to make a career choice, and a host of characters on the brink because of their looked-down-upon desires.
with (Hachette India), which puts trans life, past, present and future, under the microscope. In it are restless lumberjacks who attend a winter dance, some dressed as women, other cross-dressers who have to make a career choice, and a host of characters on the brink because of their looked-down-upon desires. Can your name change the course of your life? Florence Knapp's debut novel, The Names (Penguin), follows the lives of Cora, her husband Gordon and their children, particularly their son, and tells a chilling story of domestic abuse and its aftermath. Spanning thirty-five years, it follows three alternate and alternating versions of Cora's and her young son's lives, shaped by her choice of name.