By Neera Kashyap
In ‘Quarterlife’, Devika Rege traces several issues to their roots: the search for identities and values in contemporary living and the shocks these unleash; the origins of religious and political intertwining; the causes of family ruptures and rapprochement; the subliminal feelings of Dalits and half-castes; of educated and semi-literate minorities; of impassioned nationalists; of gays with their struggles of coming out in the open.
By Mohammad Asim Siddiqui
Thoughtfully titled, Zeyad Masroor Khan’s coming of age memoir ‘City on Fire: A Boyhood in Aligarh’, the word fire in the title of the book captures the riot-prone history of Aligarh and the volatile nature of peace that exists in the town.
By Nishi Pulugurtha
Gopal Lahiri’s ‘Crossing the Shoreline’ reveals a mature poet working on his craft and fashioning new forms in ways that only a prolific poet can.
By Aditi Ajay Pophare
In ‘Terror Trials: Life and Law in Delhi’s Courts’, Mayur Suresh, through on-field encounters with terror trials in Delhi courts, brings out the intimate relationship between the law, police, and those in conflict with the law.
By Priyanshi Kothari
Mahesh Rangarajan’s Nature and Nation is a multidisciplinary inquiry dealing with the various strands of nation-building and its effect on ecology.
By Vagmi Singh
Packed with engaging writing, Deborah Levy’s ‘Things I Don’t Want to Know’, a living autobiography, offers powerful insights into the complexities of identity, power struggle and social justice.
By Nishi Pulugurtha
‘Home Anthology’ is marked by a “plurality of approach” and it is this plurality that strikes one as one reads the poems in it.
By Shuma Talukdar
Aparna Singh’s collection of short stories, ‘Periodic Tales’, adeptly covers how menstruation is experienced by women from different walks of life, from different sections of society, in different parts of India.
By Somudranil Sarkar
‘Dreich Planet India’, edited by Sanjeev Sethi (a handmade chapbook made in Scotland, published by Hybriddreich Limited Dunfermline), emerges as germane to the poetry celebrating Indian Independence.
By Aamir Raza
Maulana Azad’s ‘Qaul-e- Faisal; Insaaf Ki Baat’ is a must read in today’s socio-political time, where sedition as an undemocratic tool is used by elected governments to suppress the voices of people.
By Gopal Lahiri
Raindrop on the Periwinkle opens up a new vista in form poems and stands out for its sheer promise and startling originality and quietness.
By Chaitali Sengupta
This volume of poetry has turned out to be a valuable discourse on cultural dualities, hybrid identities, emphasizing on paradox, conflict, feminism, and marginalization. It deserves a wide readership.
By Prithvijeet Sinha
Each poem is akin to a personal conversation, a one-on-one exchange that displays her talent given its distinctive personable nature.
By Namrata Pathak
Like Barthes, in Malhotra’s poems, too, we come across the lover’s inner monologue, in which the readers will find themselves anchored or at least recognize a speck of their personality or a part of their being.
By Mohammad Asim Siddiqui
All through the book, Satpathy argues how the very idea of nationalism, which contains many contradictions, is not only a result of some controversies but it also leads to many fresh controversies.
By Dustin Pickering
Srividya Sivakumar and Paresh Tiwari’s anthology, The Shape of a Poem: The Red River Book of Contemporary Erotic Poetry, heartily admits through many of its poets, the erotic stimulates the imagination but is something that remains unfulfilled.
By Chaitali Sengupta
Santosh Bakaya’s ‘Runcible Spoons and Peagreen Boats’ is a fascinating memoir in the poetic form where the poet recounts the pivotal moments in a way that either catches your heart or makes you stop and look back at your own life and reflect.
By Sabreen Ahmed
The everyday wonderland concocted through a maze of measured words is the crux of Goswami’s poetic vision of peaceful contentment in concordance with the acceptance of the vital signs of living.
By Anshif Ali
David Diop’s enthralling novel ‘At Night All Blood Is Black’ undermines the stereotypes of African savagery and exposes the barbarity of European colonial officers in particular and of war in general.
By Suranjana Choudhury
In making for himself a claim to write, the poet constantly negotiates with all the conflicting emotions that writing offers. It is the same with loving. Readers profoundly experience this truth, and that is enough.
Cafe Dissensus Everyday 