The Hindu On Books newsletter: The ‘Bessie’ goes to…; reading up on coalitions, Ashwin’s memoir and more

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Welcome to this edition of The Hindu on Books newsletter. The Women’s Prize for Fiction and the inaugural Women’s Prize for Non Fiction were announced last week with American writer V.V. Ganeshananthan walking away with the ‘Bessie’ (a bronze statuette, created and donated by artist Grizel Niven) and £30,000 for her second novel, Brotherless Night (Penguin Viking), which narrates the story of a family torn apart by the Sri Lankan civil war. The Non Fiction Prize was bagged by Canadian writer and activist Naomi Klein for Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World, (Allen Lane) and she was gifted £30,000 and a limited-edition artwork known as the ‘Charlotte’. Her book examines the contemporary polarised society. Read about the Non Fiction shortlist here.

In reviews, we read about coalitions, Sunjeev Sahota’s new novel, Ravichandran Ashwin’s memoirs, the world of translations and more.

Books of the week

Want to make sense of the current turn to power sharing and coalition governments at the Centre, turn to this timely book, Elections, Parties, and Coalitions in India: Theory and Recent (Permanent Black) by Eswaran Sridharan. The volume brings together a collection of Sridharan articles on various issues that have shaped Indian politics since 1989, and the themes covered include party system transformation, the rise and decline of political parties, political finance, and various aspects of coalition politics. Though they have previously appeared in academic journals and edited volumes, having them in one place will give that scholarship a wider audience, says K.K. Kailash in his review.

In 2013, Sunjeev Sahota was named one of Granta Magazine’s twenty Best of Young British Novelists of the decade. He has been longlisted and shortlisted twice for the Booker Prize for his novels China Room and The Year of the Runaways, and his fourth novel, The Spoiled Heart (Penguin), is also getting a lot of attention. In his review, Stanley Carvalho writes that the novel is as much a tale of trade union politics, class-race divide, misogyny and elitism as it is about love, grief, and the mystery surrounding two families. It’s set in the industrial city of Chesterfield in central England and revolves around the protagonist and trade unionist, Nayan Olak, a 40-plus Sikh factory worker, who tries to take a second chance at life. Carvalho has one quibble though – Sahota drops one too many F-bombs, which seem unnecessary.

In I Have the Streets (Penguin), Ravichandran Ashwin writes about his transition to becoming a great off-spinner for the Indian team with Sidharth Monga, ESPN Cricinfo’s cricket correspondent. In his review, K.C. Vijaya Kumar writes that it is to R. Ashwin’s credit that he withstood the strain and with 516 Test wickets is second to Kumble (619) among Indians and is currently placed ninth in the overall tally led by Muttiah Muralitharan (800). From being a batter to becoming one of the finest off-spinners, Ashwin throws light on the way he challenged himself. It’s also a thank you note to Chennai, “reflecting his love for Tamil, and there are lovely descriptions about his street-cricket friends.”

Spotlight

Having watched translators at work for many years, Mini Krishnan thinks it would be fair to say that translation lies in the broad zone of evangelism; it is a deep reading of a text to interpret it in a completely different language from the original, for a completely new readership. In an essay, she goes into reasons why translators choose a certain text; “What drives them is not fame or money though these things might have occurred to them.” She recalls an event when Romeo and Juliet was staged in Kannada in 1910 — “the audience couldn’t bear its tragic ending and the next performance of the same play closed with the lovers brought back to life by Vishnu.” Thus, she says, translators pole-vault walls of geography and culture to locate their texts in unfamiliar terrain.

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• The Colours of Nationalism: A Memoir of Dreams, Hopes and Betrayals (Speaking Tiger) by human rights lawyer Nandita Haksar is a first-person account of the workings of the legal system, the challenges faced by marginalised communities including Dalits, Adivasis and Muslims, the reality of army rule in the Northeast, and the erosion of workers’ rights.

• In the backdrop of a pandemic and two wars, journalist Peter S. Goodman unravels the complexities and vulnerabilities of the global supply chain. Pushing for a resilient and equitable system, he looks into the chaos behind product shortages and shipping delays in How the World Ran out of Everything. (HarperCollins)

• The Big Book of Odia Literature (Penguin) profiles the history of language, literature and song of Odisha from the tenth century to the present. Edited by Manu Dash, it has essays, stories, poems, and plays that have defined the culture of a State and a people.
• Tara (Pan Macmillan) by Koral Dasgupta is the last part of the Sati series, revealing the story of the monkey queen of Kishkindha from the Ramayana.