Anjana Basu

From petroglyphs to myths, people to climate change—a fitting history of the Himalayas

The gallows humour is dulled, but Chatterjee’s habit of framing at unusual angles helps a dark whimsy. From Thomas Roe to Art. 377, his canvas is wide.

Indentured labour, the 1971 War and search for identity are woven in a mother-haunted novel

A school swaddled in sensuality, saffron and rectitude packs an ominous presentiment

A well-lit magnetic thespian and his lifelong influence over typecast and rounded others

Neon-lit, pulpy prose tracks the scapegrace Charlie in his myriad mishaps across Delhi

This one propels the accumulated anxieties of a city into a shape-shifting future vortex

A controlled, subtle tale of how a core of secrecy in a family secretes lasting sadness

A first-person biography tells of the career of a pioneer Indian editor, but avoids significance

Nur Jahan seduced, intrigued and ruled like few women did. This is a fine tribute, with breaks.

In a state that has no industry, it is quite obvious that Durga Puja is an industry that works brilliantly well engaging a whole host of people united towards one end.

Walkers around Calcutta's Rabindra Sarovar had grown used to being surprised by music; and from surprise it had become an indulgence. But gradually a note of disharmony crept into the proceedings...

Is it possible to do it in cold blood? The Nazis certainly did. But this? Looking into their eyes and asking them their names one by one?

The stink, the uprooted bamboos, the vegetable peels — all that is left behind once the prayers are said and the festival draws to an end

Nothing compares to the noise that Deshapriya Park was generating — an entire cement protima, and huge to boot, the goddess 88 feet tall.

The situation between writers and Santhals is actually fairly similar...

In the corridors of Nabanna the perception is that Kolkata must become London, quite forgetting that the city was actually based on the London model

Set as the backdrop to an inane world that was always trying to throw yesterday into the face of now, it was incongruous and it was magnificent.

The symbolism still gets you — a woman in a white sari with a green border going up against a wall of red promising change.