Cut A Dash Like Bond

A brilliant memoir of an eventful career in the foreign service, set off by the thrilling pursuit, across...

Our Talking Heads

A revelatory account shows how, in the years after Independence, India and Pakistan tried to thrash out all...

Go Tell It In A Bazaar

Panda’s transient, on-the-spur columns might embarrass in hindsight but he richly earns his encomiums for...

Boston Diary

This week, we bring to you a diary from Boston written by Mani Shankar Aiyar.

Boatmen Wait On The Banks Of The Indus

Gracious in person, Abdul Sattar’s bilious pen spills an anti-India screed—a lesson in ‘national...

One Of Terpsichore’s Own

Sonal Mansingh’s metier enveloped her soul. At the forefront of a renaissance in performing arts post 1947,...

A Passion Rose Crushed Under A Victoria

Jinnah’s fateful marriage to the vivacious Ruttie, tangled with the turmoil of nationalist politics—is a...

If The Architect Came By In 2016

What would Nehru see if he were to revisit India today? He’d be happy to see his basic blueprint in action....

In A Pendulous State

In this magisterial account, Jaffrelot privileges thematology over chronology to examine Pakistan’s...

August Motto: Only Disconnect

For a fast, frothy record of events, Hiro’s book passes muster. Yet, premised on a ‘primeval’...

In The Streets Of Dacca

The Bangladesh insurrection comes alive in this novel, so too the horrors, and the heroics of the people

Ink, Mortar And Canon

A hundred essential books, chosen by our jury, and the reasons they should be read—and reread

Australia Diary

The first thing a visitor to Australia has to disabuse himself of is the idea that the Australians speak...

A Friend And A Gentleman

K. Natwar Singh: imaginative and impeccable; a boss, yet a sport; a grand wit. His autobiography can be his...

When Titans Roamed The Party

Acknowledging subaltern studies, the Cambridge school and the Communists, this monumental history establishes...

Laughter In The Dark

A former Pakistani minister surveys the quirks of his office and country with wit and self-deprecation, but...

Mani Shankar Aiyar

The Simoon That Never Blew

An older politician examines Manvendra Singh’s electoral exertions in Barmer through the lens of his own...

Venice Diary

Suddenly there's the anxious desire of European seminarians to know how we co-exist, so they too might learn

With Crucial Gap Years

This book navigates India’s political, economic departures, then falters at final conclusions