List of must-reads this year

Her book Songbird On My Shoulder paints the picture of urban India in a traditional Indian folk style. You will spot this author reading Floating Admiral to her 82-year-old friend Gladys Kothavala, who intently hears every word read out to her.  
Saaz Aggarwal, who is also a humour columnist, recommends, Abbas Kazerooni’s On Two Feet And Wings.

“The book is a fictionalised version of the author’s own story. Abbas is nine and his family, once among the most prominent in Iran, has been a victim of the Ayatollahs,” she says. “To save him from being recruited into the army — the age has been lowered to eight — his parents send him away. Abbas finds himself living alone in a seedy hotel in Istanbul. His goal is to get a British visa and live in safety in the very country that his great grandfather funded a guerrilla opposition against when the rulers of Persia refused to fight,” she adds. The author summarises that the book has three sections which tell about Abbas’ early life in Tehran, his struggle in Istanbul, and a little of what happens after he arrives in England. “It’s filled with adventure and suspense and can be enjoyed equally by adults and children,” says Aggarwal. 

Poet and writer Priya Sarukkai Chabria describes Namita Gokhale’s Priya In Incredible Indyaa as a novel that does not flaunt a daring literary structure, but it enchants us with the pathos she brings to her cast of vivid, ruthless and largely despicable characters. “Set in Delhi’s upper-crust, swaddled in the toxic waste of power, money and greed, Gokhale’s novel seems the most bizarre when compared to the searing tales of human wrecks from small-town India, which populate Mehrotra’s Eunuch Park and Naqvi’s dazzling, hallucinatory yet heart wrenching Home Boy set in the USA and Pakistan,” says the author, who is also a recipient of Senior Fellowship for Literature to Outstanding Artists given by the government. “Each book gleams with dark humour, streaks of compassion touch the grotesque and all are well-crafted narratives” she adds.

Author Salil Desai found India After Gandhi, Ramchandra Guha’s sweeping chronicle of independent India’s history beautifully researched with succinct narrative that puts into context important events, social and political changes and key personalities that have shaped India’s destiny since 1947. 

“As the Anna fever gripped India, I was especially enthralled to read Guha’s account of various popular movements that our country has witnessed. The book filled in so many gaps in my knowledge of free India that I would heartily recommend it to every Indian, young and old alike. Believe me, you’ll be hooked,” he says.

“The book is fully loaded with nuggets of invaluable information on little-known facts such as how the massive rehabilitation work of refugees after Partition was efficiently handled, the fascinating deliberations in the constituent assembly while framing India’s constitution, the smooth execution of India’s first general elections,” says Salil, the author of The Body In The Back Seat and Murder On A Side Street.

What they recommend
Saaz Aggarwal
Serious Men by Manu Joseph
The Convert by Deborah Baker
A Free Man by Aman Sethi
The Red Carpet by Lavanya Sankaran
On Two Feet And Wings by Abbas Kazerooni

Salil Desai 
India After Gandhi by Ramachandra Guha
Mutiny on the Bounty by John Boyne
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale
Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith

Priya Sarukkai Chabaria
Eunuch Park: Fifteen Stories of Love and Destruction by Palash Krishna Mehrotra
Priya In Incredible Indyaa by Namita Gokhale
Home Boy by HM Naqvi
The Border Kingdom (poems) by D Nurkse
The Library At Night (essays) by Alberto Manguel