A Year in Reading: Policymakers, diplomats, writers, artistes, economists and doctors tell us their favourite reads of the year

2023 in books

Raghuram Rajan, former Governor, Reserve Bank of India

Demon Copperhead (Faber and Faber) by Barbara Kingsolver, set in the same locale in Tennessee where I lived and practiced years ago (it was also the subject of my first book, My Own Country). And The Light at the End of the World (Context) by Siddhartha Deb, a strange, hallucinatory but brilliant novel. Also Megha Majumdar’s A Burning (Penguin) which is a short and memorable novel.

2023 in books

Abraham Verghese, Writer

From Phansi Yard (Juggernaut) by Sudha Bharadwaj, a first-person account of what it is like to live as an undertrial in the Phansi Yard (death row) for an offence you may never have committed. It focuses not on the author or her trials and tribulations in Yerawada Jail but on those of the women she met there as fellow women prisoners. It could well be titled as the book of compassion. Stories of pregnant women who say they are better off in prison as they get food and shelter break your heart. No court can capture the truth behind their lives or their intention for committing crime. The book is a must-read for every judge sitting in judgment over the lives of prisoners. It makes you rethink the very idea of crime and punishment.

2023 in books

Indira Jaising, Senior Advocate and former Additional Solicitor General of India

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Ann Napolitano’s new novel, Hello Beautiful (Viking). Set in America, it is a moving family drama that explores the relationships between four sisters. I am always drawn to family dramas and found this book engrossing.

2023 in books

Zoya Akhtar, Filmmaker

These are the books I am currently reading, referring, recommending as I strongly feel they are new textbooks of our time.

A New History of India: From its Origins to the Twenty-First Century (Aleph), by Rudrangshu Mukherjee, the late Shobita Punja and photographer-archivist Toby Sinclair, chronologically presents the story of one of the oldest and most complex countries on earth. The scholarship qualifies this book as an essential read for our times.

The Indians: Histories of a Civilisation (Aleph), edited by GN Davy, Tony Joseph and Ravi Korisettar maps the present-day reality of Indian civilisation and its people by bringing together scholarly writings by South Asia’s foremost scholars and domain experts…This role of the book carrying civilisational and cultural memories to the present makes it a companion to live forward through our fractured times.

The recent Malayalam book by well-known poet PN Gopikrishnan, The Story of Hindutva Politics (Logos Books), traces the routes and roots of Hindu nationalism and exposes its new symbolisms and post-truth propagandas by exploring the critical roles of many. I had the privilege to design the cover using my work Midnight in Calcutta and hope this book gets translated into many Indian languages.

2023 in books

Riyas Komu, Artist

I was once a history teacher and was gripped by Tom Holland’s Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind (Abacus), a sweep across the ideas and impact of Christianity, including a fascinating part on India. I also enjoyed Michael Frayn’s tender and deep essays Among Others (Faber and Faber), a kind gift from a kind friend.

Once I had tuned into her voice, Elif Batuman’s The Idiot (Penguin) made me laugh out loud, especially the second half – it’s a book I would never have read had it not been for the suggestion of my wife, who makes great reading recommendations.

2023 in books

Alex Ellis, British High Commissioner to India

Outlive (Vermilion) by Dr Peter Attia – a wonderful look at health in all its dimensions – physical, mental, emotional, disease prevention, diet, meditation. Wonderful systems-level thinking about living long and healthy.

Yeh Un Dinon Ki Baat Hai (Bloomsbury) by Yasir Abbasi – endearing portraits of yesteryear film stars written by their juniors and contemporaries for the Urdu magazine Shama, translated by the author. It has great essays on Meena Kumari by Nargis and Sahir Ludhianvi by Kaifi Azmi.

Revolutionaries (HarperCollins) by Sanjeev Sanyal was a terrific read on some of the lesser-known stories around how India won its freedom. Movie-worthy!

2023 in books

Nikhil Rao, guitarist, Indian Ocean

The book I loved this year was Borges and Me: An Encounter (Canongate Books) by Jay Parini. The book reminds us that the most important encounters in life are often the most improbable and unexpected — stay open to what life presents and it will never disappoint.

2023 in books

Eric Garcetti, US Ambassador to India

 From One Cell: A Journey into Life’s Origins and the Future of Medicine (Norton) by Ben Stanger. “Our embryonic origins are laced with a paradox: the single cell that gives rise to an animal bears an innate trajectory yet retains a capacity to change that trajectory,” writes Stanger. A professor of medicine, developmental biologist and a cancer researcher, he lucidly traces the growth of knowledge since ancient times on the pathways by which highly differentiated ‘collections of cells’ (the fundamental units of life) arise from a single celled embryo to form organs and converse with each other to become a complex but highly efficient human body. In doing so, a balance is struck between ‘fixed’ and ‘flexible’ by providing for ‘commitment’ or ‘plasticity’ in the growth trajectories of different cell types. We gain insights on ‘stem cells’ ‘cloning’, ‘epigenetics’ and ‘gene regulation’ while learning about the riveting life stories of scientists who overcame rejection and ridicule to become acclaimed creators of knowledge that is driving modern medicine. As a superb scribe of this scientific odyssey, Stanger reflects on the need to pursue both exploratory and applied research and the complementarity of evolutionary biology and developmental biology. He also provides a much-needed lesson to the fractious human race, closing with the sage advice “That we all began unpretentiously, as a single cell, should be a source of solidarity, a reminder of our deep and irrevocable connections.”

 Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn’t Food… and Why Can’t We Stop? (Cornerstone Press) by Chris van Tulleken. As the title clearly indicates, Ultra-Processed Food (UPF) is now becoming a global addiction, with a rapidly expanding range of products and sharply rising rates of consumption resulting in  a huge range of adverse health effects and high environmental costs. This very informative book, written in an engagingly witty style, presents convincing scientific evidence which incriminates UPF and uncovers the commercial drivers propelling the manufacture and marketing of myriad UPF products. Van Tulleken even subjects himself to a scientific study comparing a UPF laden diet with a natural food-based diet. Apart from high levels of sugar, salt and unhealthy fats, UPF products contain chemical additives like stabilisers, emulsifiers, colouring agents, texture and flavour enhancers. These not only disrupt and damage our finely tuned physiological systems but also play havoc with the friendly microorganisms which reside in our body to provide immunity and nutritional support. Results are obesity, heart disease, brain strokes, diabetes, cancers, autoimmune diseases and mental illness.  UPF deprives the body of key micronutrients like zinc. Apart from harming human and animal health, UPF reduces biodiversity and is a major contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions. The book covers contestations in scientific publications and courts, to provide irrefutable evidence of mounting harm from UPF. A must-read for anyone who envisions a healthy future for humanity and the planet.

2023 in books

Dr K Srinath Reddy, former President, Public Health Foundation of India

Career and Family (Princeton University Press), by Claudia Goldin. This book meticulously documents the changes in women’s workforce in the US over the past 125 years: from ‘career or family’ to ‘career and family’. First, electricity, refrigerators, washing machines, central heating, and sewage systems freed up women’s time; the start of creches in the late 1930s helped young mothers remain in the workforce; and first contraception and then assisted fertility technology gave more control over timing their motherhood. Though debate there has moved to wage-gaps and career progression, there are valuable lessons for India in what drives female workforce participation.

The Price of Time (Allen Lane), by Edward Chancellor. Over the last 5000 years, the social acceptability of interest on debt has fluctuated as much as interest rates. There are interesting anecdotes of Emperor Tiberius in 33 AD conducting the first known experiment of quantitative easing, religious acceptability of lending changing as elites started borrowing from commoners, and financial repression starting in China 2000 years ago. The most striking assertions are on the inevitability of crises after a sustained period of low interest rates. Incidents even 350 years ago bear a striking resemblance to the excesses built up during the recent period of low interest rates.

2023 in books

Neelkanth Mishra, Chief Economist, Axis Bank

I had loved Vivek Shanbhag’s Ghachar Ghochar (HarperCollins) and I love his latest novel Sakina’s Kiss (Penguin) even more. It takes a critical look, more like a takedown, of the Indian middle-class male. People in our country are getting more violent and angry. The book takes a microscopic view of what’s happening in our society. It is absolutely clinical and scary. The story unfolds in a regular family as they are watching television and eating food. It’s amazing how Shanbhag makes you feel so uncomfortable.

2023 in books

Abhishek Chaubey, Screenwriter-Director

I re-read two of my favourite books — The Song of Achilles (Ecco) by Madeline Miller, which I read as part of research work for a project that I was doing, and The Gathering (Vintage) by Anne Enright. The former challenges our notions of how we perceive heroes. The depth at which it talks about loss, sacrifice and love are moving beyond words. The Gathering’s premise is that there is a death in a family and the people of the house come together to mourn. The book reveals things that happen at family gatherings, secrets come out and there are hidden dynamics. It is as if the writer puts words into what we already know. Enright has great depth and every word has multiple meanings and takes us beyond that word.

2023 in books

Nimmy Raphel, Theatre Artist, Adishakti Laboratory for Theatre Art Research

One is definitely Parakala Prabhakar’s The Crooked Timber of New India (Speaking Tiger), a collection of essays where he looks at the facts and data from 2020 to 2023 to express his fears for the future of democracy and a republic in crisis. It is an insider’s factual look at India, cutting through the chimera of the constant PR blitz purportedly to make us see the mirage as reality.

The other is rediscovering Shakespeare’s Macbeth and realising how a little man’s ambition and ruthlessness change over the centuries. We have Macbeth-like heads of state in so many countries and what we see with Russian president Vladimir Putin and Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu is not so far away from that madness.

2023 in books

Mallika Sarabhai, Danseuse 

How Prime Ministers Decide by Neerja Chowdhury (Aleph). She provides a fascinating glimpse into path breaking decisions taken by six prime ministers – from Indira Gandhi to Manmohan Singh. Each one of these powerful leaders had much to admire – yet their all too “human” weaknesses could lead, at times, to decisions that were clearly flawed. Worth a read, for sure!

The Forest of Enchantments (HarperCollins) by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. In a refined yet powerful narrative, she tells the story of Ramayana through the eyes of Sita. Despite so many existing versions, this book shows us aspects not seen before. It’s not just about the courage and strength of Sita, it is also about the love story of Sita and Ram. Delightful read!

2023 in books

Dr Ambrish Mithal, Chairman and Head of Endocrinology and Diabetes at Max Healthcare, Saket

This year has been a lot about translations for me, from different languages and cultures. One is Minor Detail (Fitzcarraldo Editions) by Adania Shibli, translated by Elisabeth Jaquette, almost painful to read. A slim novel with an astoundingly simple premise, it teeters on the edge of many things — history, geography, genre, gender — and both amplifies and stills the impact of all that we are seeing and hearing from Gaza. Another is I Named My Sister Silence (Eka) by Manoj Rupda, translated by Hansda Sowendra Shekhar, which has power, beauty, and the ring of truth in every word. It’s a window into the extremes that humans — and animals — are capable of, whether their actions are born of violence or compassion, or merely the instinct for survival.

2023 in books

Karthika VK, Publisher, Westland

On my 11th birthday, my grandfather, a devout Hindu and follower of Mahatma Gandhi, gave me Kshiti Mohan Sen’s Hinduism. I read it as a teenager, and later too, but this year, as the contestation and polarization in what Sen calls “The World’s Oldest Faith” became sharper, I turned again to my copy, which is of the book’s first edition (1961). Sen succinctly traces Hinduism’s evolution and the different streams that went into shaping its ethics and metaphysics. Above all he brings forth its essence in this profound thought “The number of paths to the One Infinite is necessarily infinite” (p.37). A departure from this proposition in any way can only be un-Hindu. 

America’s defeat in its two decades-long ‘forever war’ in Afghanistan is prima facie mind-boggling. The Afghan Taliban, a group of ‘terrorists’, supported by Pakistan, was able to defeat the world’s pre-eminent country with the world’s most powerful armed forces. Carter Malkasian’s masterly The American War in Afghanistan (Oxford University Press) covers the war in granular detail. It demonstrates the military and political confusion both in Washington and in Kabul over the objectives, strategies, tactics, shifting military and political goal posts, the arrogance of power and the lack of understanding of Afghanistan’s cultural terrain. It provides clues to how and why wars are lost.

2023 in books

Vivek Katju, former Diplomat 

A.R.Venkatachalapathy’s Swadeshi Steam: V.O. Chidambaram Pillai and the Battle against the British Maritime Empire (Penguin). A historical book that employs an engaging language to explore the contribution of Tamil Nadu to India’s freedom struggle. Supported by previously unreleased documents, the book follows the remarkable life of a personality who has done extraordinary things. And A Muttulingam, Where God Began (Kalachuvadu). The novel, for which I have had the honour of writing a blurb, is a powerful portrayal of the human story behind watchwords like migration and refugee. Appadurai Muttulingam’s emotional, unwavering portrayal of refugee life makes for an intense, breathless read. The novel will be published in January. Also, The Nemesis (Eka) by Manoranjan Byapari. A literary chronicler of the lives of the marginalised, Manoranjan Byapari’s Nemesis is no different. The novel poses a fundamental question about a life that instills fear in one group of people while being perceived as ordinary by another.

2023 in books

Perumal Murugan, Writer

2023 in books