Preview: Our Top New Releases from May

AN EXAMINED LIFE: Reflections on the Personal and the Political
by Karan Singh

An Examined Life is a collection of writings from politician and scholar Karan Singh. There are momentous events here drawn from Jammu and Kashmir’s history, as well as essays and letters on subjects ranging from politics to political science, metaphysics and spirituality to Hinduism and religion. The anthology also contains select poems and excerpts from his travelogues and novel set in Kashmir. The essays, particularly, often anecdotal, feature important figures in contemporary history and offer insight into the years following Independence that set the tone for the world’s largest democracy. While his official correspondence with Jawaharlal Nehru over three decades casts light on the political turmoil in Kashmir post accession to India, his letters to Indira Gandhi address a dark period in contemporary history – the 1975 Emergency, and the events before and after.

 

CLOSE TO THE BONE
by Lisa Ray

One of India’s first supermodels. Actor. Cancer survivor. Mother of twins through surrogacy. Woman of no fixed address. This is the story of Lisa Ray. An unflinching, deeply moving account of her nomadic existence: her stumbling into the Indian entertainment industry at sixteen; her relationship with her Bengali father and Polish mother; life on the movie sets and her brush with the Oscars; her battle with eating disorders; being diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma at thirty-seven; her spiritual quest; lovers and traitors, mentors and dream-makers; and the heartaches and triumphs along the way. It is also about Lisa’s pursuit of love.
Funny, charming, and gut-wrenchingly honest all at once, Close to the Bone is Lisa Ray’s brave and inspiring story of a life lived on her terms.

 

THE BILLIONAIRE’S FUNERAL
by Elijah Brahms

Billionaire investor Chad Cohen is at a London restaurant when all his credit cards are declined. Before he can make sense of any of it, he receives a disturbing message on his phone. And now he’s being accused of travelling on a stolen passport and put in jail. Who’s out to get him?
His reputation in shreds, the company he so painstakingly built comes under threat. The stocks plummet and the board of directors decides to fire Chad. Frantic, he calls the one person he can trust the most – his friend and business partner Michael Cole.
The two try to figure out just how much of Chad’s life has been digitally erased by a hacker. Hitting one dead end after another, Chad begins to doubt Mike’s loyalty. Was this all just a vicious plan to take over everything Chad had built with him? Helpless and locked up in jail, can he count on Mike for his freedom? Has he been served the ultimate betrayal or is this a cosmic intervention to right his past wrongs?

 

OPERATION X: The Untold Story of India’s Covert Naval War in Bangladesh
by Captain M. N. R. Samant & Sandeep Unnithan

1971. Sheikh Mujibur Rehman in East Pakistan has just won an electoral mandate to become the prime minister of Pakistan. Accustomed to treating the eastern wing of the country as a colony, the ruling disposition in West Pakistan is not pleased, and launches a genocide against the residents of East Pakistan, flooding India with lakhs of refugees. With the violence in East Pakistan reaching a crescendo, the Indian government is faced with a difficult option: remain a mute spectator to the savagery on its eastern borders, or take action and go to war against its western neighbour. Thus was born Naval Commando Operation (X)—comprising Indian navy officers and divers, eight deserters from a Pakistani submarine and a ragtag bunch of Bengali youth fleeing the genocide—one of India’s largest clandestine operations, meant to destabilize the West Pakistani efforts to bring East Pakistan to its knees. Revealed for the very first time, here is the explosive authentic account of the guerrilla operation that went for the maritime jugular of Pakistan, and facilitated the birth of Bangladesh.

 

THE RADIANCE OF A THOUSAND SUNS
by Manreet Sodhi Someshwar

Niki’s determination to complete her dead father’s unfinished book, his life’s work, takes her from India to New York City where her pursuit of a mysterious immigrant woman turns into an obsession that begins to imperil her daughter, her marriage, and, eventually, Niki herself. When a blizzard blankets NYC, Niki finds herself on a path where the present and past collide violently. Propulsive and poetic, this elegant literary thriller melds the fervour of Punjab with the frenzy of New York. Spanning the cataclysms of Partition and 9/11, via the brutality of Emergency and the pogrom of 1984, the novel explores the impossible choices women are forced to make in the face of violence, the ties that connect them across ages, and the secrets they store.
Interweaving the epic Mahabharata, the poetry of Bulleh Shah, and the legend of Heer,The Radiance of a Thousand Suns is a novel about the mythic and the intimate, about stories on tapestry and mobs that recur, about home and love and history and those heartbreaking moments when they all come crashing together.

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