Indian Preview: Our Top New Releases from September

1. Gene Machine by Venki Ramakrishnan

Everyone knows the term DNA: it is the essence of our being – it determines who we are and what we pass on to our progeny. Mention the ribosome, on the other hand, and you will usually be met with blank faces, even from scientists. And yet without the ribosome, nothing lives. For if DNA is data then the ribosome is the machine that processes that data. Unlocking the secrets of this gene-reading molecule was once among the most fundamental problems in molecular biology.

Gene Machine is the thrilling story of how three scientists including Dr Ramakrishnan succeeded in decoding the ribosome, later winning the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

 

2. Typically Tanya by Taha Kehar

Tanya’s got a pretty good life, working for Karachi’s Daily Image newspaper and smoking-drinking-flirting her way through minor romantic escapades.

Sure, there are a few tiny problems. But, so far, she’s been handling them well enough – in fact, she’s even managed to neatly sidestep the rishtaas her mother’s match-making friends keep bringing in. Arranged marriage? No, thank you. She’d like some knee-shaking love instead.

But Tanya’s carefree life quickly gets complicated after her (erstwhile) best friend Sonia’s shaadi is called off when the groom runs away with another woman – the same groom Tanya once got intimate with on a drunken night she would rather not remember. Now it’s up to Tanya to set things right. Will Tanya manage to save Sonia’s wedding? And will she finally find true love?

 

3. The Profane by Satyajit Sarna

A witches’ brew of art, politics, religion and mythology, The Profane is rich with music and images. Here are poems of heartbreak and disillusion, of loneliness and mortality, but also of passion for life on earth, in all its mud and glory. In the pages of this collection, Kurt Cobain, Napoleon and Amir Khusro meet, and Homeric tough guys get what they deserve. Satyajit Sarna’s vision embraces our broken world and salutes the one chance we get to experience

 

4. Igniting Innovation by Ravi Arora

The Tata Group comprises 100+ companies spread across various business sectors and continents. The $100 billion salt-to-software conglomerate generates 70 per cent of its revenue from highly competitive overseas operations. What does it do to encourage and enhance innovation in these companies that are small and big, fledgling and well-established?

Tata Innovista is a twelve-year-old flagship innovation programme of the Tata Group. Over the years, Tata Innovista has fired the imagination of colleagues across Tata companies and has become one of the most inspiring innovation programmes in the group. It has been presented to and researched by management experts globally, including those in Harvard Business School, London Business School and INSEAD. This book will explore how Innovista has built a culture of innovation in the Tata group, inspired thousands of managers, and has given a platform for knowledge exchange leading to innovation that is collaborative and mutually beneficial for everyone.

 

5. Half Gods by Akil Kumarasamy

Startlingly beautiful, Half Gods brings together the exiled, the disappeared, the seekers.Following the fractured origins and destines of two brothers named after demigods from the ancient epic, the Mahabharata, we meet a family struggling with the reverberations of the past in their lives. These ten interlinked stories redraw the map of our world in surprising ways: following an act of violence, a baby girl is renamed after a Hindu goddess but raised as a Muslim; a lonely butcher from Angola finds solace in a family of refugees in New Jersey; a gentle entomologist, in Sri Lanka, discovers unexpected reserves of courage while searching for his missing son.