Indian Preview: Our Top New Releases in November

Winter is almost here and we all know what that means – curling up in bed with a hot mug of tea and a book. Choose your pick for this weekend from our top five releases this November.

1. Jasoda

Paar – ‘mirage’ country, where it is often impossible to draw the line between reality and illusion – has been suffering from a drought for a decade. Jasoda is one of the last to leave this ‘arse-end of the world’ with her children and mother-in-law. She is a midwife who nurses a dark secret: a mother of four sons, she kills every daughter born to her, till her eldest son puts a stop to it and one daughter survives. Since her husband claims he has important work to do for the local prince, Jasoda must make the journey to the city by the sea on her own. Meanwhile, after years of anonymity, Paar seems poised to take off. Will Jasoda return home with her children? Or stay in the city that’s become home for her children?

2. Two

It’s the winter of 1946. A truck leaves the village of Campbellpur after news the impending Partition pours in. It is carrying people who don’t know where they will go. They have just heard words like ‘border’ and ‘refugee’, and a struggling to understand how drawing a line might carve out Pakistan from Hindustan. As they reach the border, the caravan disperses and people their own ways. Gulzar’s first novel tracks the lives of the people in that truck right from 1946 up to the Kargil war.

3. If I had to Tell It Again

From the aftermath of a father’s death emerges this pioneering memoir of a daughter’s difficult love for a flawed, passionate, larger-than-life father.

If I had to Tell It Again is a tapestry of conflicting memories of clinical depression, intense togetherness, mourning, healing, and the shattering of spaces between childhood and adulthood. Charting an emotional minefield with delicacy and honesty, this is a haunting story about the sort of suffering that only families can inflict and endure.

4. Revolution

In Revolution, Emmanuel Macron, the youngest president in the history of France, reveals his personal history and his inspirations, and discusses  his vision of France and its future in a new world that is undergoing a ‘great transformation’.

5. The Driver in the Driverless Car: How Our Technology Choices Will Create The Future

How can we make appropriate decisions about whether and how to adopt new technologies? Vivek Wadhwa and Alex Salkever propose that we ask three questions: Does the technology have the potential to benefit everyone equally? What are the risks and the rewards? Does the technology more strongly promote autonomy or independence? They subject a host of new and potential technologies to these questions, but ultimately it is up to the reader to make the final decision.