The Healing By Gita Aravamudan (Harper Collins) Babri Masjid and freedom fighter Ramanujam’s collapse on the same day provide fodder for Gita Aravamudan’s The Healing. An introspective narrative about coming to terms with your past to ultimately be at peace with yourself is told from the point of view of Ramanujam’s daughter who has many skeletons in her closet. The book promises to take readers on a journey of self-discovery but the promising political link wanes all too soon.
	Nine by Nine By Daman Singh (Harper Collins) In a cramped cosmopolitan world most people occupy nine by nine’s and Daman Singh looks at the ways in which this space, or lack thereof, impacts the lives of her female characters. Anjali battles a parochial mother and secretly applies to universities abroad, Paro has a failed engagement and Tara is focused on her doctoral thesis. Singh’s debut effort is readable for its poignant examination of friendship.
	Twilight By Azhar Abidi (Penguin) Bilqis Ara Begum is a traditional Pakistani widow whose only son Samad has married an Australian, Kate. Unsettled by her son’s seeming lack of commitment to their customs, General Zia’s orthodox ideology that he is enforcing on the country and the possibility of war in Kashmir, Bilqis looks to her upbringing in undivided India for strength. Inhabiting both the male and female perspective in equal measure Twilight is a novel about displacement with an unforgettable female protagonist.
	KOLKATA DREAMS Memory’s Gold: Writings on Calcutta EDITED BY AMIT CHAUDHURI (Penguin/Viking) Kolkata comes alive in Memory’s Gold a collection of memoirs, poems, stories and essays. Contributors vary from Gunter Grass and Allen Ginsberg to the poems of Rabindranath Tagore and Buddhadeva Bose, also including familiar excerpts from Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines. The Inheritors BY NEEL CHOWDHURY (Random House India) Neel Chowdhury covers old but solid ground in his debut novel, The Inheritors. The novel charts the internal power struggles of a family of Kolkata traders, undercutting it with their path to ascendance from colonial Rajasthan, and binds up ancestral obligations and family ties with the wheeling and dealing of global corporations. With a style that reels character and plot together with wry dexterity, Chowdhury’s book traverses the interior monologues and the external trappings of industrial Bengal, hedge funds in Hong Kong, cloak-and-dagger corporate finance in Mumbai, and the loves and loyalties of the Lohia family.
	The Summer of Cool By Suchitra Krishnamoorthi (Puffin India) Chitrangana is a precocious 10-year-old who is preoccupied with usual childish concerns like growing her hair and having her mother bake her a cake. Resident of Swapnalok society, she is always attentive to the animated lives of its members, but her real desire is to find her father. And things come to a head when on her birthday, she is gifted a doll that communicates solely with her and she finally sets off on a quest to find her father. Inhabited by eccentric characters this humorous story is about love, family and friendship.
	The Lost Flamingoes Of Bombay By Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi (Penguin) Protagonist Karan Seth is a photographer with ‘India Chronicle’ who decides to document ‘Bombay’ only to abandon the project after an affair with Rhea Dalal, trapped in a vapid marriage. His friendship with pianist Samar Arora, who spurns fame at his zenith and Zaira, a silver-screen star, are wrenched after a tragedy exposes Karan to Bombay’s underbelly. Disillusioned, the shutterbug escapes to England but Karan, like the flamingos that visit Sewri every year, seems inextricably bound to return. In equal turns a shot of urban life and its love of celebrity, Shanghvi’s book, shortlisted for the Man Asian Prize 2008, seems to cast him in the mould of ‘writers and the city’.
	Damage By Amrita Kumar (Harper Collins) Gudda, the protagonist grows up resenting all things remotely Christian, thanks to her ‘fanatical born-again Christian’ mother Beatrice. Most of her youth is spent terrorised by various rituals (of casting devils out) of Christian missionaries. In an attempt to escape this, she lands a job with a popular newspaper in Mumbai, where her ‘Hindu’ boss Anand, takes a ‘personal’ interest in her. Escalating hate campaigns against Christians, however, takes Gudda back to her roots and her mother. Author Anita Kumar, impresses with her blithe handling of controversial issues, while exploring the fragile nature of secularism.
	LABOUR OF LOVE Liven up your spouse’s corporate bookshelf Panic! EDITED BY MICHAEL LEWIS (Penguin) Michael Lewis captures the most idle imagination with humorous anecdotes in his 50-odd essays. Watch out for accounts of economist and professor, Joseph Stiglitz; humorist, Dave Barry and economist and columnist, Paul Krugman. Outliers: The Story Of Success BY MALCOLM GLADWELL (PENGUIN/ LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY) After Blink, Malcolm Gladwell tops up his lateral thinking chart with a book on success – an analytical study of the various factors involved in making a person truly successful. Peppered with examples, the book is not self-help as much as a research docket.
	Whistling In The Dark Edited by R. Raj Rao and Dibyajyoti Sarma (SAGE Publications) R. Raj Rao and Dibyajyoti Sarma edit an incisive book of interviews with 21 queer respondents from every walk of life, ranging from activists and academics to auto-rickshaw drivers and those convicted for crimes under Section 377, which outlaws same-sex activity.? Rao and Sarma, both academics as well as novelists, balance the narratives in this book between private, individual stories and their wider context with poise and sensitivity. By turns stark and wry, emotional and enlightening, Whistling In The Dark serves as more than just an academic addition to the canon of sub-continental queer studies.
	The Girl From Foreign: A Search for Shipwrecked Ancestors, Forgotten Histories and A Sense of Home By Sadia Shepard (Penguin) A personal chronicle that is located around India’s Independence and Partition which affected the lives of its minority communities, is also a telling story about their dynamics. After discovering that her grandmother who she believes is Muslim is actually an Israeli Jew who married a Muslim, she takes an interest in Indian Jews and decides to study their lives. The persevering reader is rewarded because this doesn’t take the clichéd route that NRI tales’ do.
	Delhi: Adventures in a Megacity By Sam Miller (Penguin) TV commentator and journalist Sam Miller was the BBC’s Delhi correspondent in the early 1990s and returned to the city again in 2002. Having been there ever since, he used this knowledge to ‘discover’ the real Delhi, describing a city and its nuances. The publication of the book is accompanied by a walk in Delhi with Miller on February 22.
	Kama Sutra Edited by Sandhya Mulchandani (Roli Books) This stunningly produced special edition of Kama Sutra is a collector’s delight. The images have been sourced from various international collections including Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge University, UK. A perfect gift for your amour, this ancient love tome is guaranteed to spice things up.
	BOLLYWOOD BUZZ Bachchanalia BY BHAWANA SOMAAYA AND OSIAN’S CARD Fans of Amitabh Bachchan have another big slice of the Big B that they can take home. The coffee-table book takes readers through the icon’s filmography with vintage and often rare film posters and publicity material. Bollywood on the Bend BY SANGEETA WADHWANI (SAMPARK) The debut novel embarks on a fictionalised account of Bollywood upstarts and starlets in a rambunctious journey.

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