The Story Of My Assassins
By Tarun Tejpal
(Harper Collins)
Tarun Tejpal’s newest literary venture is the story of an unnamed protagonist, who almost seems like the author’s doppelganger and is informed of his own death, but is unacquainted with his assassins. Tongue-in-cheek about reportage, chartering old Delhi’s terrain and weaving in the elite and the working class, Tejpal builds up a complex page-turning plot, with a commentary on power, sex, corruption and poverty.

Fugitive Histories
By Githa Hariharan
(Penguin/Viking)
Memory mingles with documentary, and personal histories become the filter through which public record is viewed in Hariharan’s latest novel about the problems of identity and prejudice running through various cities in different generations. We pick through the pieces via the memories of Mala, a widow trying to piece together her artist husband’s work after his death; the personal and professional crises of Sara, and through the life of Yasmin, a girl growing up in the shadow of the anti-Muslim riots. Hariharan’s writing is spare, punctuated with passages of brilliant clarity and compassion. Fugitive Histories is remarkable for being the first major work of fiction that attempts to narrativise Godhra and its aftermath through the lives of those affected by it.

The Storyteller’s Tale
By Omair Ahmad
(Penguin)
Reminiscent of the best of Indian fables, Sufi sayings and Koranic and Biblical tales Omair Ahmad’s storyteller and begum measure up to Scheherazade. The storyteller who leaves his home after Delhi is pillaged, arrives at a citadel and is welcomed in by the Begum. The arabesque narrative begins with a story, told to entertain the lady of the house, about two brothers, a boy, Wara and a wolf, Taka. The Begum retorts with one about two brothers Barab and Aresh. In the jugalbandi that follows all four characters are interlaced into an increasingly layered parable about love and sacrifice. Drawing on the circular tendency of Eastern mythology Ahmad present’s his readers with a romantic study of human nature and takes adults as his mark.

Life Is Perfect
By Himani Dalmia
(Rupa)
Domestic idyll in Mitali Jaitia’s life lasts about as long as the two page prologue. The first chapter jumps to her life in Delhi as a college student, her father is having an affair, her mother is still distraught by it, Mitali isn’t really coming to terms with it and seems to sublimate and project these feelings in her relationships. Dealing with teen angst that readers are all too familiar with, she also has to come to grips with the death of a girl in the Jaitia House. The novel doesn’t trespass new territory but it does tackle problems that are all too recognisable in modern lives and is readable, if only for that.

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