Books to watch out for in 2020

From novels by Jeet Thayil and Upamanyu Chatterjee to memoirs by actor Will Smith and former Delhi High Court Chief Justice Rajinder Sachar and from several works related to economy to more stories by the indomitable Ruskin Bond, 2020 promises to be yet another busy year for bookworms.

While Thayil's "Low", a joyride through the darklands of grief towards obliteration and epiphany, is published by Faber & Faber, Speaking Tiger is bringing out Chatterjee's "The Hapless Prince".

A number of books related to economy will be published during the year. These include "Backstage: The Story behind the India Story" by Montek Singh Ahluwalia; "Top 10 Game-changing Moments in the Indian Economy" by Bibek Debroy; and "India at 75: Then and Now" by Bimal Jalan (all Rupa).

 

Among the works of foreign writers are "The Mirror and the Light"; the final book of Hilary Mantel's "The Wolf Hall Trilogy" (HCI); "Facebook: The Inside Story" by Steven Levy (PRH); "Insha' Allah Nation: Glorious Chaos of Pakistan" by Declan Walsh; and "Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women White Feminists" by Mikki Kendall (all Bloomsbury).

Aleph will come out with Ruskin Bond's "The Boy Who Refused to Grow Up: My Favourite Stories of Childhood" while Westland will come out with his "Happy Birthday, World!"

There are also several books about films and entertainment slated to be published this year. These include: Deepti Naval's candid memoir "A Country Called Childhood"; a biography of Rajinikanth by Vaasanthi; "Manto and I" by Nandita Das (all Aleph); "The Three Khans" (Kaveree Bamzai, Westland); "The Longest Kiss", a biography of Devika Rani by Kishwar Desai (Westland) and Vinod Khanna's biography by Gautam Chintamani (Bloomsbury).

A few other books in this category are "Irrfan Khan: The man, the dreamer, the star" by Aseem Chhabra; "Longest Playing Record: Laxmikant-Pyarelal" by Rajiv Vijayakar; "Danny: Life of a Superstar" by Priyanka Pereira and "Interval" by Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra and Reeta Gupta (all Rupa); "The Bachchans" by SMM Ausaja; "Tapan Sinha: The Authorised Biography" by Amitava Nag; "RIP: Bollywood Obituaries" by Ziya Us Salam (all Om Books International) and "Zoravar", book one in the Bollywood Saga by Maharrsh Shah (HarperCollins India).

Culinary books include those by Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson, Yotam Ottolenghi's "Flavour", Ajay Chowdhury's "The Waiter" (Penguin Random House); "Lazzatnaama" by Pushpesh Pant (Rupa), "From the Table of My Friends" by Sunita Kohli (Aleph), and "The Legacy Kitchen: A Culinary Journey for the Ages" by former head chef of Taj Mahal Hotel Satish Arora with Chandrima Pal.

"Jikoni: Proudly Inauthentic Recipes from an Immigrant Kitchen" by Ravinder Bhogal (both Bloomsbury), "The Parsi Kitchen" by SodaBottleOpenerWala's Anahita Dhondy (HCI); "Cultures of Food in Mughal and Post Mughal India", a study of food cultures in Mughal and post-Mughal India between the 16th and mid-19th centuries by Divya Narayanan (Oxford); and two books by Vicky Ratnani - "Urban Desi Non-Vegetarian" and "Urban Desi Vegetarian (Om)" are some other books in this category.

HarperCollins will also publish "Loss" (Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi); "365: A Poem a Day" selected and edited by Gulzar; "Honour Bound: Adventures of an Indian Lawyer in the English Courts" by Sarosh Zaiwalla; "Poison on a Platter" by Maneka Sanjay Gandhi and "Shuttling to the Top: The Story of PV Sindhu" by V Krishnaswamy.

Penguin Random House will bring out "Rethinking India" series by various authors over the year besides "Jaipur Journals" (Namita Gokhale); "Happy for No Reason" (Mandira Bedi with Satyadev Barman, PRH); "Uncommon Sense: The Marico Story" (Harsh Mariwala and Ram Charan); "The Dry Fasting Miracle" (Luke Coutinho); "Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line" (Deepa Anappara).

Its international titles include "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need" by Bill Gates; Will Smith's memoir with Mark Mason; "Home in the World" by Amartya Sen; Ruchir Sharma's "The 10 Rules of Successful Nations" and "Virginity" by Jennifer Niven.

Among Rupa's books are "Coaches of Indian Cricket" (Abhishek Dubey and Sanjeeb Mukherjea); "Bahubali of Indian Politics" (Rajesh Singh); "Evolution of RSS from an Organisation to a Movement: How Successive Sarsanghchalaks Shaped the Sangh" (Ratan Sharda); "Ayodhya and Beyond: National Hindutva Awakening" (Subramanian Swamy); "India's Foreign Policy Blunders" (Yashwant Sinha and Satish Misra), Rajiv Dogra's "The Prime Minister"; and TRAI boss R S Sharma's "Aadhaar: The Inside Story".

It will also publish "Life as a PoW", in which Air Marshal K C Cariappa recounts his days as a prisoner of war in Pakistan besides the autobiography of Justice Rajinder Sachar.

Aleph's list has "JNU Stories" by Neeladri Bhattacharya, Kunal Chakrabarti, S Gunasekaran, Janaki Nair and Joy L K Pachuau; "Plassey: The Battle That Changed the Course of Indian History" by Sudeep Chakravarti; "Bharatvarsh: The Idea of India through Pilgrim Spots" by Devdutt Pattanaik; "Born a Muslim: Some Truths about Islam in India" by Ghazala Wahab, and "Gazing Eastwards: Glimpses of China's Pasts" by Romila Thapar.

Aleph will also publish quite three Shashi Tharoor books -- "The New World Disorder and the Indian Imperative" with Samir Saran; "On Indian Nationalism"; "The Great Game: The Exhilarating World of Indian Cricket".

Pan Macmillan India will come out with titles like Kunal Basu's novella "The Endgame", Joy Ma and Dilip D'Souza's "The Deoliwallahs", Jerome Armstrong's "Calcutta Yoga", "The Heart Asks Pleasure First" by Karuna Ezara Parikh, "Landscapes of Loss" by Arati Kunar-Rao, and "After I Was Raped: The Untold Lives of Five Rape Survivors and Their Emotional Journeys" by Urmi Bhattacharya.

Westland's other titles feature a biography of veritable giant of Hindi literature Nirmal Verma by Vineet Gill; poet and novelist Keki N Daruwalla's memoir; Meghnad Desai's autobiography; "Sebastian & Sons: A Brief History of Mrdangam Makers" by T M Krishna; Myntra founder Mukesh Bansal's debut book "No Limits: The Art and Science of High Performance"; and "Lift Off: The Story of Conzerv" by former CEO Hema Hattangady and Ashish Sen.

Among other Westland books are "The Greatest Ode to Lord Rama: Select Stanzas from Tulsidas's Ramcharitmanas" by Pavan K Varma; "Our Hindu Rashtra: What Is It and How We Got Here" by Aakar Patel; "Soul Rivals: State, Militant and Pop Sufism in Pakistan" by Nadeem Farooq Paracha; and "Queeristan: LGBTQ Inclusion in Corporate India" by Godrej India Culture Lab founder Parmesh Shahani.

Some of its commercial fiction titles are "The Vault of Vishnu" by Ashwin Sanghi, "Baahubali - Book 2: Before the Beginning" by Anand Neelakantan, "Shotz" (a series) by Ravi Subramaniam, and "Girls of Mumbaistan" by Piyush Jha.

It will also come out with "India's Space Adventure" by Biman Basu, billed as the first ever children's encyclopedia that focuses on the triumphs and challenges of India's space missions and explorations; "Poonachi: Lost in the Jungle" by Perumal Murugan, illustrated by Priya Kuriyan; "Birds in Your Backyard and Beyond" by Kaustubh Srikanth.

Other translation titles include "Estuary" by Perumal Murugan, translated from Tamil by Nandini Krishnan; "The Rooster is the Culprit", Unni R, translated from Malayalam by J Devika; "Hellfire", by Bangladesh-born British writer Leesa Gazi/Shabnam Nadia; "Yugandhar" (Marathi) by Shivaji Sawant; "Chhera Chhera Jeebon (Tattered Life)" by Manoranjan Byapari, translated by Arunava Sinha.

Niyogi Books print list has "Flower Shower" by Alka Pande; "Phulkari" (Shalina Mehta); a book on Sourav Ganguly by Debasish Datta; "Kashmir: A Journey through History" by Garry Weare; "Nathdwara Paintings" by Kalyan Krishna and Kay Talwar; "Coconut: How the shy fruit shaped our world" by Robin Laurance, "Article 370" by Sumit Dutt Majumder; and "Mountain of the Moon" by Bibhutibhushan Bandopdhay.

Books to watch out from Bloomsbury in 2020 include "Gandhi's Hinduism: The Struggle against Jinnah's Islam" by MJ Akbar; "The Phoenix" by columnist Rituparna Chatterjee, a memoir that details how she dealt with and overcame the trauma of being abused as a child; "Who, Me, Feminist?" by Gayatri Jayaraman; and "Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol" by Holly Whitaker.

Its list also has "The Tashkent Files: Who Killed Shastri" by Vivek Agnihotri; "Hindutva: A Critical Look" by Aravindan Neelakandan; "Crash Landing: The Inside Story of the Rise and Fall of Jet Airways" by Kingshuk Nag; and "The Big Book of Mutual Funds" by Aashish Somaiyya and Vivek Law.

Oxford's titles include "Young and Dynamic? Gen-Next Leaders in Indian Politics" (Pradeep Chhibber); "Law, Justice, Society: The Selected Works of Upendra Baxi", "B.R. Ambedkar: The Quest for Justice" (Aakash Singh Rathore); "Unravelling the Mind: The Selected Works of Sudhir Kakar"; "Walking to Dandi" (Harmony Siganporia); "Breakfast with Evil", a compilation of the complete works of Ashis Nandy; and "The Diary of Manu Gandhi" (Tridip Suhrud).

Hachette will publish John Grisham's next novel in the bestselling Camino Island series "Camino Winds", "The Lost Homestead: My Family, Partition and the Punjab" by Marina Wheeler; and "If It Bleeds" by Stephen King; besides several other titles.

Fingerprint will come out with actor-director Sanjay Khan's "Assalamualaikum Watan", which provides a unique perspective into the role the Muslims of India has played in nation building; "Make Your Own Luck" by Bob Miglani and Rehan Yar Khan; Sadguru Rameshji's "Soul Selfie"; "She Screw Silence!" by Reecha Agarwal Goyal; and "Ghosts of the Silent Hills" by Anita Krishan among other titles.

Speaking Tiger will publish fiction titles like "Fern Road" by Angshu Dasgupta; "The Legend of Himal and Nagrai: Greatest Kashmiri Folktales Retold" by Onaiza Drabu; and "Murder in Shimla" by Bulbul Sharma.

Its non-fiction titles include "Exiles of the New Frontier" by Ashwin Parulkar; "The Demolition that Changed India - and the Verdict" by Nilanajan Mukhopadhyay; "Being Indian, Being Muslim", edited and with an introduction by Christophe Jaffrelot; and "Contested Citizenship and The Indian Nation", edited and with an introduction by Harsh Mander and Navsharan Singh.

Speaking Tiger will also publish Shanta Gokhale's "Shivaji Park, Dadar, Mumbai 400 028" as part of its 'Local History' series besides two translations by Jerry Pinto - Vishram Bedekar's "Ranaangan" ("Battlefield") and Swadesh Deepak's autobiography "Maine Mandu Nahin Dekha" ("I Haven't Seen Mandu: Fractured Collage of a Broken Life").

Simon & Schuster will bring out "Srilaaji: Diary of a Marwari Dowager" by Shobhaa De; Samit Basu's "Chosen Spirits"; "The First Little King" by Siddhartha Sarmah; "The Mauryas" by Devika Rangachari; "Cat People" by Devapriya Roy; Ashok Banker's "Upon A Burning Throne: 2"; "V P Menon: The Unsung Architect of Modern India" by Narayani Basu.

Om Books International's list includes "In-Between: Love Poems" by Maria Goretti, a biography of Narendra Modi "Being The Change" by Rahul Agarwal with Bharathi Pradhan; "Shadows on the Wall: Pen-portraits", a collection of pen-portraits translated from Javed Siddiqi's award-winning Urdu collections "Raushandan and Langarkhana"; "Postcards From Islam" by Ziya Us Salam; and "Surface & Depth" by Rohit Bal.