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Journalism of Courage
In 2022, as the pandemic eased its grip and war returned to Europe with Russia’s attack on Ukraine, as protests rocked Iran against its conservative regime and, at home, a rising tide of polarisation marked conversations, we turned to books to make sense of our changing world and break it down for you.
Will 2023 be the year when things take a turn for the better? When climate conversations take precedence, tensions de-escalate and the threat of the virus is left behind? It’s hard to tell. But one thing is guaranteed: there will still be books to make sense of new aspirations and old fears. Here’s our pick of the best non-fiction books to look forward to in the coming year, that address not just the pressing concerns of our time, but also the possibilities of fuller, more self-contained lives:
The Half Known Life
Pico Iyer, Penguin
In Autumn Light: Season of Fire and Farewells (2019), a meditation on how death reminds us to take nothing for granted, Pico Iyer writes, “Autumn poses the question we all have to live with: How to hold on to the things we love even though we know that we and they are dying. How to see the world as it is, yet find light within that truth.”
In his new book, The Half Known Life, scheduled for publication in early January, he chases the light across a polarised world beset with conflict, to arrive at what it means to seek —and find — paradise in these times. In a journey that is both interior and outward, Iyer travels across a holy mountain in Japan, to mosques in Iran, from the Australian Outback to a film studio in North Korea. Weaving together his chance encounters with strangers on these trips with his own memories of his mother speaking of pre-Partition India; of accompanying the Dalai Lama on his travels, and spending time in a Benedictine monastery above the Pacific, Iyer makes unexpected connections that throw up possibilities of arriving at paradise in this angry, restive world.
Smoke and Ashes: A Writer’s Journey Through Hidden Histories
Amitav Ghosh, HarperCollins
Tea, opium and relationships with China have featured in Amitav Ghosh’s fiction over the years, mostly notably in the Ibis trilogy, but in Smoke and Ashes, Ghosh examines his abiding interests through the lens of non-fiction, connecting the dots between colonialism, capitalism and ecological imbalance; exploring indigenous understandings of the environment; the difference in perspectives between Asia and Europe and the lacuna in our understanding of China. Through it all, Ghosh’s experiences as a writer, his memories and anecdotes, run like a thread and bind together these diverse interests, making it a fascinating compendium of contemporary history and its compelling concerns.
Why We Die
Venki Ramakrishnan, Hachette
From Nobel Prize-winning structural biologist and academic Venki Ramakrishnan comes a deep exploration of the science of ageing and the necessity of death.Why We Die looks at the human urge for immortality that modern advances in biological sciences appears to have made tangible. Yet, death and its imagination have been at the core of cultures, religions, and, even science. If immortality stands within grasp, what do individuals stand to lose and what could their ramifications on civilisations possibly be?
As science hurtles forward at breakneck pace, Ramakrishnan, whose work on the structure and function of the ribosome won him the Nobel Prize in 2009 alongside Thomas A Steitz and Ada Yonath, explores the social, cultural and ethical fallouts of an indefinitely long lifespan.
Indians: A History of a Civilization
Edited by GN Devy, Tony Joseph, and Ravi Korisettar, Aleph Book Company
In contemporary India, with its predilection for social othering based on lopsided majoritarian narratives, a collection of 100 essays, with contributions by eminent historians, linguists, sociologists, biologists and other domain experts from India and abroad examines India’s contested past.
Edited by GN Devy, Tony Joseph and Ravi Korisettar, the collection, scheduled for publication in April, examines mass migrations, the diversity of languages, formation of social and political organisations, social movements, colonialism and its impact, the freedom struggle and modern India since 1947 to show how banal the discussion over antecedents can be when not grounded in empirical evidence.
While the editors themselves have an enviable body of work to their credit — Devy’s work with People’s Linguistic Survey of India and the Adivasi Academy needs little introduction; Joseph is the author of the prize-winning Early Indians: The Story of Our Ancestors and Where We Came From (2018); and archaeologist Korisettar’s discovery of volcanic ash of Sumatran origin in peninsular river deposits has thrown open the debate on the early human migration out of Africa — the list of contributors is equally impressive.
It includes Narayani Gupta, Nivedita Menon, Partha Pratim Majumder of National Institute of Biomedical Genomics, Kolkata, Rajmohan Gandhi, American historian Richard Maxwell Eaton, to name a few.
Patriarchs: How Men Came to Rule
Angela Saini, Harper Collins
Award-winning independent science writer Angela Saini, known for works that include Superior: The Return of Race Science (2019) and Geek Nation: How Indian Science is Taking Over the World (2011), returns with a work that explores the origin and history of patriarchy, the phenomenon behind one of the oldest inequalities in the world — of gender. From the Americas to Asia, Saini explores socio-political histories, analyses research findings in science and archaeology to show how the hold of patriarchy varies between civilisations and the role women play in enabling patriarchal structures.
BONUS:
A Lucky Man: The Memoirs of a Radio-wala
Mark Tully, Speaking Tiger
Mark Tully, the voice of the BBC in South Asia for over six decades, and the intrepid journalist whose vivid accounts made news come alive in the pre-internet era, will publish his memoir in 2023.
The octogenarian, known for his non-combative and unfailingly courteous style of reportage, since outdated in the shrill din of primetime anchors, writes of his childhood in Calcutta, his years in the BBC and his meetings with some of the biggest newsmakers of his time from the subcontinent — Indira Gandhi, Narasimha Rao, LK Advani, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, Mujibur Rehman and General Zia-ul-Haq, among others.
