Ajay Shukla’s The Yali Awakens is an ambitious attempt to bring together Indian mythology, spirituality, fantasy adventure and environmental concerns within a single narrative. The novel follows Shankara, a young man whose seemingly ordinary journey gradually draws him into a world of…
A Story of War, Friendship and Freedom! The War Elephants of Trigarta is an engaging and emotionally rich historical adventure that successfully combines the grandeur of ancient warfare with the intimacy of a child’s friendship with an elephant. Mili and Nathu…
A compelling, deeply personal and richly observed wildlife book—especially rewarding for readers interested in tigers, Ranthambhore, Indian conservation and the complex behaviour of wild animals. Star Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ (4.5/5) Valmik Thapar’s The Mysterious World of Tigers is best understood as a portrait…
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (5/5) A Memoir That Transforms Memory into History Some memoirs seek merely to preserve the story of an individual life, while others succeed in preserving an entire vanished world. The Maker of Eternity belongs firmly to the latter category. Suresh…
Author: Satyarth PanditaPublisher: Hawakal PublishersGenre: Short Stories / Literary Fiction / Psychological Fiction / Speculative FictionRating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5/5 Introduction: Entering the World of the Void Satyarth Pandita’s Grammar of the Void: Stories is a compelling collection built around a deceptively simple idea: absence can be as powerful…
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐🌟 (4.9/5) Introduction Wendy Doniger’s For the Love of Stories is an intimate, wide-ranging and intellectually engaging memoir that brings together the personal and professional dimensions of an extraordinary scholarly life. Doniger, a renowned scholar of Hinduism and Sanskrit, has spent…
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ (4/5) Published by Niyogi Books in 2025 and translated by Chandana Dutta, The Mapmaker is a historical novel about William Smith, the largely self-taught geologist whose painstaking investigations fundamentally altered the way England’s geological landscape was understood. The narrative moves…
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ (4.5/5) Manu Joseph’s Why the Poor Don’t Kill Us: The Psychology of Indians is an unusual and provocative examination of Indian society. Instead of approaching poverty through conventional discussions of economic policy, welfare programmes or development indicators, Joseph begins with a…
Some books describe a place. Others attempt to make the reader feel a place. Santiniketan: Nature’s Gateway to Spirituality, a collaborative work by Bitann Chakraborty and Kiriti Sengupta, belongs firmly to the second category. Published by Hawakal Publishers in July 2026, the book…
Dzangpo Here they came, the last of the season. Dzangpo watched as the lights of the long jeep wound through the hillside, disappearing into blind turns and then returning, dots and dashes. The sun had already set over the hills…
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ (4.5/5) Amitava Kumar’s The Social Life of Indian Trains: A Journey uses the Indian railway system as a compelling framework to examine the many layers of the nation’s identity. Rather than focusing on trains solely as a means of travel,…