Book after Book

Welcome to the blog tour for Teatime at Peggy's: A Glimpse of Anglo-India by Clare Jenkins and Stephen McClarence! More about the book… For 15 years, award-winning travel writer Stephen McClarence and his BBC Radio journalist wife Clare Jenkins regularly visited Jhansi, the railway town in Uttar Pradesh that inspired Bhowani Junction, John Masters' classic 1954 tale of Anglo-Indian life during Partition. There they spent hours ‘down the rabbit hole’ with Peggy Cantem - ‘Aunty Peggy’ as she was known throughout the town, daughter and widow of railwaymen, overseer of the European cemetery with its 66 Mutiny graves and ‘dancing and prancing peacocks’ - and with her great friend Captain Royston (Roy) Abbott, ‘The Rajah of Jhansi’, possibly India’s last British landowner and ‘more British than the Brits’. In Peggy’s tiny, crowded ground-floor flat, she and her friends would reflect on Anglo-Indian life then and now: the dances (waltzes, foxtrot, jive), amateur drama...

Welcome to the blog tour for The Nigerian Mafia: Mumbai  by Onyeka Nwelue! More about the book… Nollywood actor, Uche Mbadiegwu leaves his Surulere neighbourhood in Lagos, to Bandra in Mumbai to join Bollywood, so he could make it big, hoping to play exceptional roles. Like a flash, Periwinkle appears in his life and changes everything. Tired of living in a pigsty, Efemena wants to live a life in independence, but there is more to being a Nigerian in Mumbai – a constant escape from Indian police and narcotics agents. The Nigerian Mafia  is a tale of violence, drugs, human trafficking, murder and sex. More about the author… Onyeka Nwelue is a Nigerian filmmaker, talk-show host, bookseller and author whose book, Hip-Hop is Only for Children won the Creative Non-Fiction Book of the Year at the 2015 Nigerian Writers’ Awards. He adapted his novella, Island of Happiness into an Igbo language film, Agwaetiti Obiụtọ and won Best Featur...

Welcome to the blog tour for Fear and Lovely by Anjana Appachana ! More about the book… Mallika is a painfully shy young woman growing up in the heart of a close-knit, sometimes stifling New Delhi colony. Though she is surrounded by love, her life is complicated by secrets that she, her mother and her aunt work hard to keep. After suffering a trauma aged nineteen that causes her to lose three days of her memory and spiral into a deep depression, Mallika must find a way out of the abyss, back to herself and those she cares about. But she must also hide her mental illness from her community. In a narrative that unfolds elliptically from the perspectives of Mallika and the seven people closest to her, the astonishing story of these characters' intertwining lives emerges. For Mallika's family, childhood friends and the two men she loves are also hiding truths. As each gives voice to contending with their own struggles, secrets and silences shatter. More about the author… Anjana Ap...

Welcome to the blog tour for Baby Does A Runner  by Anita Rani! More about the book… Sometimes you need to run, to find out where you really belong. Baby Saul has had it with just about everything. She's fed up with her job and her colleagues, her love life is permanently casual, and underpinning everything is the recent grief of losing her much-loved dad. Oh, and if her mother and the aunties don't stop asking her when she's going to settle down and start having babies, Baby might just lose it. When she finds some love letters between her grandfather and someone who is very clearly not her grandmother, Baby realises that she needs to know more. She heads to India to do some detective work on this mysterious other woman and to find out a bit more about herself along the way. What she doesn't bargain for is Sid, her guide (and unwilling driver) being annoyingly handsome with a knack for asking Baby the sort o...

Welcome to the blog tour for Sylvia by Maithreyi Karnoor! More about the book… Longing to connect to his ancestral roots, Cajetan Pereira has taken up residence near one of the rare and mystical Baobab trees in South India. Into his world walks  Sylvia, a young woman in search of a story. They bond over their new-found relationship, until one day consumed by regret, Sylvia disappears. In a rich kaleidoscope of tales, Sylvia is glimpsed in the lives of other characters as a colleague, friend, wife, and lover, until she comes back into focus as she finds herself becoming whole once more – but is it too late? Brimming with exquisite prose,  Sylvia  is a beautifully woven tapestry of the ways in which we leave indelible imprints on each other’s lives. More about the author… Maithreyi Karnoor is a Charles Wallace India Trust Fellow in creative writing and translation at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. She has been shortlisted for The Lucien Stryk Asia...

Welcome to the blog tour for The Perfumist of Paris by Alka Joshi! More about the book… Paris, 1974. Radha is now living in Paris with her husband, Pierre, and their two daughters. She still grieves for the baby boy she gave up years ago, when she was only a child herself, but she loves being a mother to her daughters, and she’s finally found her passion—the treasure trove of scents. She has an exciting and challenging position working for a master perfumer, helping to design completely new fragrances for clients and building her career one scent at a time. She only wishes Pierre could understand her need to work. She feels his frustration, but she can’t give up this thing that drives her. Tasked with her first major project, Radha travels to India, where she enlists the help of her sister, Lakshmi, and the courtesans of Agra—women who use the power of fragrance to seduce, tease and entice. She’s on the cusp of a breakthrough when she finds out the son she never told her husb...

Welcome to the blog tour for Independence by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni! More about the book… India, 1947. In a rural village in Bengal live three sisters, daughters of a well-respected doctor. Priya: intelligent and idealistic, resolved to follow in her father’s footsteps and become a doctor, though society frowns on it. Deepa: the beauty, determined to make a marriage that will bring her family joy and status. Jamini: devout, sharp-eyed, and a talented quiltmaker, with deeper passions than she reveals. Theirs is a home of love and safety, a refuge from the violent events taking shape in the nation. Then their father is killed during a riot, and even their neighbours turn against them, bringing the events of their country closer to home. As Priya determinedly pursues her career goal, Deepa falls deeply in love with a Muslim, causing her to break with her family. And Jamini attempts to hold her family together, even as she secretly longs for her sister’s fiancé. When the partition of ...

Welcome to the blog tour for The Newlyweds by Mansi Choksi! More about the book… Twenty-first century India is a culture on fast forward, a society which is changing at breakneck speed, where two out of every three people are under the age of thirty-five. These young men and women grew up with the internet, smartphones and social media. But when it comes to love, the weight of thousands of years of tradition cannot so easily be set aside. An extraordinary work of reportage, The Newlyweds is a portrait of modern India told through the stories of three young couples, who defy their families to pursue love. The lesbian couple forced to flee for a chance at a life together. The Hindu woman and Muslim man who must escape under the cover of night after being harassed by a violent mob. And the couple from different castes who know the terrible risk they run by marrying. More about the author… Mansi Choksi is a writer based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates and Mumbai, India.  The Newly...

Welcome to the blog tour for Honor by Thrity Umrigar! More about the book… Indian American journalist Smita has returned to India to cover a story, but reluctantly: long ago she and her family left the country with no intention of ever coming back. As she follows the case of Meena – a Hindu woman attacked by members of her own village and her own family for marrying a Muslim man –Smita comes face to face with a society where tradition carries more weight than one’s own heart, and a story that threatens to unearth the painful secrets of Smita’s own past. While Meena’s fate hangs in the balance, Smita tries in every way she can to right the scales. She also finds herself increasingly drawn to Mohan, an Indian man she meets while on assignment. But the dual love stories of Honor are as different as the cultures of Meena and Smita themselves: Smita realizes she has the freedom to enter into a casual affair, knowing she can decide later how much it means to her. In this tender...

Welcome to the blog tour for The Secret Keeper of Jaipur by Alka Joshi . More about the book… Henna artist Lakshmi arranges for her protégé, Malik, to intern at the Jaipur Palace in this tale rich in character, atmosphere, and lavish storytelling. It’s the spring of 1969, and Lakshmi, now married to Dr Jay Kumar, directs the Healing Garden in Shimla. Malik has finished his private school education. At twenty, he has just met a young woman named Nimmi when he leaves to apprentice at the Facilities Office of the Jaipur Royal Palace. Their latest project: a state-of-the-art cinema. Malik soon finds that not much has changed as he navigates the Pink City of his childhood. Power and money still move seamlessly among the wealthy class, and favours flow from Jaipur’s Royal Palace, but only if certain secrets remain buried. When the cinema’s balcony tragically collapses on opening night, blame is placed where it is convenient. But Malik suspects something far darker and sets out to uncover th...

Welcome to the blog tour for Jaipur Journals by Namita Gokhale . More about the book… Told from multiple perspectives, from the authors enjoying moments of adulation after years of creative isolation, to the star-struck public mingling with their cultural icons, to those in-between, who are both author and fan, these diverse stories of lost love and regret, self-doubt, and new beginnings come together in a narrative that is as varied as India itself. From a septuagenarian who has completed her semi-biographical novel but does not want to part with it, to an author who receives a threat in the form of a poison pen letter; from a historian who reunites with a past lover, to a burglar who is passionate about poetry; from a young woman who has no idea what this world has in store for her, to an American woman looking for the India of her hippie youth, this metafictional, wryly funny novel is an ode to literature. Partly a love letter to the greatest literary show on earth, partly a satire...

Welcome to the blog tour for Can You See Me Now? by Trisha Sakhlecha . More about the book… Fifteen years ago, three sixteen-year-old girls meet at Wescott, an exclusive private school in India.   Two, Sabah and Noor, are the most popular girls in their year. One, Alia, is a new arrival from England, who feels her happiness depends on their acceptance. Before she knows it, Sabah and Noor’s intoxicating world of privilege and intimacy opens up to Alia and, for the first time, after years of neglect from her parents, she feels she is exactly where, and with whom, she belongs. But with intimacy comes jealousy, and with privilege, resentment, and Alia finds that it only takes one night for her bright new world to shatter around her. Now Alia, a cabinet minister in the Indian government, is about to find her secrets have no intention of staying buried... More about the author… Trisha Sakhlecha grew up in New Delhi and now lives in London.   For her new novel she draws upon a true...

By Aravind Adiga Published by Picador Synopsis: Manjunath Kumar is fourteen. He knows he is good at cricket - if not as good as his elder brother Radha. He knows that he fears and resents his domineering and cricket-obsessed father, admires his brilliantly talented sibling and is fascinated by the world of CSI and by curious and interesting scientific facts. But there are many things, about himself and about the world, that he doesn't know… Sometimes it seems as though everyone around him has a clear idea of who Manju should be, except Manju himself. When Manju begins to get to know Radha's great rival, a boy as privileged and confident as Manju is not, everything in Manju's world begins to change and he is faced with decisions that will challenge both his sense of self and of the world around him… How did this book end up in my hands? I bought this book during a bookshop crawl in London as I feel it is important to support independent businesses. Was it a pag...

By Fiona McIntosh Synopsis: Spirited Doctor Isla Fenwick is determined to work at the coalface of medicine in India before committing to life as a dutiful wife. With hopes of making a difference in the world, she sails to Calcutta to set up a midwifery clinic. There she will be forced to question her beliefs, her professionalism and her romantic loyalties.  On a desperate rescue mission to save the one person who needs her the most, she travels into the foothills of the Himalayas to a tea plantation outside Darjeeling. At the roof of the world, where heaven and earth collide, Isla will be asked to pay the ultimate price for her passions.  How did this book end up in my hands? I was browsing the BorrowBox app looking for my next audiobook and the title of this book caught my eye as I happened to have visited and loved some tea gardens in India. Was it a page-turner? This novel is rich with descriptions but it is also quite eventful. I wouldn’t go as far as t...

By Anita Mir Published by Unbound Digital Synopsis: As India hurtles towards Partition, in Lahore's ancient inside city, Amrau Dar is not thinking about politics. She is waiting for a prediction about her son, Awais, to come true. Awais discovers not a secret garden but a secret city and his beloved sister, Maryam, discovers the world of maths. Fearing that the prediction has gone wrong, Amrau takes a series of decisions that will change all their lives. How did this book end up in my hands? I followed its serialisation as it appeared on The Pigeonhole . Was it a page-turner? Every day for ten days I received an instalment of the book in my inbox and I dutifully read it. I didn’t have a problem keeping up with the schedule but I must admit that I struggled with the novel itself and – were it not for references to a culture I am extremely intrigued by – this might have been a DNF for me. Did the book meet my expectations? At one point, a character in the book said ‘Mit...

Do you know that feeling of desperately wanting to speak a language just so you could read all the lovely books on the shelves? I have most recently experienced it in India. Look at the gorgeous Malayalam script on display in a bookshop in Kochi, Kerala!

Am I too late to write a post about my top 5 books in 2017?  Yes? No? I can't hear you so I'll just go ahead! Without further ado, here are the books I loved last year: 1) The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga Very simplistically, it could be described as a rag to riches story with the Indian caste system thrown in. Absolutely fascinating. I couldn't put it down.  2) Big Brother by Lionel Shriver This should really be in joint first place. Adoring sister helps obese brother get back on the right track. I drank every word of this book only to find myself chocking at the end. Only McEwan's Atonement has had this effect on me so far and that's another book I love! 3) Gloria by Kerry Young This was a book group read and I spent the first 50 pages wondering how on earth I would be able to read the Jamaican dialect it was written in. I just wanted to correct grammar and spelling - and I'm not even an English native speaker. And then it happened: Glo...