Books
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Prakrit poetry for posterity
Published on Mar 07, 2025 11:01 AM IST
The Gatha Saptashati, an anthology of 700 poems on everything from nature and love to the general experiences of ordinary people, still enthrals
Emily Dickinson at work at home
No literary pilgrimage to Massachusetts can be complete without a visit to the Amherst home of one of the most important figures in American poetry
Published on Mar 06, 2025 03:35 PM IST
Teja Lele
Huma Qureshi – “Books can be an escape from the harsh truth of reality”
Writing became a natural calling during COVID, blending humor and gender fluidity in a narrative shaped by uncertainty. A second book is planned.
Updated on Mar 05, 2025 07:31 PM IST
Simar Bhasin
Review: A Touch of Salt by Anita Agnihotri
Translated from the original Bangla, this multigenerational story is an outstanding portrait of the salt makers of the Rann of Kutch
Published on Mar 05, 2025 07:30 PM IST
Lamat R Hasan
Twenty Years and Counting: The Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards
To mark its milestone anniversary, 10 remarkable plays nominated across 13 categories will be staged in New Delhi, followed by the awards ceremony.
Published on Mar 05, 2025 06:38 PM IST
Neha Kirpal
Matthieu Ricard: “Reducing all of Buddhism to mindfulness is far too simplistic”
A Vajrayana Buddhist monk of French heritage and a PhD in genetics, Matthieu Ricard is the author of ‘Notebooks of a Wandering Monk’. Here, he talks about mindfulness
Published on Mar 03, 2025 10:53 PM IST
Book Box: Why Handwriting (Still) Works
Handwriting assignments fostered authenticity and connection in students, enhancing creativity and learning, unlike digital submissions.
Updated on Mar 01, 2025 06:31 PM IST
HT Picks; New Reads
On the reading list this week is a detective story set in the Mughal era, a chronicle of the Urdu newspaper Pratap and its Hindi counterpart, Vir Pratap, and a book that discusses the melodic and rhythmic aspects of both Carnatic and Hindustani classical music
Published on Feb 28, 2025 11:50 PM IST
HT Team
Aakriti Mandhwani: “Dissent existed in the middlebrow”
The author of ‘Everyday Reading’ on the print culture that emerged in Hindi in the two decades after India’s independence that allowed for the articulation of alternatives to dominant national narratives
Published on Feb 28, 2025 11:49 PM IST
Syed Saad Ahmed
JLF 2025: Of Gaza, namaste etiquette and vanishing tents
While this year’s Jaipur Literature Festival had a diverse mix of eminent literary figures, Nobel laureates, and celebrities-turned-authors, it was the pro-Palestinian representation that made it stand out
Published on Feb 28, 2025 11:48 PM IST
Simar Bhasin
Review: Shooting Straight by Arjun Subramaniam
This military biography of Lt General Rostum K Nanavatty (Retd) presents his intellectual explorations and bold assertions about defence and security issues that continue to have a contemporary relevance
Published on Feb 28, 2025 11:45 PM IST
Sujan Chinoy
Review: Fang Si-Chi’s First Love Paradise by Lin Yi-Han
The novel presents the horrific interconnected stories of three women and exposes the amoral glob of public opinion.
Published on Feb 28, 2025 10:41 AM IST
Kartik Chauhan
Handmaid’s Tales
As a new era of political conservatism dawns, calls for restrictions on abortion have grown louder in some societies.
Updated on Feb 27, 2025 02:48 PM IST
Report: Shillong Literary Festival
The fourth edition of the festival, held at the city’s famous Ward’s Lake from 18 to 20 November 2024, celebrated regional voices from north east India
Published on Feb 26, 2025 04:46 PM IST
Goa’s Serendipity Arts Festival: pushing the boundaries of art
The latest edition of the festival featured diverse visual arts, theatre, dance and design projects in new, experimental and interactive formats
Published on Feb 25, 2025 08:00 PM IST
Riddhi Doshi
Review: Summer of Then by Rupleena Bose
With a protagonist who rages at the injustice of patriarchy and motherhood, this is a novel that captures the fears and ambitions of Indian middle-class women
Published on Feb 25, 2025 03:19 PM IST
Sharmistha Jha
Dan Morrison: “This story came to me as a tangent of a tangent of a tangent ”
The author of ‘The Poisoner of Bengal’ spoke of how a news clipping got him interested in the 1933 murder of a 22-year-old prince
Updated on Feb 24, 2025 05:02 PM IST
Book Box | John Vaillant on Fire, Tigers, and Climate Change
From Russian tigers to global fires: A writer's call for change
Published on Feb 22, 2025 10:24 PM IST
HT Picks; New Reads
This week’s pick of interesting reads includes a book by two Nobel Peace Prize Laureates on the need for compassion, another on the filmmakers instrumental in the renaissance of Malayalam cinema in the 1970s and 1980s, and a volume on one of the greatest Hindustani classical music vocalists of India
Published on Feb 22, 2025 05:14 AM IST
HT Team
Rollo Romig: “Gauri Lankesh had a talent for connecting people”
The author of ‘I Am on the Hit List’ on the journalist-activist’s assassination, and what it says about the criminalisation of dissent
Published on Feb 22, 2025 05:10 AM IST
Majid Maqbool
Report: Kerala Literature Festival 2025
Featuring Nobel Laureates Esther Duflo and Venki Ramakrishnan alongside Booker Prize winners like Jenny Erpenbeck, Michael Hofmann, Paul Lynch, and Georgi Gospodoniv, the Kerala Literature Festival 2025 clearly pulled out all the stops
Published on Feb 22, 2025 05:08 AM IST
Mir’s fame and the many frauds in his name
The Urdu Adab’s special issue on Mir Taqi Mir acknowledges a past mistake of censorship and rectifies it by publishing, for the first time, the complete unabridged text of ‘Zikr-i Mir’, the poet’s autobiography, in Farsi and Urdu
Published on Feb 22, 2025 05:04 AM IST
Mohammad Kazim
A classical-folk jugalbandi in Virginia!
The unique fusion concert of Dhrupad and Rajasthani folk music had the American-Indian audience jumping up to sway to the irresistible beat
Published on Feb 21, 2025 09:58 AM IST
Manjari Sinha
Asako Yuzuki: “It seems ‘Butter’ is more popular in India than in Japan”
The author of the best selling Japanese novel talks about her exploration of the relationship between food, pleasure and shame.
Published on Feb 20, 2025 05:30 PM IST
Report: Vedanta Udaipur World Music Festival 2025
Artists from Kurdistan, Chile, Cuba, Morocco, Senegal, Mali, Spain among others performed alongside those from India at the event.
Published on Feb 19, 2025 02:13 PM IST
Neha Kirpal
Review: The Lion and the Lily by Ira Mukhoty
A picture of the glory days of Awadh in the eighteenth century, the book draws connections between global events of the time, the struggle for power between the British and the French, and the rapacity of the East India Company
Updated on Feb 19, 2025 01:34 PM IST
Kartik Chauhan
Defne Suman: “Your body dictates fiction; fiction dictates your body”
At the Kerala Literature Festival 2025, Turkish author Defne Suman reflected on exploring Istanbul’s unwalked places and how Hatha yoga informs her fiction.
Published on Feb 18, 2025 02:10 PM IST
Report: Mahindra Kabira Festival
The festival held in Varanasi from December 13 to 15, 2024, encouraged audiences to cultivate love, empathy and a sense of calm within their hearts
Updated on Feb 17, 2025 03:41 PM IST
Book Box | Lessons from Frankfurt on the Everything War
That classic German drama about selling your soul? It's actually about Amazon
Published on Feb 15, 2025 06:43 PM IST
HT Picks; New Reads
On the reading list this week is a pioneering work on the lost textile traditions of Bengal from the 16th to the 20th century, a novel about the teeming metropolis of Calcutta in the last moments before multiple disasters strike, and a book that provides profound insights into the practice of fasting
Published on Feb 14, 2025 10:58 PM IST
HT Team