On The Shelf

Gavin Francis

Shapeshifters | Profile Books

Francis, a doctor, delivers a paean to the human body and mind and its relentless, inherent changeability. Some are the sheer stuff of life—pub­erty, pregnancy, menopause, memory, death.... Then there are others—castration, laughter, anore­xia, hallucination…. Moving through history philosophy and modernity, this is a celebration of medicine and its penchant for influencing/correcting the hand nature has dealt us.

Amar Bhushan

The Wily Agent & The Zero-Cost Mission | HarperCollins

Former RAW officer Amar Bhushan, author of Escape to Nowhere, offers two back-to-back thrillers in one volume. In The Wily Agent, an Ind­ian operative handles a volatile asset: an employee of the Bangla­d­eshi foreign office. In The Zero-Cost Mission, another officer must combat Jamaat-e-Islami and the ISI without seeming to interfere in Bangladesh’s internal affairs.

Rimli Sengupta

Karno’s Daughter: The Lives of an Indian Maid | Westland

Former academic Rimli Sengupta makes her English debut with this biography of ‘Buttermilk’, a Calcutta maid. Framed through the author’s relationship with Buttermilk and stories that the maid narrates to the author, it presents a picture of someone who navigates the vagaries of an uninsured existence with wit, aplomb and not a little Thras­ymachian survivalism.