On The Shelf

Marwan Hisham

Brothers of the Gun | One World

“They gave us rebels and took the revolution,” wrote poet Muha­mmad Al-Maghout, quoted by Hisham in this raw, savage and compassionate account of the civil war in his country, Syria. This is also a story of young adulthood and friendship—one of Hisham’s closest friends died at the hands of Assad’s troops; the other threw in his lot with Isla­mi­sts. Molly Crabapple’s ink drawings brilliantly capture the pity and confusion of a brutalised landscape.

Madhu Tandan

Hemis | HarperCollins

In this novel, Madhu Tandan, aut­hor of spiritual and psychological works, tells the story of a man who, troubled by a rocky marriage, goes trekking in Ladakh—only to be trapped in a monastic sanctuary due to terrible floods. There, he learns something of passion bey­ond the corporeal flames of Eros.

Nadia Akbar

Goodbye Freddie Mercury | Penguin

The decadence of Lahore’s high—in multiple senses—society is on display in Pakistani-American aut­hor Nadia Akbar’s debut novel, as a popular RJ helping out an old friend and a student trying to esc­ape the confines of her own traditional milieu become entangled in a web of drugs, rock ’n roll, political intrigue and each other.