The Mitrokhin Archives II: The KGB And The World by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin
It’s difficult to believe that a book that looks like a dressed-up version of the yellow pages, and as dull, should create such a storm. But it did, with all hell breaking loose when members of the Congress and the Communist parties were named asKGB stooges. The book is based on the secret documents former KGB officer Vasili Mitrokhin smuggled out with him when he defected to Britain. But there ends the drama, the rest is dry facts.
Two Lives by Vikram Seth
Fans of Vikram Seth are likely to be underwhelmed by this large memoir of his great-uncle and his German wife. The prose is schoolboyish, of the cat-sat-on-the-mat variety, shunning all adjectives. But the suspense is compelling, you find yourself racing through the 503 pages, certain there must be a point to all this family feeling and comings and goings, of schoolboy letters and Christmas vacations at 18 Queens Road, Hendon, where his great-uncle lived and practised as a dentist. The suspense on where this ambitiously unambitious memoir is going stays unbroken until the very last page. There you finally discover what this was all about: "Behind every door on every ordinary street, in every hut in every ordinary village on this middling planet of a trivial star, such riches are to be found," Seth writes. The riches, in this case, are rather like what you may get from watching your neighbour’s home videos.
Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
In the early hours of July 16, the world awoke to the sounds of hundreds of thousands, even millions, of kids, their parents and ‘adultescents’ everywhere flipping pages. Typically deserted bookshops opened at midnight to serpentine queues. The reason, of course, was the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth and penultimate of a series you’d be doing a grave disservice to if you describe it merely as popular. British critics’ reactions ranged from "unploughthroughable" to "mediocre in the extreme", the equivalent of using spitballs to ward off an advancing army. Unsurprisingly, HP6 became the fastest selling book in history, selling seven million copies in a single day in the US alone. So, is the book any good? Rarely can a question have been more beside the point. In the words of Robert McCrum, the Observer’s literary editor, "people who like this sort of thing will find that they like this sort of thing".
Shalimar The Clown by Salman Rushdie
In this novel Salman Rushdie returns to an Indian theme, sort of. It begins with a bang—a slash, rather—with the assassination of a former US ambassador by his Kashmiri driver, Shalimar. But if you think Rushdie has let up on the reader and decided to make it an easy and smooth ride, you are of course mistaken. The reader will catch vivid glimpses of Kashmir and the destruction of this paradise in the last five decades and even some almost real characters. But that’s when Rushdie is not distracting you with his usual acrobatics, the famous "Rushdiean overflow" with "compulsive puns, learned allusions, winks at the reader and repeated bows to popular culture". There’s a Bollywood-style love story, there’s plenty of drama, a village boy turning into a militant, the transformation of a village belle, but by no means what you’d call a cosy read.
The Alchemy Of Desire by Tarun Tejpal
Tarun Tejpal’s debut novel tells the story of a penniless young couple who move from a small town to Delhi and have a lot of sex. In between, the narrator is trying to write the Great Indian Novel. He doesn’t succeed but discovers some ancient journals in a haunted house in the mountains, so there’s more sex. But in between the sex, there are other very readable parts, especially the rape of a broken-down bus by an enraged Sikh driver. This is a sexy book with literary aspirations so you’ll find lots of descriptions of nature and the Latin names of flora and fauna. But if you manage to ignore that—and the pats to himself that Tejpal throws in every now and then—it’s highly readable. Even if there’s too much distance between the covers.
Open Secrets—India’s Intelligence Unveiled by Maloy Krishna Dhar
An open confession of a spy from the government’s "dirty tricks department" was bound to be a bestseller. And it was, despite having little new to say, apart from the machinations that led up to the demolition of the Babri Masjid. A candid peek at what the IB’s spies have to do on their political bosses’ orders: tap telephones, wire suspects, infiltrate insurgent outfits, even break into offices late at night to retrieve incriminating documents. This is a book for dedicated dirt-diggers, willing to plod through 519 pages in search of a scoop that never materialises. Author of two spy novels that sank without a trace, Dhar refuses to learn from his past failures: he’s adopted a thriller-type prose and would-be-snappy dialogues where plain truth would have sufficed.
Q and A by Vikas Swarup
Q And A got read because of the huge advance its author, an ifs officer, got. Swarup deserved it for the ingenuity of his plot as well as for stretching our credulousness to unexplored levels. It’s the story of a poor 18-year-old waiter from Dharavi with a name (Ram Mohammad Thomas) as improbable as the plot: he wins 13 consecutive rounds of a KBC-type TV quiz. But that’s the credible part. He is led to the correct answers because of a series of coincidences that challenge our ability to keep reality at bay. Each question unravels a chapter of this potboiler character, taking us relentlessly from one lurid adventure to the next, leaving nothing to the imagination. There are murders, suicides and other horrific demises, including a death by rabies. And maiming of children, theft, rape, corruption. And for good measure: international espionage. Thankfully, the prose is not purple; it’s just flat.
One Night @The Call Centre by Chetan Bhagat
This is a book of the moment: set in a call centre, it combines the lethal oversimplification of Paulo Coelho with the bad prose and flat humour that is Chetan Bhagat’s own contribution to our bestseller lists. Being a book expressly designed for the SMS generation, the characters are cardboard and the language shorn of all frills except dialogue. A sample: "‘Esha, big date coming?’ Radhika said. ‘No dates, I’m still so single. Single guys are an endangered species,’ Esha said and all the girls laughed. It wasn’t that funny if you ask me." Right. Having taken on the onus of telling a contemporary story in contemporary language, Bhagat often resorts toSMS messaging. A sample: "where r u my eddy teddy? come soon—curly wurly." Like all books of the moment, best forgotten.
Spouse—The Truth About Marriage by Shobhaa Dé
This is a marriage manual by a seasoned practitioner (Shobhaa De is in her second marriage and third long-term relationship). It’s full of insights like "A loving touch can often make up for the harshest words". Or, "There’s no such thing as a perfect marriage". It gives you the dos and don’ts for staying married, in case you didn’t already know. Stuff like, When misunderstandings arise, "Make love. Sex, as frequent as possible, is the basis of a long-standing marriage.... There are ways of reanimating desire for sex: get your partner to massage you with aromatic oil and take a shower together.... How you go about it is entirely your own business: what others call kinky is perfectly ok if both partners are consenting". With advice like that, the book is soaring high on the bestseller lists.
Remember These Anyone?
Memoirs Of A Rationalist—by Vasant Sathe
A shining example of how not to write an autobiography: self-congratulatory, repressing information and no womanising.
Journey Of A Legend—by Najma Heptullah
Died at birth after she was caught morphing a photograph of herself with Maulana Azad.
Demons Of Chitrakut—by Ashok K. Banker
Even the hype about his advance couldn’t keep the reader awake through Book Three of the Ramayana retold.
Indiraji Through My Eyes—by Usha Bhagat
People kept asking her why she didn’t write a book on her years with Mrs G. Now we know why.
Will The Iron Fence Save A Tree Hollowed By Termites? Defence Imperatives Beyond the Military—by Arun Shourie
The title is longer than the argument.
Year’s Biggest Surprises
The Red Carpet—by Lavanya Sankaran
A debut collection of short stories set in Bangalore that showed a writer of rare promise.
Diddi: My Mother’s Voice—by Ira Pande
A deft memoir that brings alive Hindi writer Shivani’s life and her stories.
Bougainvillea House—by Kalpana Swaminathan
A practising doctor creates a page-turner of a novel that critics say is brilliant.
Death At My Doorstep—by Khushwant Singh
A collection of obituaries that is far more entertaining than living people, and already in its eighth printing.
Forget Kathmandu-Elegy forDemocracy—by Manjushree Thapa
Launched in the same week that emergency was declared in Nepal, but that’s not the only reason why the book became a surprise bestseller.
