TL;DR

There’s plenty to take away from journalist-author Ravish Kumar’s life and body of work over the years, but one can draw inspiration from the most unlikely corners, such as his stories in A City Happens in Love – chronicling the little details of love and longing in the cramped recesses of big city life.

Shane Warne would have turned fifty-four this week. That's sadly not meant to be and now the closest we can get to this modern-day maestro is either through highlights of his career, and there are so many, on YouTube videos or reading about his life. And this stream-of-consciousness memoir from Shane, written with the help of commentator and broadcaster Mark Nicholas, is perhaps always going to be the best place to start.

This past week was all about the moon. We continue to reach out to every poet's favourite celestial body that lights up our night sky, and maybe someday our species will find a way to colonise it too. Tom Gauld’s Mooncop imagines that scenario and goes beyond – told from the perspective of a nameless lunar policeman on the moon who goes about his days, solving petty problems of the few remaining inhabitants.

As a reader and citizen of this country – which is still unable to junk the stench of the regressive caste system into the garbage bin of history – you must read the astonishing Ants Among Elephants by Sujatha Gidla. Most “upper caste” people who were born and raised in India have at least once said or heard someone say: “I’m not aware of my caste.” Gidla’s simply told yet deeply affecting book must be kept on the bedside table of all of them.

This is a collection of stories about the private lives of ordinary, working-class Japanese men who are struggling to make ends meet – performing menial and physically laborious jobs – offered to us without any hint of judgement.

Oh William! is the third book in the Lucy Barton series by Elizabeth Strout, and how it got its title is a little story in itself. When My Name Is Lucy Barton, the very first Lucy Barton book, was about to be staged in New York, Strout was observing the gifted actor Laura Linney – who was playing the lead – in her rehearsal space.

An excerpt from Koel Purie Rinchet's debut book, Clearly Invisible in Paris.

Today's recommendation is Manu S Pillai's delightfully brisk 2019 anthology titled The Courtesan, the Mahatma & the Italian Brahmin: Tales from Indian History. Unlike his other books, this collection presents a series of essays that also tells India's story but through short and compelling unconnected chapters.

Until yesterday, I hadn't been able to decide the name of the book I should be talking about in this week's column. When a couple of days ago, a war broke out on where-else-but-Twitter between vegetarians and non-vegetarians.

The film, like most screen adaptations, failed to do justice to the evocative and atmospheric text on which it is based, even though both are created by noted Marathi filmmaker and writer Sachin Kundalkar.