HT Picks; New Reads

This week’s list of interesting reads includes the first of a three-volume series of Saadat Hasan Manto’s stories and essays translated into English, a collection of writings by colonial Indians on the course that India should take, and a memoir of an adventurous life

Of Bombay and Poona

On the reading list this week is a volume of Saadat Hasan Manto’s stories and essays, writings by colonial Indians that shaped our world, and a memoir of a life of adventure. (HT Team)

548pp, ₹999; Aleph (The first of a three-volume series)

Saadat Hasan Manto (1912–1955) needs no introduction. One of the greatest stars of Urdu literature, Manto published over 20 collections of short stories in a literary career spanning almost two decades. Several of these have been adapted into films and plays that have won a multitude of awards and his stories about the Partition remain some of the best accounts ever written on the catastrophic event.

This book is the first of a three-volume series which will contain all of Saadat Hasan Manto’s 255 known stories translated into English. Volume I collects 54 stories and two essays written by Manto about his time in Bombay and Poona in colonial India. The anthology includes well-known stories like Mummy and Janki, which provide rare insights into the Poona film industry; the fascinating story of Babu Gopinath; and My Marriage and My Sahib, two essays that read almost like stories. These meticulous translations by award-winning writer and translator Nasreen Rehman, distil the aura that Manto creates of a time, a place, and a moment.*

How Nineteenth-Century Indians Saw Their World and Shaped Ours

312pp, ₹799; Juggernaut (Shedding light on India’s past and present)

Should India strive to be a great power or a moral one? Should it protect its markets or support free trade? Should religious or ethnic considerations influence its diplomacy or not? Should it accept Western values or promote its own civilization? As India rises, these questions have come to dominate public discussion. But few realise how deep the fault lines run. In this groundbreaking anthology, Rahul Sagar shows that contemporary debates on the role that India should play on the world stage actually originated in the nineteenth century. This was the era in which public figures began imagining India’s place in the world. Through newspapers and periodicals that had started circulating in the country, they disseminated competing ideals that shaped subsequent generations and continue to provoke disagreement today. By uncovering and outlining these historic debates, To Raise a Fallen People sheds new and invaluable light on India’s past – and its present.*

432pp, ₹359; Notion Press (About an epic road trip)

On an epic road trip from Mumbai to London, 73-year-old Badri Baldawa’s granddaughter Nishi asks him about his many adventures. She had joined him on his drive around Iceland where their car broke down and had wondered aloud about the other adventures he might have had. When Badri tells her about a terrifying incident from his Kailash-Mansarovar trip of 30 years ago, it serves to whet her appetite for his stories. He begins telling her about his life, about visiting the North Pole and plunging into its freezing waters, trekking up to Everest base camp at the age of 63 and about his multiple treks to Kailash-Mansarovar, among his adventures. These reminiscences are punctuated by the many sights and stops along their 72 day road trip to London.*

*All copy from book flap