HT Picks: The most interesting books of the week

The river of stories

456pp, ₹999; Aleph

Within its vast frame, The Kathasaritasagara has several hundred stories that owe their origin to India’s limitless storehouse of myth, scripture, and folklore. Snake gods rub shoulders with enchanted princesses, and heroic warrior kings battle rakshasas tall as the sky and wide as the ocean. Celestial apsaras seduce handsome princes, wise prostitutes counsel errant husbands, fools parley with ghouls, and riddlers and talking monkeys pace through the tales. Here you will find talking birds and swindlers, beggars and conjurers, sages and polymaths, divine beings and semi divine vidyadharas, yakshas and yoginis, walking corpses and sleeping giants, and a host of other remarkable creatures mingling with ordinary men and women in a multitude of magical kingdoms, enchanted islands, and forbidding forests in the three worlds – heaven, earth, and the nether world, and through this skein of stories contained in eighteen books, Somadeva spins tales of love, infidelity, death rebirth, sacrifice, fulfilment, courage, cowardliness, honesty, untruth, separation, togetherness, joy, sadness, and much, much more.*

Compelling account of India-China relations



240pp, ₹595; Rupa

In September 1978, at the invitation of the prestigious Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs, Subramanian Swamy, then a Lok Sabha Member of Parliament of the ruling Janata Party and an elected member of the Party’s National Executive, travelled to China as an envoy of the then Prime Minister, Morarji Desai, where he met senior leader Ji Pengfei. This led to the first contact, since 1962, between the ruling parties of both countries. Late, in April 1981, Swamy, the then deputy leader of the Opposition, was invited to meet China’s Supreme leader, Chairman Deng Xiaoping. In this historic 100-minute meeting, Swamy successfully persuaded Deng to reopen the Kailash Mansarovar route for Hindu pilgrims. In August that year, he also led the first delegation to the holy site, which he revisited as a guest of the Chinese government in June 2016. It is this vast, first-hand experience that Swamy combines with a provocative exploration of historical sources and fascinating new insights to create Himalayan Challenge – the most compelling and definitive account of India-China relations. From uncovering the perfidy committed by the British vis-a-vis the McMahon Line in 1936 and the circumstances leading to the folly of war in 1962, to the current fluid situation at the border, this seminal work effortlessly blends meticulous scholarship and memoir-style writing in an intellectually rich fashion. Swamy breaks new ground when he suggests a middle path grounded in pragmatism, and not carried out over fear or overreaction – that India must take in her interactions with China. Filled with vivid personalities and declassified material, Himalayan Challenge is, without question, the most important book written about the rise of China by one of India’s most interesting and original thinkers.*

Reflections on the Sindhi identity

432pp, ₹750; Black-and-White Fountain

Here is an ethnic group, abruptly displaced by the Partition of India in 1947, role model refugees, who achieved pinnacles of success and contributed significantly to the communities in which they settled. Having fled a homeland that was quickly occupied by others, their history lapsed. Their language and culture dissipated, and their identity grew nebulous as they merged into adopted homelands, while tenuous connections to places they would never see sometimes lingers. Who are these extraordinary people – depleted yet powerful; contributing yet marginalised; confused yet confident; integrated hence barely visible? The essays in this book, from writers living in countries around the world, offer clues. Along with glimpses of lost lifestyles, read about the ingrained habits that helped the Sindhis take trauma in their stride. Read about the new languages and relationships that enriched them, nostalgic tributes to people and places who made them who they are; reconstituted icons form their past – in all, a wealth of detail about the evolving culture of a fascinating community and its present and historical realities.*

*All copy from book flap