Category: BookReviews

Essential Reader: Sarojini Naidu

A collection of the most iconic poems, speeches and letters by the Nightingale of India

Pub Date: 23 May 2022
ISBN: 9780143454144 / 0143454145
Price: £7.99
Subject: Autobiography: Historical, Political & Military, Speeches, History, Political Leaders &
Leadership, Political Structures: Democracy,
India, Autobiography: Literary
Format: 198mmx 129mm
Binding: Paperback
Extent: 224 pages
Territory: World
Bar Code: 9780143454144
BIC Code: BGHA, DNS, HB, JPHL, JPHV, 1FKA, BGLA

THE PITCH
· All of Sarojini Naidu’s most important speeches, letters and poems in one comprehensive volume
· This book also contains an introduction to Sarojini Naidu’s life by Makarand Paranjape, to set the context of each of the writings.

THE BOOK
Sarojini Naidu was a prolific writer and speaker, publishing three collections of poetry during her life and delivered many rousing speeches throughout the freedom struggle and after India gained Independence. This book compiles her best-known work, as well as letters she wrote throughout her life to Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Rabindranath Tagore and others, to provide a glimpse into the kind of person she was and the ideas she believed in. Through these pages, we can witness her innermost thoughts and feelings, and the important role she played in shaping the country’s freedom struggle and its ideas as a young nation, particularly through rousing speeches on the Education of Indian Women and the Battle of Freedom is Over, which were broadcast over the All India Radio on 15 August 1947.

THE AUTHOR
Sarojini Naidu was a poet and politician who played an integral role in India’s freedom struggle. Throughout her life, she spoke up for civil rights and women’s rights. A key member of the Indian National Congress, she was the first female Governor of India. Her poetry was widely read and earned her the moniker of the ‘Nightingale of India’.

Good Innings
The Extraordinary, Ordinary Life of Lily Tharoor

Shobha Tharoor Srinivasan

An inspiring assortment of stories from the exciting life of Lily Tharoor

Pub Date: 18 April 2022
ISBN: 9780670096152 / 0670096156
Price: £15.99
Subject: Biography: General, Memoirs
Format: 198mmx 129mm
Binding: Hardback
Extent: 144 pages
Territory: World
Bar Code: 9780670096152
BIC Code: BG, BM

THE PITCH

• Full of inspiring life lessons from Lily Tharoor’s experiences
• Peppered with reflections from Lily Tharoor herself
• Includes a lovely and personal prologue by Shashi Tharoor

THE BOOK
Lily Tharoor was born in a small village in Kerala in the mid-1930s. From this humble beginning, she would live around the world, raise three global citizens, and inspire multiple generations with her drive to learn and achieve. Fiercely independent and ambitious, she pushed her children, including her son Shashi, to always think outside the box. The only ground firm enough to stand on, she told them, is the one written into existence by your own hand. In Good Innings, Shobha Tharoor Srinivasan tells her mother Lily’s ‘extraordinary, ordinary’ story through a combination of personal reflections, life lessons, and philosophical insights. The result is a collection of teachable vignettes aimed to galvanize a new generation into growth and action. Every chapter starts with an anecdote which will encourage conversations and transformations in the reader’s life. Good Innings is an intimate account of the life of a beloved matriarch with a modest background and an iron will-a woman who learned from the school of life and now has lessons to share of her own.

THE AUTHOR
Shobha Tharoor Srinivasan is the author of numerous award-winning children’s books, including Indi-Alphabet, How Many Lines in a Limerick?, Prince with a Paintbrush: The Story of Raja Ravi Varma, It’s Time to Rhyme and the upcoming Parvati the Elephant’s Very Important Day. Shobha is also a translator, poet, editor, voice-over talent and former non-profit development professional who spent over two decades as an advocate for persons with disabilities.

BOOK TITLE

Rahul Bajaj

An Extraordinary Life | Biography of the chairman of Bajaj Group

Gita Piramal

The long-awaited authorized biography of business legend Rahul Bajaj.

Pub Date: 21 March 2022

ISBN: 9780670091713 / 0670091715

Price: £23.97

Subject: Biography: Business & Industry,

Business & Management, Biography: Historical,

Political & Military

Format: 234mm x 153mm

Binding: Hardback

Extent: 288 pages

Territory: World

Bar Code: 9780670091713

BIC Code: BGB, KJ, BGH

THE PITCH

This is the first authorized biography of Rahul Bajaj. He comes from the business house started by Jamnalal Bajaj. Rahul Bajaj was awarded the Padma Bhushan, India’s third-highest civilian honour, in 2001. This is a definitive biography written by one of the leading journalists in the country, Gita Piramal. She is the bestselling author of Business Legends and Business Maharajas. The book will have an extensive marketing plan and will be launched at the Jaipur Literature Festival.

THE BOOK

‘Integrity and character matter. Without them, no amount of ability can get you anywhere. In addition, you need courage–courage to make difficult decisions and courage to oppose something if your conscience tells you that you are right’–Rahul Bajaj

Rahul Bajaj is a billionaire businessman, the chairman emeritus of the Bajaj Group and a former member of Parliament. This book is not just the story of Rahul Bajaj but the story of India. The author takes us through the country’s transformation from the time Rahul Bajaj’s mother was imprisoned during the freedom struggle to the prism of his eventful life. Based on unrestricted interviews, the book is full of anecdotes, business learnings and political asides. It is, at its core, a moving human story.

THE AUTHOR

Gita Piramal is a bestselling author. She has previously written Business Maharajas and Business Legends.

TITLE : Ancient India

UK pub date 20th Mar
USA pub date 20th June, 2022.

ISBN: 9789392510366

PRICE: £14.99 $24.95

AUTHOR :   R.C. Majumdar

PUBLISHER : Motilal Banarsidass International

ISBN-13 : 978-93-92510-36-6

EDITION : Paperback

MONTH, YEAR OF PUBLICATION: Feb’ 2022

NO OF PAGES : 538

RIGHTS : World

ABOUT THE BOOK:

This book is a revised and enlarged edition of my “Outline of Ancient Indian History and Civilization” which was published in 1927 and has been out of print since 1938. Constant demands for the book, ever since, showed that the object with which it was written, as explained in the preface, was more than fulfilled. Owing to a variety of circumstances I could not bring out a second edition of the book during the next ten years. When at last I had some leisure to take up the work. I found that the book, in its present form, has, to some extent, outlived its utility, as there are already several other works of the same nature in the field. At the same time I felt the necessity of a book on ancient Indian history and culture of a more advanced type, which would not only serve the needs of general readers but may also be sued as preliminary handbook by more earnest students  who require a thorough grasp of the essential facts and features before taking  up specialized study in any branch of the subject. Incidentally I also kept in view the requirements of the growing number of candidates for competitive examinations in which ancient India history and culture is a prescribed subject.

Zero Day S. Hussain Zaidi

English 2022

Paperback 224

9789354893650

Harper Collins Mumbai is in a state of chaos. All the traffic signals across the city have stopped working.

Shahwaz Ali Mirza, head of the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad, receives an anonymous email that claims it was a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack by the sender who calls himself Muntaqim (The Avenger), and more such attacks are to happen soon. He quickly puts together a crack team that includes his protégé, IG Cybercrime Vikrant Singh, and Major Shaina Verma of the National Security Guard. and gets to work trawling the dark web for more information on this mystery attack.
Meanwhile, an angadia courier mysteriously jumps to his death when chased by the Railway police and far away in Pathankot, there are signs of a major attack being planned.
A move by Vikrant and Mirza to bring forward the hacker backfires, leading to a second, bigger attack on Mumbai’s lifeline, the railway system.

It is their first brush with cyberterrorism: a zero-day vulnerability in the Indian government’s system that could bring the country to its knees. But Muntaqim has a weapon in store that is even bigger…

In Zero Day, racing against time and investigating a case unlike any other, Mirza and Vikrant face the most dangerous mission of their lives. Before becoming a writer, publisher, producer, scriptwriter and mentor to new talent, S. Hussain Zaidi was a journalist for over twenty years. He started his career with the Asian Age and the Indian Express before moving on to Mid-Day and Mumbai Mirror as editor (investigations). He bid adieu to journalism in 2016.
His first book, Black Friday, was made into a critically acclaimed film by director Anurag Kashyap. His documentation of the Mumbai mafia in books such as Dongri to Dubai, Mafia Queens of Mumbai, My Name Is Abu Salem and Byculla to Bangkok are considered some of the finest pieces of investigative journalism. His mastery over terrorism-related research is reflected in Black Friday, Headley and I and Mumbai Avengers. Mumbai Avengers was the first fiction title that Zaidi experimented with. The book was adapted into a Hindi film, Phantom, starring Saif Ali Khan and Katrina Kaif and directed by Kabir Khan.
Zaidi was also associate producer for the documentary Terror in Mumbai, along with Dan Reed for HBO, based on the 26/11 Mumbai attacks. The movie was widely acclaimed and won a series of awards. While Class of ’83, based on his book by the same name, produced by Shah Rukh Khan, is already streaming on Netflix, a web series based on Dongri to Dubai being produced by Farhan Akhtar is soon to be released on Amazon Prime Video.
Fiction 14.03.2022 299 19.8 12.9 1.4 170

ISBN: 9789391125530
PRICE: £112.50
of White sharks and Caged Humans Raj Shekhar Aich 2022

English 978-93-91125-53-0

ANTHROPOLOGY (SENSORY ANTHROPOLOGY, AUTOETHONOGRAPHY) 4500 492

Hardback JHM 1FK 2AB 3J,

Iridescent Skin is the first of its kind multispecies ethnography on humans and white sharks, entangled through the practice of cage diving at the very end of New Zealand. It is based on an immersive field work of marine anthropologist Prof. Raj Sekhar Aich, and his friend, research assistant, and anthropologist—Soosan Lucas, as they go in search of the elusive and mystified Great White Sharks of Foveaux Strait.

This is not a ‘shark book’, although it revolves around sharks in the classical sense of the manner. It is also not merely an academic book, although it is based on detailed academic investigation. Neither is it an exploration of shark behaviour or ecology, although they are certainly part of it, and no, it is not even a book about shark attacks, although shark bites are featured here. It is, on the surface, a sensory narrative of human and white shark encounters, but beneath the ripples, it is a story of love: among humans, rivers, oceans, bricks, stones, and sharks.

As Prof. Agustín Fuentes puts it, the book ‘invites the reader along…at the intersection of two sentient species, humans and white sharks.…The book you hold in your hands, is an enticement into the experiential journey of a scholar, artist and narrator who starts out with the goal of appreciating or assessing a multispecies entanglement, but ends up traversing a tangle of personal, social, historical, ecological and perceptual water/land/species-scapes.…This is an immersive multispecies anthropology.’