Arundhati Roy has the gift of language. And a life filled with challenges that make it fit for great literature. But it could have all come undone given the girlhood trauma she bore all through her womanhood. Call it luck or blame it on the mysterious workings of the universe, Roy, who could have become a social misfit instead became an internationally acclaimed writer and a feisty woman of worthy causes who does not buckle down under the pressure of Big Politics or Big Business. Her latest offering Mother Mary Comes To Me, thus, is both memoir and a self-help book for anyone wanting to live life on her own terms.
The book is also an ode to her mother, Mary Roy, an educator par excellence, an advocate for women’s rights and also a mother whose tough love made her children want to escape home. The book is in equal parts about Arundhati Roy’s adventures through life as an architect-turned-writer-activist and her quest to make peace with her mother. Roy, who has spent a life pulling no punches to write against the Big and the Powerful, has now turned her critical gaze on the Indian family. A must-read for all those who do not agree with her otherwise.
When someone is in your heart, they’re never truly gone. They can come back to you, even at unlikely times.” This line from the book is something I felt occasionally. I am sure it’s the same for many others who have lost their loved ones. I feel it when I eat something I am sure my grandfather loved to eat or watch a clip or hear a song from Rab Ne Banadi Jodi or Jab We Met (his favourite films) or when I fall sick and he isn’t around to suggest medicines—to me or anyone he knew was sick—as he has done all my life.
For One More Day hit me in a deeply personal way. It’s a story about regret, forgiveness, and the longing for just one more moment with someone we’ve lost. The simplicity of the writing makes the emotions feel even more intimate, almost like reading someone’s confession. It left me reflecting on people I wish I could go back and speak to, even for a single day, like my grandfather.
-Samidha Jain
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The Maniac by Benjamin Labatut
This was a difficult book to read, especially the first 80-odd pages. And yet the reward for perseverance is outstanding. The book was a pick for our book club and is a fictionalised biography of the mathematician John von Neumann. The book sketches out the personas of Feynman, Wigner, Barricelli and other famous scientists beyond their contributions to their respective fields.
The book, which questions how ethics can keep up with scientific progress through different events, leading up to the creation of the atom bomb, ends on a surprising note where it connects the dots of years of research which went into laying the foundation and advancement of artificial intelligence as we know it today.
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-Payal Ganguly
Ghachar Ghochar by Vivek Shanbhag
I picked up the English translation of Ghachar Ghochar (the original being written in Kannada) because an Instagram page I follow suggested it was “one of those slim books that changes the way you see families”. I am glad I read it. I started it late in December 2024 and carried it into early January 2025, and, in a way, the book became the bridge between the two years. What struck me most was how quietly the story operates. No dramatic twists, no loud confrontations, and yet the tension builds in a way that almost makes you uncomfortable.
The story explores the changes within the household of a family that moves from rags to riches, the shift in loyalties, the unsaid rules and the nonchalance over moral compromises. There’s something uncomfortably recognisable about it all, as if these characters exist in far too many of our own families. The title itself, which means “all messed up” nailed the emotional knots we so often pretend aren’t there.
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This book worked for me because it reminded me that the most complex stories can be narrated in the simplest of languages. It is the kind of book that stays on long after the last page, making you question your own silences and complicities. A small book that leaves a big impact.
-Siddhant Konduskar
Speaking of History by Romila Thapar and Namit Arora
Over the past few years, I have been increasingly on the lookout for books on history (India’s and those of some other countries). This has arisen from the need to revisit my own understanding of the subject—I studied it in my undergraduate years, and versions of it in post-graduation—in current times, when facts are being mangled beyond recognition in popular discourse. I even got back in touch with my professors and sourced academic papers on various subjects. And then there were the many hagiographies being published about various political figures from the past which would be sure-shot turn-offs.
It was, therefore, fortuitous that this book came my way. Its format is akin to a podcast transcribed for print: Conversations between historian Thapar and writer Arora around the subject of history, how it is interpreted, how this interpretation has evolved depending on available evidence and the leanings and agendas of those who interpret it, and how it shapes our understanding of ourselves and our current times.
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I loved this book because it took me back to scholarship and academic discourse in a manner that did not remind me of my college text books and research papers. It discussed subjects, methods and approaches that I have myself formally studied, and was grappling to revisit and re-interpret through the prism of current narratives.
-Jasodhara Banerjee
What We Fed to the Manticore by Talia Lakshmi Kolluri
South Asian-American writer Talia Lakshmi Kolluri’s 2022 debut What We Fed to the Manticore is a collection of short stories told entirely from the perspectives of animals. Its imagery is so vivid that you feel drawn into their minds and habitats. Each narrative offers a different vantage point—from a donkey in Gaza painted to look like a zebra, to a hound guarding an endangered rhino, a wounded pigeon navigating Delhi, and whales navigating life beneath seas increasingly disrupted by human activity in the ocean.
Kolluri uses these voices to explore questions of belonging, loss, survival and environmental collapse. By letting animals narrate their worlds, she exposes how deeply global crises affect beings whose inner lives we barely recognise. Their experiences become living metaphors for our own, inviting readers to consider empathy beyond the human boundary.
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At under 200 pages, the book is easy to pick up and finish, especially for readers who want something meaningful without committing to a lengthy read. It stays with you because it makes big topics feel personal and accessible.
-Vasudha Mukherjee
Butter by Asako Yuzuki
Originally published in Japanese in 2017 (the English translation was published in 2024), Butter is the story of a young, woman journalist (Rika Machida) in Tokyo trying to get an interview with a woman (Manako Kajii) accused of, and detained for, killing three men. Whatever ideas you might have about journalists trying to get into the minds of serial killers can be thrown into the trash can even before you begin.
The story is a journey of discovery: Of a young woman navigating a suffocatingly patriarchal society and workplace, treading the unending thin lines between ambition and professional success on one hand, and acceptance and derision by her peers on the other; of another woman, ridiculed and reviled by everyone, manipulating her way through the same society; and a host of supporting characters, all lost and confused in their own little bubbles, floating along with the tide. And holding these characters and their story lines together is the idea of food, our relationship with it, and how it reflects our relationship with ourselves.
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Butter is an absolute revelation about how the theme of a journalist chasing an interview with an alleged killer can be turned on its head, and made into a commentary on societal expectations, eventually blurring the lines between right and wrong.
-Jasodhara Banerjee
Lives Not Lived by Monika Bhatti
Lives Not Lived also came to me via an Instagram page I follow, and it ended up becoming the only book I read in 2025. For many personal reasons, this was not a year in which I could read much, but this one book felt enough, almost as if it arrived at the right time to say what I needed to hear. Monika Bhatti writes with a gentle yet piercing clarity about all those versions of ourselves that we quietly hid or abandon trying to meet the expectations of those around us.
What impressed me most was the book’s emotional honesty. It reflects the subtle pain of all those unlived dreams and desires that lie hidden under the surface of our ordinary lives. Bhatti catches that feeling of looking back and wondering how many choices were truly our own and how many were pressed upon us by circumstance, responsibility or fear.
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The writing is simple, direct and powerful. It doesn’t dramatise grief or regret but expresses it with ease. Though this was the only read of the year, it carried enough depth and reflection to last the entire year for me. In its stillness and emotional truth, the book felt like a companion—one that understood the unspoken parts of my own year.
-Siddhant Konduskar
Intermezzo by Sally Rooney
Set in Dublin in 2022, Intermezzo follows the lives of two brothers trying to make sense of their world after the death of their father. Peter, a lawyer, and Ivan, a young chess player, spiral and then come to terms with each other and their relationships as they navigate grief, love, desire, resentment.
Their romantic interests—Peter (32) is dating a woman 10 years younger, while Ivan (22) starts dating Margaret, 14 years older—set up scenes and a plot that throws light on the messiness of life. “Are there even reasoned arguments to be made in matters of love, marriage, intimate life?” Margaret asks at some point in the book. An estranged mother and Peter’s ex-girlfriend and soulmate Sylvia, add to the entanglements as the brothers grapple with sibling rivalry and try and find solace in the places they can. It’s Sally Rooney doing what she does best: Making 440 pages of reading a joy with her deep understanding of people, of life, and of loss.
