Literature

Talking Classics: A persuasive case for questioning over venerating them

Personal, anecdotal and humorous, Mary Beard's book is a love letter to antiquity, but one that wants readers to question, denounce, and be shocked by the findings

AI has no capacity for originality, zero role in literature: Salman Rushdie

Celebrated author Salman Rushdie does not believe AI has any role to play in creative work as it has no capacity for originality. The Booker-winning author spoke about AI before accepting Liberatum's 14th Cultural Honor at a ceremony in London on July 8. "Nothing. Zero," Rushdie told Variety when asked what part AI should play in creative work. "It's not useful to creative work because AI has no capacity for originality. What it can do is suck up enormous amounts of information and produce versions of that. But what it can't do is something nobody's done before. And that's what art is, is to find things people haven't done before. So, I mean I have less than zero interest in AI." "Art at its best is a lot more than entertainment. It's challenging. And you challenge people, sometimes people don't like it, but that is all the more reason for doing it." Rushdie, who had once collaborated with director Deepa Mehta to adapt "Midnight's Children for the 2012 film, also discussed the she

Marjane Satrapi's women: How Embroideries shaped a generation of readers

The process of adapting a Tehran-based play into one in Lucknow made us realise how women's struggles - both the everyday and the revolutionary - are often the same everywhere

For a room of one's own: Manil Suri's moving memoir of Bombay and belonging

In his memoir, A Room in Bombay, Manil Suri revisits his Bombay childhood, family struggles, sexuality and the letters that shaped his life

The Ghosts of Indian Small Towns: Ruskin Bond's journey through time

Ruskin Bond's reflective essays revisit vanished small-town India, blending nostalgia, memory, humour, and the quiet ghosts of changing landscapes

Love in the Time of Caste: Beyond headlines, a deeply human portrait

A powerful anthology that reimagines love as resistance, exposing how caste oppression shapes intimate relationships and personal freedoms in India

Departure(s): Julian Barnes' final novel reflects on endings and memory

The book meditates on the blurred lines between fact and fiction, only to arrive at a semi-conclusion that both are governed by memory

Tell My Mother I Like Boys: Suvir Saran's honest, heartbreaking memoir

As an openly gay man, Suvir Saran's memoir weaves his personal struggles to find love and belonging with reflections on policy, resulting in a memoir that is brutally honest and partly heartbreaking

What banning To Kill A Mockingbird tells us about fear, memory, and race

Over the years, Harper Lee's book has encountered pushback and bans, but in her centennial year, its lesson is as clear as it was when she wrote it: Silencing a mockingbird is difficult

From Ghalib to open mics: What is going wrong with Urdu Shayari today?

Once celebrated for its originality and craft, shayari is moving towards populism instead of excellence

Coffee King: Book on CCD weaves cautionary tale for investors, regulators

In uncovering how CCD was run as a one-man show, this book weaves a cautionary tale for investors, regulators, consumers, and even fellow journalists

Beneath the pink glitter, Barbie is a tale of theft and ruthlessness

Barbieland is a book written from outside Barbieland's high-security gates; we meet Hitt - an editor and contributor with The Drift magazine

The Eleventh Hour review: Salman Rushdie's meditations on mortality

Salman Rushdie's latest work blends fiction, memory, myth, and mortality, offering a deeply personal meditation shaped by near-death, nostalgia, and literary playfulness

Power, crime, survival: The women who define Mafia Queens of India

The book opens with Mr Zaidi's journey to meet a mysterious figure who people call Akka, once a key aide to one of Mumbai's mob bosses Varadarajan Mudaliar

Between being and nothingness: Yiyun Li picks acceptance as a way of living

Yiyun Li is an award-winning Chinese-American author with multiple novels and short story collections to her name

Scamlands: From Cambodia to Jamtara, a deep dive into global fraud networks

A sharp, immersive look at phone fraud networks, their victims, and the hidden economies that keep them alive

The Breath of the Gods: The polymath probes a force driving human history

Simon Winchester's The Breath of the Gods explores how wind has shaped exploration, disaster, innovation, and imagination, even as its future remains uncertain

Manoj Kumar Jha's book explains hope versus reality in coalition politics

A timely collection reflects on democratic ideals, coalition failures, federalism and the need for active citizenship as India debates the future of its political culture

Voice of the people: Book explains why speeches matter in a democracy

Ms Gupta's selection captures not the speeches alone but the parry and thrust that goes on between the treasury and Opposition benches. CPI (M) leader, late Sitaram Yechury never disrupted parliament

Girls Who Said Nothing and Everything: A journey towards selfhood

In a sense, the book is a kind of quiet revolution, reclaiming the voice and identity of Indian girls across generations