Five new novels and an anthology to read in the

All information sourced from publishers.

Intemperance, Sonora Jha

A woman who has left two husbands announces she will celebrate her 55th birthday by holding a swayamvar. Drawn from an ancient custom in her Indian culture, this is an event in which suitors line up to compete in a feat of wills and strength to win a beautiful princess’s hand in marriage. The woman, a renowned and respected intellectual in an American town who had once declared she was “past such petty matters as love,” knows she is now setting herself up for widespread societal ridicule, but her self-esteem and sexual libido are off the charts even as her body withers from disability, fading beauty, and her appetite for cake.

To her surprise, a cast of characters shows up to support her call – a wedding planner looking for the next enchanting thing, a disability rights activist making a documentary film, and even, begrudgingly, her own young adult son. The Men’s Rights Movement protests her project, angry at her objectification of men. She is waylaid by visitations from goddesses and princesses past, who either try to slap sense into her or cheer her on. She must also reckon with a brutal love story in her ancestry that was endangered by the caste system – a story that placed a generational curse on those in the family who show an intemperance of spirit. As her whole plan spirals into a spectacle, the woman embarks on a journey to decide what feat her suitor must perform to be worthy of her wrinkling hand. What feat will define a newer, better masculinity? What feat will it take for her to trust in the tenderness of love?

Our Friends in Good Houses, Rahul Pandita

Neel is a journalist drawn to war zones. It’s in these spaces riven by conflict that his sense of dislocation, of not belonging anywhere, drops off him. At all other times, he’s in quest, seeking solid ground: a home. It is a pursuit that takes him halfway across the world to America and back to the urban dystopia of Delhi, headlong into fleeting relationships that glimmer with the promise of shelter

Is Neel – haunted by the past and exiled from the present – likely to find what he desires in ephemeral associations? Will he chance upon the quiet anchorage he seeks in short-term dwellings and the objects he gathers within them-coffee percolators and rugs, posters and penknives? Or is the home he so badly wants elsewhere? Not in the noise and blood and lust outside, but in some sanctuary within?

The Struggle, Showkat Ali, translated from the Bengali by V Ramaswamy and Mohiuddin Jahangir

Set in a remote village in the Dinajpur region of undivided Bengal during the mid-1940s, The Struggle tells the intertwined story of Phulmoti – a young widow fighting to hold on to her land, her dignity and her child – and Qutubali, a simple-minded outsider whose unexpected kindness and fierce loyalty make him her unlikely ally amid the upheavals of a precarious feudal order and the stirrings of a nation on the verge of independence. The death of Phulmoti’s husband shatters her fragile world. Her ten-year-old, Abed, can offer little defence against the men now circling her – neighbours, relatives, even the local cleric – drawn by desire and the lure of her small property. Malek, a kindly bookseller at the local market, too, proves not to be what he seems. It is Malek’s hired hand, Qutubali, who finds himself drawn into her struggles, standing by her in ways that others do not. The politics of the Congress and the Muslim League hover on the margins of village life, far removed from their daily battles. But when the tebhaga struggle breaks out in Bengal – with sharecroppers demanding two-thirds of the harvest from landlords as their rightful due – Phulmoti and Qutubali stand to lose what little of their lives they have pieced back together.

Lonely People Meet, Sayantan Ghosh

For Karno, an aspiring young novelist, who works two jobs – as an editor and at a charming bookstore – meeting Devaki on the streets of Delhi feels like destiny. Their days are an Amaltas-toned blur of stolen moments and quiet intimacy, a perfect love story unfolding. A chance encounter transforms into a full-blown Delhi romance. They spend evenings strolling in Lodi gardens, where young lovers lie on the grass on lazy afternoons, forgetting all notions of time, inhale cups of coffee at the iconic Madras Coffee House, browse through discounted paperbacks, and steal glances at bookstores.

But when a cryptic organisation arrives at his door and reveals Devaki is not who she seems, Karno’s life is shattered. To find the truth, he must navigate a shadowy world where people rent fabricated lives and pasts can be rewritten.

This is a novel about the choices we make for love, and what happens when the lines between real feelings and borrowed memories begin to blur. It asks a simple, brutal question: what if you could have the perfect love only to realise it’s nearly not real?

The Only City: Bombay in Eighteen Stories, edited by Anindita Ghose

Financial capital, cradle of Bollywood, home to India’s largest slum – Bombay is a megalopolis with many associations. But the one that’s especially significant is this: it is a place of stories. The Only City is a collection of 18 new pieces of short fiction that captures the pulse of this always-morphing urban centre.

Featuring some of the best names in Indian fiction – both emerging and established –this extraordinary anthology frames the city through a range of vantage points. From the urchin lurking by Grant Road’s railway overbridge to the screenwriter prowling the dance bars in Andheri; from the gay man cruising in a Dadar local to the artist hovering by a studio across the Danda shore; from immigrant nurses and couples in love to runaway teenagers – every character carries a critical Bombay fragment. Bombay is the only city that can grant them dimension.

That’s A Fire Ant Right There: Tales from Kavali, Mohammed Khadeer Babu, translated from the Telugu by DV Subhashri

Captured in the innocent voice of a young boy, Mohammed Khadeer Babu’s Chaplinesque style of portraying misery through humour shines a sweeping light on Muslim lives in coastal Andhra. Populated with strong women, cheeky scamps, virtuous dawdlers and scrupulous teachers, his witty storytelling in the Nellore dialect is a riveting portrayal of the daily struggles of adapting to a majoritarian world in small-town India. Belying the nostalgic memories of childhood are scathing observations of the education system, child labour, social barriers, and casteist attitudes. Yet, the stories also resound with a clear message of friendship, especially among Hindus and Muslims, making this book essential reading in today’s fraught times, to remind ourselves of our inherited legacy of communal harmony.