Reading list: January 2025 to January 2026

1. In Custody (Anita Desai)
2. Beautiful World, Where Are You (Sally Rooney)
3. Breasts and Eggs (Mieko Kawakami)
4. Agency (William Gibson)
5. Lords of the Deccan (Anirudh Kanisetti)
6. Neuromancer (William Gibson) [reread]
7. Pattern Recognition (William Gibson) [reread]
8. The Ivory Throne (Manu Pillai)
9. Spook Country (William Gibson) [reread]
10. Zero History (William Gibson) [reread]
11. Taliban (Pavneet Singh)
12. प्रतिनिधि कविताएं (विनोद कुमार शुक्ल)
13. The Diamond Age (Neal Stephenson)
14. Nietzsche: A Very Short Introduction (Michael Tanner)
15. Mrs Dalloway (Virginia Woolf)
16. प्रतिनिधि कविताएं (नागार्जुन)
17. The Odessa File (Frederik Forsyth)
18. Lord of the Flies (William Holding)
19. Spy Hook (Len Deighton)
20. Children of Time (Adrian Tchaikovsky)
21. Spy Line (Len Deighton)
22. Intermezzo (Sally Rooney)
23. No country for Old Men (Cormac McCarthy)
24. Spy Sinker (Len Deighton)
25. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain)
26. False Alarm (Bjorn Lomberg)
27. Savarkar: Echoes From a Forgotten Past (Vikram Sampath)
28. पंचतंत्र (पंडित विष्णु शर्मा)
29. Against the Day (Thomas Pynchon)
30. The Chekhov Collection of Short Stories (Anton Chekhov)
31. The Economics of International Development (William Easterly)
32. Faith (Len Deighton)
33. Hope (Len Deighton)
34. Hayek: A Life (1899-1950) (Bruce Caldwell, Hansjoerg Klausinger)
35. Charity (Len Deighton)
36. Hegel: A Very Short Introduction (Peter Singer)
37. Mildred Pierce (James M Cain)
38. The Warden (Anthony Trollope)
39. Impossible People (Julia Wertz)
40. We, The Citizens: Strengthening the Indian Republic (Khyati Pathak, Anupam Manur and Pranay Kotasthane)
41. The Curse of Chalion (Lois McMaster Bujold)
42. Dharma Democracy: How India Built the Third World's First Democracy (Salvatore Babones)
43. Double Star (Robert Heinlein)
44. Money and Empire: Charles Kindleberger and the Dollar system (Perry Mehrling)
45. Palestine (Joe Sacco)
46. Paladin of Souls (Lois McMaster Bujold)
47. Chandrakanta (Devakinandan Khatri) [reread]
48. The Prophet (Khalil Gibran)
49. The Blindfold (Siri Hustvedt)
50. The Loverboy of Bahawalpur (Rahul Pandita)

Delayed though not denied

Vinod Kumar Shukla wins the Gyanpeeth this year. The unbearable lightness of his prose, his unassuming, self effacing personality and rootedness in his own singular, idiosyncratic tradition are sui generis. Note his reaction when informed of the prize:

“I’ve seen a lot (in life), heard a lot and felt a lot but I could write only a little. When I think of how much I needed to write… It feels like a lot remains. Till I remain (alive), I want to complete my remaining writings but I may not be able to finish my work… Due to this, I’m in a great dilemma. I want to pursue my life through my writing, but my life is rapidly approaching its end and I don’t know how to write that fast, so I feel a bit regretful.”

and also this:

“I’ve read very little. You tell me your favourite authors. If they are mine too, I will say yes,”

While he is known most for his novels 'Deewar mein ek khidki rahti thi' (tr. In the wall there lived a window) and 'Naukar ki kameez' (tr. The servant's shirt) (made into a film later by Mani Kaul) his deeply original simplicity and unadorned style in his poetry is his dinstictive hallmark. Observe his famous poem 'Hatasha se ek vyakti baith gaya' (tr. In desperation, a person sat down)

हताशा से एक व्यक्ति बैठ गया था

व्यक्ति को मैं नहीं जानता था

हताशा को जानता था

इसलिए मैं उस व्यक्ति के पास गया

मैंने हाथ बढ़ाया

मेरा हाथ पकड़कर वह खड़ा हुआ

मुझे वह नहीं जानता था

मेरे हाथ बढ़ाने को जानता था

हम दोनों साथ चले

दोनों एक दूसरे को नहीं जानते थे

साथ चलने को जानते थे

Translated below:

Desperate, a man sat down,

I didn't know him,

I knew desperation,

so I went close to him

and reached out my hand –

holding it, he stood up,

he didn't know me, he knew

my reaching out the hand,

from there, we walked together,

neither of us knew the other –

both knew walking together.

Truly a singular being. Here's more in the Indian Express: ‘A storyteller of hope & light’: Vinod Kumar Shukla wins Jnanpith award.

पृथ्वी की गंध

 The superlative living master Amit Dutta at his most direct, and most accessible in the 2 minute 'The Scent of Earth' [मिट्टी इत्र]. 

Go forth and prosper, o successor of Mani Kaul! 

Love in the time of cholera (and beyond)

From 'The cultural evolution of love in literary history' [Bamaurd et al. 2022, Nature Human Behavior]. (Link to paper here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-022-01292-z)

Abstract

Since the late nineteenth century, cultural historians have noted that the importance of love increased during the Medieval and Early Modern European period (a phenomenon that was once referred to as the emergence of ‘courtly love’). However, more recent works have shown a similar increase in Chinese, Arabic, Persian, Indian and Japanese cultures. Why such a convergent evolution in very different cultures? Using qualitative and quantitative approaches, we leverage literary history and build a database of ancient literary fiction for 19 geographical areas and 77 historical periods covering 3,800 years, from the Middle Bronze Age to the Early Modern period. We first confirm that romantic elements have increased in Eurasian literary fiction over the past millennium, and that similar increases also occurred earlier, in Ancient Greece, Rome and Classical India. We then explore the ecological determinants of this increase. Consistent with hypotheses from cultural history and behavioural ecology, we show that a higher level of economic development is strongly associated with a greater incidence of love in narrative fiction (our proxy for the importance of love in a culture). To further test the causal role of economic development, we used a difference-in-difference method that exploits exogenous regional variations in economic development resulting from the adoption of the heavy plough in medieval Europe. Finally, we used probabilistic generative models to reconstruct the latent evolution of love and to assess the respective role of cultural diffusion and economic development. 

Admirable. Though Robin Williams from Dead Poets Society would likely ejaculate: 'Excrement'.

The reading list: January 2021 to January 2022

1. Black Coffee (Agatha Christie)
2. The Armchair Economist (Steven Landsburg)
3. Call for the Dead (John LeCarre)
4. The Lord of the Rings (JRR Tolkien) [reread]
5. The Constitution of Liberty (Friedrich Hayek)
6. A Murder of Quality (John LeCarre)
7. The Possessed (Elif Batuman)
8. Audition (Ryu Murakami)
9. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (John LeCarre)
10. Mansfield Park (Jane Austen)
11. Smiley's People (John leCarre)
12. Seeing Like A State (James Scott) 
13. Incompleteness (Rebecca Goldstein)
14. Emma (Jane Austen)
15. Northanger Abbey (Jane Austen)
16. The Essential Austrian Economics (Christopher Coyne and Peter Boettke)
17. The Essential David Hume (James R. Otteson)
18. The Essential Adam Smith (James R. Otteson)
19. Persuasion (Jane Austen)
20. The Essential John Locke (Eric Mack)
21. Babel-17 (Samuel R Delaney)
22. Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand (Samuel R Delaney)
23. Rocannon's World (Ursula K LeGuin)
24. The Valley of Fear (Arthur Conan Doyle)
25. The Looking Glass War (John leCarre)
26. The Grand Pursuit (Sylvia Nasar)
27. Dictators (Frank Dikotter)
28. Who Moved My Interest Rates? (D Subbarao)
29. The Economics of International Development (William Easterly)
30. Planet of Exile (Ursula K LeGuin) 
31. A Mathematician's Apology (G H Hardy)
32. City of Illusions (Ursula K leGuin)
33. Exhalation (Ted Chiang)
34. Economical Writing (Deirdre McCloseksky)
35. तट पर हूँ पर तटस्थ नहीं (कुंवर नारायण)
36. Spy Stories (Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott)
37. A Beautiful Mind (Sylvia Nasar) [reread]
38. The Essential John Stuart Mill (Sandra Peart)
39. The war that made R&AW (Anusha Nandakumar and Sandeep Saket)
40. Five Little Pigs (Agatha Christie)
41. Among the Believers (VS Naipaul)
42. Crashed (Adam Tooze)
43. Whose Body? (Dorothy L. Sayers)
44. The Postman Always Rings Twice (James M Cain)
45. The Accidental Theorist (Paul Krugman)
46. Individualism and Economic Order (Freidrich Hayek)
47. New Spring (Robert Jordan) [reread]
48. The Narrow Corridor (Acemoglu and Robinson)
49. हमज़ाद (मनोहर श्याम जोशी)
50.  अल्पाहारी गृहत्यागी (प्रचंड प्रवीर)
51. The Eye of the World (Robert Jordan) [reread]

Reading List: Jan 2020-Jan 2021

1. Gulag (Anne Applebaum)
2. Persepolis 2 (Marjane Satrapi)
3. In Service of the Republic (Vijay Kelkar, Ajay Shah)
4. A Wizard of Earthsea (Ursula K LeGuin)
5. The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov) [reread]
6. The Tombs of Atanu (Ursula K LeGuin)
7. The Farthest Shore (Ursula K LeGuin)
8. Tehanu (Ursula K LeGuin)
9. Mao's Great Famine (Frank Dikotter)
10. Serotonin (Michel Houellebecq)
11. Exit West (Mohsin Hamid)
12. What we talk about when we talk about love (Raymond Carver)
13. The Tragedy of Liberation (Frank Dikotter)
14. The Cultural Revolution (Frank Dikotter)
15. घाचर गोचर (विवेक शानभाग)
16. The Fatal Conceit (Friedrich Hayek)
17. The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis (Lydia Davis)
18. Capitalism and Freedom (Milton Friedman)
19. The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Milan Kundera)
20. The Road to Serfdom (Friedrich Hayek)
21. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)
22. Iron Curtain (Anne Applebaum)
23. The Better Angels of Our Nature (Steven Pinker)
24. The Twenty-Seventh City (Jonathan Franzen)
25. Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity (David Foster Wallace)
26. The Undoing Project (Michael Lewis)
27. Life and Fate (Vasily Grossman)
28. After the Funeral (Agatha Christie)
29. The Mysterious Affairs At Styles (Agatha Christie)
30. The Murder on the Links (Agatha Christie)
31. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (Agatha Christie)
32. Death on the Nile (Agatha Christie)
33. Mothsmoke (Mohsin Hamid)
34. Three Act Tragedy (Agatha Christie)
35. The Great Gtasby (F Scott Fitzgerald)
36. A Legacy of Spies (John leCarre)
37. ABC Murders (Agatha Christie)
38. Murder on the Orient Express (Agatha Christie)
39. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen) [reread]
40. Harry Potter and the Philisopher's Stone (JK Rowling) [reread]
41. Sense and Sensibilities (Jane Austen)
42. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (Susanna Clarke)
43. Oliver Twist (Charles Dickens)
44. Humiliated and Insulted (Fyodor Dostoyevsky) [reread]
45. Thirty Years That Shook Physics (George Gamow)
46. Look to Windward (Iain M Banks)

The Reading List: Jan 2018 to Jan 2019

1. 2010: Odyssey Two (Arthur C Clarke)
2. The Vegetarian (Han Kang)
3. The Three Body Problem (Liu Cixin)
4. Invisible Planets (Editor and translator Ken Liu)
5. The Sellout (Paul Beatty)
6. The Competent Authority (Shovon Chaudhary)
7. Who Gets What and Why? (Alvin Roth)
8. मन हिंडोला (विनोद कुमार त्रिपाठी)
9. Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron (Jai Arjun Singh)
10. Every Love Story is a Ghost Story (D T Max)
11. सीन 75 (राही मासूम रज़ा)
12. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (John LeCarre)
13. The World of Hrishikesh Mukherjee (Jai Arjun Singh)
14. Mason and Dixon (Thomas Pynchon)
15. India Moving (Chinmay Tumbe)
16. The Peripheral (William Gibson)
17. करता भूलूं क्या याद करूं (हरिवंश राय बच्चन)
18. The Secret Pilgrim (John LeCarre)
19. Milk and Honey (Rupi Kaur)
20. Atomised (Michel Houellebecq)
21. Vampire in Love (Enrique Vila Matas)
22. The Honorable Schoolboy (John LeCarre)
23. सोनम गुप्ता बेवफ़ा नहीं है (अनिल यादव)
24. A Death in the Family (Karl Ove Knausgaard)
25. My Brilliant Friend (Elena Ferrante)

Further Recent Mega Acquisitions

Featuring:

1. मन हिंडोला (विनोद त्रिपाठी)
2. My Brilliant Friend (Elena Ferrante)
3. The World of Hrishikesh Mukherjee (Jai Arjun Singh)
4. A Death in the Family (Karl Over Knausgaard)
5. Goodbye, Columbus (Philip Roth)
6. I Married a Communist (Philip Roth)
7. Mason and Dixon (Thomas Pynchon)
8. Every Love Story is a Ghost Story (D T Max)
9. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (John le Carre)
10. सीन: 75 (राही मासूम रज़ा)
11. Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro (Jai Arjun Singh)

The Reading List: Jan 2017 to Jan 2018

1. The Martian Chronicles (Ray Bradbury)
2. Ratner's Star (Don Delillo)
3. In Other Rooms, Other Wonders (Daniyal Mueenuddin)
4. The Human Stain (Philip Roth)
5. Prelude to Foundation (Isaac Asimov) (reread)
6. मोहन राकेश की यादगारी कहानियां (मोहन राकेश) (tr. Memorable Stories of Mohan Rakesh (Mohan Rakesh))
7. Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro) 
8. Attack on Titan: Vol 1 (Hajime Isayama)
9. Attack on Titan: Vol 2 (Hajime Isayama)
10. Boomerang (Michael Lewis)
11. Forward the Foundation (Isaac Asimov)
12. Falling Man (Don DeLillo)
13. दाग़ देहलवी: ग़ज़ल का एक स्कूल (सं: निदा फ़ाज़ली) (Daagh Dehalvi: A School of Ghazal (Ed. Nida Fazli))
14. Foundation's Edge (Isaac Asimov) (reread)
15. Foundation and Empire (Isaac Asimov)
16. Foundation and Earth (Isaac Asimov)
17. शिकायत मुझे भी है (हरिशंकर परसाई) (tr. I Too Have A Complaint (Harishankar Parsai))
18. The Caves of Steel (Isaac Asimov)
19. Complete Fictions (Jorge Luis Borges)
20. Nemesis (Isaac Asimov)
21. दोज़ख़नामा (रबिशंकर बल (अमृता बेरा)) (tr. Chronicles of Hell (Rabishankar Bal (Amrita Bera)))
22. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Arthur C Clarke)
23. Lords of Finance (Liaquat Ahmed)
24. Why Nations Fail? (Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson)
25. Flash Boys (Michael Lewis)
26. Portnoy's Complaint (Philip Roth)
27. अभी, बिलकुल अभी (केदारनाथ सिंह) (tr. Now, Just Now (Kedarnath Singh))
28. Man Tiger (Eka Kurniawan)
29. Submission (Michel Houellebecq)
30. Horse Walks Into a Bar (David Grossman)

Megamore Recent Acquisitions

Featuring:

1. Submission (Michel Houellebecq)
2. R Packages (Hadley Wickham)
3. The Competent Authority (Shovon Chowdhary)
4. Analysis of Financial Time Series (Ruey Tsay)
5. R for Data Science (Hadley Wickham and Garrett Grolemund)
6. Convergence of Probability Measures (Patrick Billingsley)
7. क्या भूलूँ क्या याद करूँ (हरिवंश राय बच्चन) (tr. What to remember what to forget (Harivansh Rai Bachchan))
8. सोनम गुप्ता बेवफ़ा नहीं है (अनिल यादव) (tr. Sonam Gupta is not a cheat (Anil Yadav))
9. आकारों के आसपास (कुंवर नारायण) (tr. In the vicinity of shapes (Kunwar Narayan))
10. A Horse Walks Into A Bar (David Grossman)
11. If On A Winter's Night A Traveler (Italo Calvino)
12. The Sellout (Paul Beatty)
13. The Vegetarian (Han Kang)
14. On Anarchism (Noam Chomsky)

The Child is Grown, The Dream is Gone. Not.

Featuring:

1. The Three-Body Problem (Cixin Liu)
2. Portnoy's Complaint (Philip Roth)
3. Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation (tr. Ken Liu)
4. Man Tiger (Eka Kurniawan)
5. Vampire in Love (Enrique Vila-Matas)
6. अभी, बिलकुल अभी (केदारनाथ सिंह) (tr. Now, Just Now (Kedarnath Singh))
7. खिलेगा तो देखेंगे (विनोद कुमार शुक्ल) (tr. Will See When Blooms (Vinod Kumar Shukla))
8. तट पर हूँ पर तटस्थ नहीं (कुंवर नारायण) (tr. On The (Shore)Line But Not Neutral (Kunwar Narayan))
9. The Peripheral (William Gibson)

Evermore Recent Acquisitions

Featuring:

1. Linear Algebra and its Applications (Gilbert Strang)
2. Analysis I (Terence Tao)
3. Analysis II (Terence Tao)
4. Asset Pricing (John Cochrane)
5. The Essential Chomsky (Noam Chomsky) 
6. Probability and Measure (Patrick Billingsley)
7. Functional Analysis (Walter Rudin)
8. Introduction to Topology and Modern Analysis (George Simmons)
9. The Idea of Justice (Amartya Sen)
10. Flash Boys (Michael Lewis)
11. Poor Economics (Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo)
12. The Blind Watchmaker (Richard Dawkins)

... just not evenly distributed

There is a striking regularity with which the state of science fiction literature in a society could predict its stage of economic development. Modern science fiction appeared in Victorian England post Industrial Revolution—a period of heady growth and technological innovation. The golden age of classical American Science Fiction was during the '50s and '60s (dominated by Asimov, Clark and Heinlein)—the halcyon days of the American economy when growth was high, inequality low and (thanks to the Cold War) disruptive technologies swept the nation.

And hence the strides that Chinese Science Fiction has taken in recent times comes as no surprise. The massively acclaimed trilogy: the Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin won him a Hugo recently. Another Chinese macroeconomist-cum-science-fiction-writer (yay!) Hao Jinfang won the Hugo this year, beating Stephen King (yes!) for her book Folding Beijing. 

The role that online publishing has played in this growth is especially well captured in this Foreign Policy piece published early this year: How China Became a Sci-Fi Powerhouse. 

Of course, since this is China, every aspect is mega-scale:

Much of the interest in science fiction within China is now driven by film and television companies, say writers and editors. China’s fast-growing media and entertainment industry is already worth about $180 billion, and companies are eager to capitalize on the burgeoning enthusiasm for sci-fi stories. A September 2016 article in Chinese outlet Today’s Headlines speaks of a “science fiction film investment fever.” It mentions that 85 sci-fi related film projects were undertaken in China in the first eight months of 2016 alone.

South China Morning Post also highlighted this issue a while back while featuring Hao Jingfang (among others) in Hong Kong's first science fiction conference. 

Hao Jingfang works as an economic researcher for the China Development Research Foundation think tank, so her research informs and inspires her writing.

“Half of the theme [of my writing] concerns social systems, their history and future development. The other half concerns philosophical aspects, such as human agency and willpower,” Hao says. 

For example, her award-winning novelette Folding Beijing addresses the inequality perpetuated by the social and economic system. The story takes place in a futuristic Beijing that is divided into three time dimensions. Protagonist Lao Dao travels illegally between dimensions to raise school fees for his adopted daughter. The story idea stemmed from a conversation Hao had with a taxi driver in Beijing, who had to spend a whole night queueing to get his child into kindergarten.

Do read the whole at: Science fiction’s new golden age in China. 

Thick at the center of all this action is Ken Liu—the translator of both Cixin and Hao—and is profiled in South China Morning Post's: How novelist Ken Liu is bringing Chinese sci-fi to the Western world.

The conspicuous successes of Liu Cixin and Hao have made Ken Liu the unofficial cheerleader for Chinese science fiction on the global stage. This status will only be enhanced by the recently released Invisible Planets, an anthology of short stories compiled and edited by Liu, from some of China’s leading science-fiction authors.

Here is an explanation why societies experiencing high rates of growth and commotion see growth and innovation in their respective cultures' science fiction literature too. Again, since this is China, everything is mega-scale:

While grappling with cutting-edge technological develop­ment is nothing new, in science fiction or life, what distin­guishes China from the rest of the world is the sheer scale and speed of that change. “The industrial advances that took centuries in Western nations have occurred in roughly 30 years,” he says. “Within the space of two generations, you have families where the parents lived an existence essentially like the 19th century and their children are now in Beijing working at some of the most advanced technological companies in the world.”

Here is the link to Ken Liu's latest offering (Amazon): Invisible Planets, 13 Visions of the Future: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction. Highly recommended of course!

... 

On the basis of all this, could one predict that the stage is set for an inexorable rise in the profile of Indian science fiction? After all, in terms of growth rate and technological disruption, India certainly ranks very high; and in NF's humble opinion, that it will continue to do so in the foreseeable future is an almost mathematical certainty. 

There's certainly some evidence to that hypothesis. It is in this respect that the following HT article assumes some significance. It showcases the rise of digital publishing and its enabling push in helping speed up the expansion of an erstwhile niche maket—in both literary and science fictional capacities. Published early this year and titled A host of new digital literary magazines are giving a boost to India’s literary magazine culture, it profiles the founders of these exciting new voices in Indian publishing.

India has always been in the back seat when it comes to a literary-magazine culture. In fact, Brooklyn borough of New York boasts of more literary magazines than the whole of India.

But lately a host of new digital ventures are trying to change that.

Much like acclaimed literary magazines such as The Paris Review, The New Yorker and London Review of Books, these new online lit-magazines are named after cities or regions -- The Bombay Review, The Bangalore Review, The Madras Mag, Mithila Review, etc.

Visually appealing, these magazines publish high quality work – art, essays, fiction, non- fiction, poetry – merging genres, forms and realities.

In particular, the Mithila Review, published from Delhi, is leading the charge on the science fiction/fantasy front and has received a thumbs up from the mighty Bruce Sterling himself! 

Here is the link to their 9th issue: Mithila Review: Issue 9. Follow the link and salivate!

So given this simplistic model, what's the prognostication regarding the Indian SF scene in say, 10-15 years? NF won't be shy to wager a small sum for the case for a high growth rate in the segment—even more so in the numerous Indian languages than in English. If you can't wait for the future to happen right-friggin'-now, you have company. Bravo you guys!

Recent Acquisitions

Featuring:

1. The Wealth of Nations (Adam Smith)
2. Lords of Finance (Liaquat Ahmed)
3. Collective Choice and Social Welfare (Amartya Sen)
4. Thinking, Fast and Slow (Daniel Kahneman)
5. Why Nations Fail (Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson)
6. Who Gets What and Why (Alvin Roth)
7. Mathematics for Economists (Simon and Blume)

Hontoni Muchos Arigatos

Namma Bengaluru beckons. Yay!

The Reading List: January 2016 to January 2017

1. The Lathe of Heaven (Ursula K Le Guin)
2. The Savage Detectives (Roberto Bolaño) (reread)
3. 2666 (Roberto Bolaño) (reread)
4. The Diamond Age (Neal Stephenson)
5. Wolf Hall (Hilary Mantel)
6. Virtual Light (William Gibson) (reread)
7. Norwegian Wood (Haruki Murakami)
8. Cosmopolis (Don Delillo)
9. बदन सराय (मुनव्वर राना) (tr. Badan Sarai, Munawwar Rana)
10. Shame (Salman Rushdie)
11. सृष्टि पर पहरा (केदारनाथ सिंह) (tr. Nature Under Watch, Kedarnath Singh)
12. Roadside Picnic (Arkady and Boris Strugatski)
13. Herzog (Saul Bellow)
14. Diamond Dogs and Turquoise Days (Alaistair Reynolds)
15. काशी का अस्सी (काशीनाथ सिंह) (tr. Kashi's Assi, Kashinath Singh)
16. Idoru (William Gibson) (reread)
17. Purity (Jonathan Franzen)
18. All Tomorrow's Partys (William Gibson) (reread)
19. The Plot Against America (Philip Roth)
20. 51 अनमोल कहानियां (प्रेमचंद) (tr. 51 Invaluable Stories, Premchand)
21. The Name of the Rose (Umberto Eco)
22. The Windup Bird Chronicle (Haruki Murakami)
23. By Night in Chile (Roberto Bolaño)
24. Nazi Literature in the Americas (Roberto Bolaño) 
25. The Return (Roberto Bolaño)
26. दीवार में एक खिड़की रहती थी (विनोद कुमार शुक्ल) (tr. There Lived a Window in a Wall, Vinod Kumar Shukla)
27. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (Michael Chabon)
28. The Life and Times of Michael K (J M Coetzee)
29. The Agent Esmerelda: Nine Stories (Don DeLillo)
30. The Aleph and Other Stories (Jorge Luis Borges)
31. The Long Goodbye (Raymond Chandler)
32. पैंसठ लाख की डकैती (सुरेंदर मोहन पाठक) (tr. The Sixty Five Lakh Heist, Surender Mohan Pathak)
33. क़त्ल की दावत (सुरेंदर मोहन पाठक) (tr. The Feast of Death, Surender Mohan Pathak)
34. अभेद आकाश (मणि कॉल से उदयन वाजपेयी की बातचीत) (tr. Impenetrable Space, Udayan Vajpeyi's Conversation with Mani Kaul)
35. एक गधे की आत्मकथा (कृशन चन्दर) (tr. A Donkey's Autobiography, Krishan Chandar)
36. Conversations with Economists (Arjo Klamer)
37. Ghosts (César Aira)
38. An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter (César Aira)
39. The Literary Conference (César Aira)
40. कालजयी कमबख्त (अमित दत्ता) (tr. The Damned Classic, Amit Dutta)

Further Acquisitions

Featuring:

1. 3 Novels by Cesar Aira (Ghosts, An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter, The Literary Conference)
2. कालजयी कमबख्त (अमित दत्ता) (tr. The Damned Classic, Amit Dutta)
3. दोज़ख़नामा (रबिशंकर बल) (बांग्ला अनुवादक: अमृता बेरा) (tr. Chronicles of Hell, Rabishankar Bal, translated from Bengali by Amrita Bera)
4. अभेद आकाश: मणि कॉल से उदयन वाजपेयी की बातचीत (tr. Impenetrable Space: Udayan Vajpeyi's conversation with Mani Kaul)

It Escalates

Featuring:

1. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (Michael Chabon)
2. The Windup Bird Chronicle (Haruki Murakami)
3. The Human Stain (Philip Roth)
4. Nazi Literature in the Americas (Roberto Bolaño)
5. The Return (Roberto Bolaño)
6. By Night in Chile (Roberto Bolaño)

A Momentary (Re)Lapse of Reason

In Other Books, Other Fictions

Recent Acquisitions