The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker
When the busy London street on which I live suddenly turned eerily quiet and deserted in March, I was, fittingly perhaps, wandering through the distant mythological territory of ancient Greece. It is a feminist re-working of Homer’s The Iliad, telling the story of the Trojan war through the voices of its female victims. Following the #MeToo movement and hearing about the horrors inflicted on female characters...it was a powerful reading experience.
The Anarchy by William Dalrymple
Fortuitously, the next book also took me far away from the travails of the lockdown. This is a masterful account of how India came to be ruled by the East India Company, after the fall of the Mughal Empire. It is a carefully researched non-fiction, but Dalrymple is very good at serving up history as though it were a great yarn.
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo
I was well into this book by the time #BlackLivesMatter protests took centrestage. The book is a series of interlinked stories, mostly around black women. I was curious because it won The Booker Prize, alongside Margaret Atwood. However, I left was a brimming feeling of empathy for the angry protestors on television.
Small Days & Nights by Tishani Doshi
It is about a woman who returns to India on the death of her mother, to find an unusual inheritance of the house by the sea and a sibling with Down’s Syndrome, whose existence she was unaware of. As I have both a house by the sea and a daughter with a disability, this is sure to have great resonance with me.
A Burning by Megha Majumdar
I also cannot wait to get my hands on a debut work that everyone seems to be talking about. Set against a catastrophic event and a false accusation, it sounds like an urgent and important story about the state of contemporary India.
We would love to know how you are keeping busy at home. Tell us what you are reading, at metro@thehindu.co.in
