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“The Book Censor’s Library” by Bothayna Al-Essa, translated by Ranya Abdelrahman and Sawad Hussain / TOI Bookmark podcast

Bothayna Al-Essa’s The Book Censor’s Library was published in 2024 by Restless Books. It is described a perilous and fantastical satire of banned books, secret archives, and the looming eye of an all-powerful government. In a near future where most literature is deemed dangerous by the state, a bureaucrat falls head over heels for the novel he’s supposed to ban. That leads to another book, and then another… soon he’s drawn into an underground movement of illegal readers laboring to save the stories they love. As the stakes go up, he must weigh his mission against the terrible risk posed to his family – particularly his young daughter, whose affinity for make-believe is already rousing suspicion.

This dark adventure is timely to the point of urgency, written in defiance of strict censorship laws in Al-Essa’s home country of Kuwait. It arrives in the U.S. amid a rising tide of restrictive legislation that targets schools, libraries, and marginalized writers. I’m thrilled to share this magical and important story.

Bothayna Al-Essa is the bestselling Kuwaiti author of nearly a dozen novels and additional children’s books. She is also the founder of Takween, a bookshop and publisher of critically acclaimed works. Her most recent book, The Book Censor’s Library, won the Sharjah Award for Creativity in the novel category in 2021 and is her third novel to appear in English, after Lost in Mecca and All That I Want to Forget. It was on the Time magazine’s 100 Best Books of 2024. The Book Censor’s Library was translated from the Arabic by Ranya Abdelrahman and Sawad Hussain. It was longlisted for the 2024 National Book Award for Fiction in their category for translated literature.

El Essa is a member of the Kuwaiti Writers Association as well as the Arab Internet Writers Union. She campaigned against censorship in Kuwait until it was abolished in 2020.

Al-Essa was author-in-residence at the British Centre for Literary Translation for the summer of 2023, and the recipient of Kuwait’s Nation Encouragement Award for her fiction in 2003 and 2012. She has written books on writing and led writing workshops throughout the Arab world.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Bothayna for TOI Bookmark podcast. Here is a snippet from the conversation:

Well, I guess that was the whole idea of writing that book. The defining line between reality and imagination is also imaginary. Everything is blended together. I think the more we deny the reality of imagination… if we deny it, it will haunt us in ways that never occurred to us, in ways that are unexpected.

Listen to it on Spotify:

TOI Bookmark is a weekly podcast on literature and publishing. TOI is an acronym for the Times of India (TOI) which is the world’s largest newspaper and India’s No. 1 digital news platform with over 3 billion page views per month. The TOI website is one of the most visited news sites in the world with 200 million unique monthly visitors and about 1.6 billion monthly page views. TOI is the world’s largest English newspaper with a daily circulation of more than 4 million copies, across many editions, and is read daily by approximately 13.5 million readers. The podcasts are promoted across all TOI platforms. I have recorded more than 130+ sessions with Jnanpith, Padma Bhushan, and Padma Shree awardees, International Booker Prize winners, Booker Prize winners, Women’s Prize for Fiction, Nobel Laureates, Pulitzer Prize, Stella Prize, AutHer Awards, Erasmus Prize, BAFTA winners etc. Sometimes the podcast interviews are carried across all editions of the print paper with a QR code embedded in it.

Some of the authors who have been interviewed are: Banu Mushtaq, Deepa Bashti, Samantha Harvey, Jenny Erpenbeck, Michael Hoffman, Paul Murray, V. V. Ganeshananthan, Hisham Matar, Anita Desai, Amitava Kumar, Hari Kunzro, Venki Ramakishnan, Siddhartha Deb, Elaine Feeney, Manjula Padmanabhan, NYRB Classics editor and founder Edwin Frank, Jonathan Escoffery, Joya Chatterji, Arati Kumar-Rao, Paul Lynch, Dr Kathryn Mannix, David Nicholls, Cat Bohannon, Charlotte Wood, Sebastian Barry, Shabnam Minwalla, Paul Harding, Ayobami Adebayo, Pradeep Sebastian, G N Devy, Angela Saini, Manav Kaul, Amitav Ghosh, Damodar Mauzo, Boria Majumdar, Geetanjali Mishra, William Dalrymple, David Walliams, and Annie Ernaux.

21 May 2025

100 episodes of TOI Bookmark (5 Oct 2024)

19 05 , 2025 No Comments

I am sharing the text of a Facebook post that I created on 5 October 2024. We had crossed 100 podcast recordings. In December 2024, the podcast became available on Spotify as well. Today, we have crossed 130+ and growing every month.

An incredible milestone! We have recorded 100 episodes of #TOIBookmark. As the host of the show, I have interviewed a wide variety of authors, across genres.

We have recorded sessions with the winners of Jnanpith, Padma Bhushan, Padma Shree, International Booker Prize, Booker Prize, Women’s Prize for Fiction, AutHer Awards, Stella Prize, Nobel Laureates, Pulitzer Prize, BAFTA winners, etc. Also, diplomats, bestselling authors, debut writers, and legendary writers, across genres and languages. Sometimes the podcast interviews are carried across all editions of the print paper with a QR code embedded in it.

Some of the authors who have been interviewed are:Jenny Erpenbeck, Michael Hoffman, Paul Murray, V. V. Ganeshananthan, Hisham Matar, Anita Desai, Amitava Kumar, Hari Kunzro, Venki Ramakishnan, Siddhartha Deb, Elaine Feeney, Manjula Padmanabhan, NYRB Classics editor and founder Edwin Frank, Jonathan Escoffery, Joya Chatterji, Amish Tripathi, Ashwin Sanghi, Arati Kumar-Rao, Paul Lynch, Dr Kathryn Mannix, Cat Bohannon, Sebastian Barry, Shabnam Minwalla, Paul Harding, Ayobami Adebayo, Pradeep Sebastian, G N Devy, Angela Saini, Manav Kaul, Amitav Ghosh, Damodar Mauzo, Sonora Jha, Geetanjali Mishra, William Dalrymple, and Annie Ernaux.

TOI Bookmark is a weekly podcast on literature and publishing. TOI is an acronym for the Times of India (TOI) which is the world’s largest newspaper and India’s No. 1 digital news platform with over 3 billion page views per month. The TOI website is one of the most visited news sites in the world with 200 million unique monthly visitors and about 1.6 billion monthly page views. TOI is the world’s largest English newspaper with a daily circulation of more than 4 million copies, across many editions, and is read daily by approximately 13.5 million readers. The podcasts are promoted across all TOI platforms. The podcast is not behind a paywall. It is free to listen anywhere in the world.

We began recording TOI Bookmark episodes about two years ago. Initially it was with long gaps in between as we were trying to figure out details. Ultimately, it became easier to figure out the programme. This is a massive team effort with lots of folks helping behind the scene.

19 May 2025

“Rosarita” by Anita Desai

19 05 , 2025 No Comments

Anita Desai’s novella published on 7 July 2024. Rosarita is about a young student from India called Bonita who is visiting San Miguel, Mexico to learn Spanish. One day, while sitting quietly, she is approached by a flamboyantly dressed elderly woman, swishing her skirt, who plonks herself down next to Bonita, insisting that Bonita is “my adored Rosarita’s little girl. You are the image of her when she first came to us as an Oriental bird!” Later, Bonita refers to this stranger as the “Trickster”.

In the pages that follow, Bonita is mystified by the story spun about her mother being an exceptional artist, who stayed in various artist communes and travelled around the country. The Trickster takes Bonita to the various locations, but most of the buildings have been reduced to rubble. Despite her disbelief at her late mother’s life before marriage to her father, Bonita accompanies the Trickster to find out more. She doesn’t find much else. But she does find a sense of belonging in this distant land and realises she need not search any more.

When this book goes out into the world, there will be much said about motherhood and memory. Perhaps, even about grief and finding one’s own space and identity. Whereas, my understanding of reading this stupendous story is the energy criss-crossing generations. It is also making visible the lives women, especially married women, put in one lifetime. Their younger selves and their histories are blanked out in their marriages and thus, to their children too. It takes a special effort to make one’s life visible and share details of the past. Bonita feels bewildered about her mother’s past and her exceptional talent as a painter but she does nothing about it. Instead, she gets caught in a whirlpool of memories that do not help her in any way. She seems to recall her mother publicly being a good wife, hostess, and mum but who was in private, resentful of the chores that fell her way. It’s not said explicitly but mentioned.

The gaps in a mother’s life, before and after marriage, is a violent break that few talk about openly. In Rosarita it is merely displayed but at least it is made visible. Such an important task.

*****

When Pan Macmillan India announced that they were publishing in South Asia #AnitaDesai‘s forthcoming novella “#Rosarita“, it caused quite a stir. I read an ARC and enjoyed it immensely. Later, I was fortunate to record a conversation with the legendary writer. It was late at night for us and at her end, Mrs Desai and her daughter had been battling the aftermath of a terrible storm that had cut off their telephone lines and caused a few other inconveniences. Yet, there they were at the other end, bright and chirpy, ready for this special edition of #TOIBookmark podcast, a Times Special offering on books and literature. It was truly an honour and a privilege to speak with Anita Desai.

*****

Here is a snippet from the recording:

“Yes, I suppose we all do but maybe we only find a little key to that story, that is all and if you have that lingering in your mind, when we have so many encounters, we meet so many people, forget them, forget their names even, others you may have only spent two minutes with but they linger in your mind and that gives you a little key to unlock what you do not know about them. So, like all fiction writers I have to invent their stories for them which of course involves some research like I had to do for Baumgartner, his Jewish European past to do no research for the family in Clear Light of Day. It was a familiar world, I knew everything about it.”

19 May 2025

“The Book of Guilt” by Catherine Chidgey/ TOI Bookmark

18 05 , 2025 No Comments

This podcast was recorded at the beginning of 2025. Hence, the reference to the book being forthcoming. Now it has been released in various parts of the world. On 9 May 2025, Catherine wrote on Facebook that the New Zealand edition of The Book of Guilt was reprinted before it was even published! A dream come true for all writers.

We have had a fascinating range of guests on the weekly #TOIBookmark podcast. 124+ guests! The guests featured have been national and international authors including Jnanpith, Padma Bhushan, & Padma Shri awardees, Nobel Laureates, Booker Prize winners, Pulitzer Prize winners, BAFTA awardees, diplomats, bestselling authors, debut writers, and legendary writers, across genres and languages. But the conversation was Catherine Chidgey was extra special. For years, I have been hearing about her incredible work and never got a chance to read her books. Thanks to the New Zealand High Commission to India, Bangladesh & Nepal I not only managed to read a pile of Catherine’s incredible novels but got to interview her as well. She has garnered a pile of awards over the years but has also generously given back to the literary community by instituting the Sargeson Prize for short stories in recognition of Frank Sargeson’s influence on New Zealand literature. At NZD 15,000, it is the country’s richest short story award.

Her debut In a Fishbone Church won Best First Book at the New Zealand Book (1998) Awards and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (South East Asia/South Pacific,1999), as well as the Betty Trask Award (1999) in the UK. It was longlisted for the Orange Prize (1999). Other honours include the Prize in Modern Letters (2002), the Katherine Mansfield Award (2013) and the Janet Frame Fiction Prize (2017). Her novel Remote Sympathy was longlisted for the Women’s Prize in the UK and shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award (both in 2022).

Her forthcoming novel “The Book of Guilt” (Hachette India) is a compelling work of dystopian fiction. It sparked two international bidding wars and is published in May 2025 by five different English-language publishers! John Murray (UK, in May), Hachette (US, in September), Knopf Canada (September), Penguin Random House Australia (May), Te Herenga Waka University Press (NZ, in May).

Catherine really explores the dark spaces in life, while seemingly not to. She does it well. In the conversation, she says that she really pushes herself hard. If anyone does that, then they squeeze the best out of themselves. It was such a pleasure to chat with “one of New Zealand’s greatest living writers” (Radio NZ).

Here is a snippet from our conversation:

“My life is very busy. So, I teach creative writing full time at the University of Waikato and we have a nine-and-a-half-year-old daughter and somehow around that I also seem to write full time. So the true answer is that I have no social life when I am in the generative phase of a novel rather than the late editing phase. I write first thing in the morning and I take my daughter to school and then I go into the university campus and then I come home and we have dinner and then we get our daughter to bed and then I write again. I do the evening shift. Morning and night, seven days a week. I am pretty hard on myself. I have a daily word count that I have to meet. There is no option of not meeting that. If I exceed it, which I most often do, it doesn’t mean that I get to go easy on myself the next day. The clock resets itself to zero and I have to start again. [Laughs]”

I highly recommend Catherine’s new novel. It is truly unforgettable. It has the incredible knack of popping up in one’s memory while reading other contemporary literature and discovering unexpected threads between the books. Utterly gorgeous!

18 May 2025

TOI Bookmark podcast with Gopalkrishna Gandhi

07 05 , 2025 No Comments

TOI Bookmark is a weekly podcast on literature and publishing. TOI is an acronym for the Times of India (TOI) which is the world’s largest newspaper and India’s No. 1 digital news platform with over 3 billion page views per month. The TOI website is one of the most visited news sites in the world with 200 million unique monthly visitors and about 1.6 billion monthly page views. TOI is the world’s largest English newspaper with a daily circulation of more than 4 million copies, across many editions, and is read daily by approximately 13.5 million readers. The podcasts are promoted across all TOI platforms. I have recorded more than 128+ sessions with Jnanpith, Padma Bhushan, and Padma Shree awardees, International Booker Prize winners, Booker Prize winners, Women’s Prize for Fiction, Nobel Laureates, Pulitzer Prize, Stella Prize, AutHer Awards, Erasmus Prize, BAFTA etc. Sometimes the podcast interviews are carried across all editions of the print paper with a QR code embedded in it.

Some of the authors who have been interviewed are: Samantha Harvey, Jenny Erpenbeck, Michael Hoffman, Paul Murray, V. V. Ganeshananthan, Hisham Matar, Anita Desai, Amitava Kumar, Hari Kunzro, Venki Ramakishnan, Siddhartha Deb, Elaine Feeney, Manjula Padmanabhan, NYRB Classics editor and founder Edwin Frank, Jonathan Escoffery, Joya Chatterji, Arati Kumar-Rao, Paul Lynch, Dr Kathryn Mannix, Cat Bohannon, Sebastian Barry, Shabnam Minwalla, Paul Harding, Ayobami Adebayo, Pradeep Sebastian, G N Devy, Angela Saini, Manav Kaul, Amitav Ghosh, Damodar Mauzo, Boria Majumdar, Geetanjali Mishra, William Dalrymple, and Annie Ernaux.

We have recorded umpteen episodes but recording a conversation with Gopalkrishna Gandhi is very precious. He is a highly admired and well reputed bureaucrat, diplomat, and former governor. He is also a writer. But it his lineage that is often brought to the fore. His grandfathers were Mahatma Gandhi (paternal) and the first and only Indian governor general of India, C. Rajagopalachari (maternal).

Mr Gandhi has written innumerable books but his recent publication The Undying Light is his memoir. It is published by Aleph Book Company. Given that he was born nearly three years before India gained independence from the British, he is able to provide a sweeping and fascinating account of modern Indian history. This is truly a life well spent. An aspect that really stood out for me in the memoir was the subtext of the interpretation of the Constitution of India. It is the longest written constitution in the world, but it is a living and breathing document. For a gentleman like Mr Gandhi, who has been able to engage with various aspects of it as an Indian Administrative Services officer, a diplomat when he was appointed as High Commissioner to South Africa, and later as Governor of West Bengal, The Undying Light is a valuable insight into how Indian citizens and its administrators rely upon this visionary document for our democratic rights.

Here is a snippet from the conversation:

I am glad you are emphasising the importance of the constitution and the place of the constitution in this book. I can’t but say here that the Preamble, a lyrical document, has been translated with rest of the Constitution into all the languages of India. But the Sanskrit translation of the Constitution starts with “We the People of India” as “Vayam Bharatasya Jahana” and the Urdu translation starts with “Hum Hind ki Awam”. There is an extraordinary lyrical voltage to “Vayam Bharatasya Jahana” and “Hum Hind ki Awam” which takes it even beyond the English, “We the People of India”. This book is about the people of India. Both as a collectivity and as so many individuals.

Listen to the conversation on Spotify:

Buy it from Amazon India or wherever books are sold:

7 May 2025

TOI Bookmark podcast with Ranjit Lal

06 05 , 2025 No Comments

TOI Bookmark is a weekly podcast on literature and publishing. TOI is an acronym for the Times of India (TOI) which is the world’s largest newspaper and India’s No. 1 digital news platform with over 3 billion page views per month. The TOI website is one of the most visited news sites in the world with 200 million unique monthly visitors and about 1.6 billion monthly page views. TOI is the world’s largest English newspaper with a daily circulation of more than 4 million copies, across many editions, and is read daily by approximately 13.5 million readers. The podcasts are promoted across all TOI platforms. I have recorded more than 128+ sessions with Jnanpith, Padma Bhushan, and Padma Shree awardees, International Booker Prize winners, Booker Prize winners, Women’s Prize for Fiction, Nobel Laureates, Pulitzer Prize, Stella Prize, AutHer Awards, Erasmus Prize, BAFTA etc. Sometimes the podcast interviews are carried across all editions of the print paper with a QR code embedded in it.

Some of the authors who have been interviewed are: Samantha Harvey, Jenny Erpenbeck, Michael Hoffman, Paul Murray, V. V. Ganeshananthan, Hisham Matar, Anita Desai, Amitava Kumar, Hari Kunzro, Venki Ramakishnan, Siddhartha Deb, Elaine Feeney, Manjula Padmanabhan, NYRB Classics editor and founder Edwin Frank, Jonathan Escoffery, Joya Chatterji, Arati Kumar-Rao, Paul Lynch, Dr Kathryn Mannix, Cat Bohannon, Sebastian Barry, Shabnam Minwalla, Paul Harding, Ayobami Adebayo, Pradeep Sebastian, G N Devy, Angela Saini, Manav Kaul, Amitav Ghosh, Damodar Mauzo, Boria Majumdar, Geetanjali Mishra, William Dalrymple, and Annie Ernaux.

It is always such a pleasure speaking with Ranjit Lal, award-winning writer who has an abiding interest in natural history, birds, animals and insects. Recording this fantabulous episode of #TOIBookmark is one such example.

Here is a snippet from our conversation:

“… you need a little patience. That is all. I have always considered that you do not have to go to Nature, Nature will come to you. Sit quietly in a place for half hour and things will start happening. You do not have to do anything. Just keep your eyes and ears open. “

Listen on Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2rh1AguCGnF3wx5U8xXrWI…

Listen on the The Times of India website:

https://search.app/jsgTSxqJpfF8ES2a8

Buy the book that Ranjit Lal discusses, Our Potpourri Planet, published by HarperCollins India.

6 May 2025

Annie Ernaux podcast, 27 Feb 2023

01 03 , 2023 No Comments

https://epaper.timesgroup.com/timesspecial/leisure/nobel-laureate-annie-ernaux-doubted-if-my-books-would-fetch-me-enough-money/1677423290365

1 March 2023

TOI Bookmark podcasts

09 02 , 2023 No Comments

In the middle of December 2022, TOI Bookmark, weekly podcasts on books and literature was launched by The Times of India (TOI) . TOI has a new vertical dedicated to podcasts called Times Specials / ( @TimesSpecialTOI). It is specially curated premium content from across the Times Group, for digital audiences. I record every week with incredible writers and publishers, based around the world. The Times of India, of course, is the world’s largest newspaper and India’s No. 1 digital news platform with over 3 billion page views per month. Times Specials podcasts will be promoted across all TOI platforms, including print.

Some of those featured so far are International Booker Prize 2022 winner Geetanjali Shree, translator Daisy Rockwell, popular writers Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Ashwin Sanghi, Amish Tripathi, political scientist and academic Nalin Mehta, oral historian and chronicler Aanchal Malhotra, publisher ( Seagull Books) and poet Naveen Kishore, and many more.

And then on 5 Feb 2023, I got tagged in these incredibly generous tweets by Ipshita Mitra. Thank you for listening, Ipshita!

9 Feb 2023

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