Annie Ernaux | Jaya's blog

Booker Prize Foundation announces Children’s Booker Prize

The Booker Prize Foundation announces the Children’s Booker Prize

The charity behind two of the world’s most significant literary prizes announces new £50,000 award for children’s fiction supported by AKO Foundation.

The UK’s Children’s Laureate Frank Cottrell-Boyce to be inaugural Chair of judges for 2027
The Children’s Booker Prize winner will be selected by a combined panel of child and adult judges
At least 30,000 copies of the shortlisted and winning books will be gifted to ensure more children can own and read the world’s best fiction
Former Booker Prize and Carnegie Medal-winning author Penelope Lively will give the keynote speech at the Booker Prize 2025 ceremony to celebrate the new prize
Watch the Children’s Booker Prize teaser video here

The Booker Prize Foundation today (Friday, 24 October 2025) announces the Children’s Booker Prize supported by AKO Foundation, the first prize for children’s fiction from the charity that awards the prestigious Booker Prize and International Booker Prize.

The Booker Prizes have rewarded and celebrated world-class talent for over 55 years, helping to shape the canon of 20th and 21st century literature, transforming the careers of writers and building a global community of readers. Today’s announcement marks the first major new prize from the Foundation in two decades, since the launch of the International Booker Prize in 2005.

The Children’s Booker Prize, which will launch in 2026 and be awarded annually from 2027, will celebrate the best contemporary fiction for children aged eight to 12 years old, written in or translated into English and published in the UK and/or Ireland. The aim of the prize is to engage and grow a new generation of readers by recognising and championing the best children’s fiction from writers around the world. Their nominated works will join almost 700 books in the Booker library.

The founding partner and principal funder of the Children’s Booker Prize is AKO Foundation, a grant-giving charitable foundation focused on supporting charities that improve education and the wellbeing of young people, promote the arts, and combat the climate emergency. AKO Foundation has generously committed to supporting the prize for its first three years. The development of the prize over the last three years has been made possible with thanks to donations from a small group of philanthropic supporters.

Gaby Wood, Chief Executive of the Booker Prize Foundation, says:

‘The Children’s Booker Prize is the most ambitious endeavour we’ve embarked on in 20 years – and we hope its impact will resonate for decades to come. It aims to be several things at once: an award that will champion future classics written for children; a social intervention designed to inspire more young people to read; and a seed from which we hope future generations of lifelong readers will grow.

‘In other words, the Children’s Booker Prize is not just a prize – it’s part of a movement: a cause that children, parents, carers, teachers and everyone in the world of storytelling can get behind.

‘We have been laying the groundwork for this prize for the past three years, and in that time we have been buoyed by many fruitful conversations with prospective partners: we could not do this alone. And we absolutely could not have launched it without the generosity of its founding partner and principal funder, AKO Foundation, to whom we are enormously grateful.

‘We’re delighted that Frank Cottrell-Boyce, master storyteller and passionate advocate, will be the inaugural Chair of the judges. And we can’t wait to hear the views of the ultimate judges of the quality of children’s fiction: children themselves.

‘The Booker Prize Foundation exists to inspire more people to read the world’s best fiction – because if you can imagine a different world, you can help to create a better one. The possibility of welcoming young readers into our growing global community is hugely exciting. We hope they discover stories and characters that will keep them company for life.’

Gaby Wood, Chief Executive of Booker Prize Foundation at the Booker Prize 2024 shortlist announcement at Somerset House’s Portico Rooms, London.

Philip Lawford, Chief Executive Officer, AKO Foundation says:

‘We are very pleased to support the Booker Prize Foundation in launching the Children’s Booker Prize. At AKO Foundation we believe strongly in the importance of nurturing a love of reading from an early age. The evidence linking reading for pleasure to improved educational outcomes and greater social mobility is compelling, and this initiative aligns closely with our priorities as a funder. We are proud to contribute to a project that will inspire and empower young readers.’

The multi-award-winning children’s book author and screenwriter Frank Cottrell-Boyce, who is the current Waterstones Children’s Laureate, will become the inaugural Chair of judges for the prize. Uniquely, the prize will be judged by a mixed panel of adult and child judges. Cottrell-Boyce and two other adult judges will select a shortlist of eight books. Three child judges will be recruited – with the support of schools and a range of partners across the culture and entertainment industries – to join the adults in choosing the winning book. The process will give children a direct voice in the outcome, ensuring the book is recommended by young readers to their peers.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Waterstones Children’s Laureate 2024-2026 and Chair of judges for the Children’s Booker Prize 2027, says:

‘Stories belong to everyone. Every child deserves the chance to experience the happiness that diving into a great book can bring. The Children’s Booker Prize will make it easier for children to find the best that current fiction can offer. To find the book that speaks to them. By inviting them to the judging table and by gifting copies of the nominated books it will bring thousands more children into the wonderful world of reading.

‘I am absolutely buzzing about the news that I’m going to be chairing the judging panel. It’s going to be – as they say – absolute scenes in there. Let the yelling commence.’

To mark the announcement of the Children’s Booker Prize, the Foundation has created a teaser video featuring children reading from a range of Booker Prize-winning classics, which can be watched here. The much-loved author Penelope Lively will give the keynote speech at this year’s Booker Prize ceremony on Monday, 10 November 2025 at Old Billingsgate, London sharing the reasons she thinks that children’s literature should be celebrated by this new prize. Lively is the only recipient of both the Booker Prize (for Moon Tiger, 1987) and the Carnegie Medal for writing, the UK’s longest-running children’s book award (for The Ghost of Thomas Kempe, 1973). Welcoming the announcement of the Children’s Booker Prize, she says: ‘Those who write for children especially need this – and it is needed equally for the children who read the books.’

The inaugural prize will open for submissions from publishers in spring 2026, when the remaining two adult judges will be made public. The shortlist of eight books – and the three child judges – will be announced in late November 2026, with the winner revealed at a high-profile event for young readers in February 2027. The eligibility period for the 2027 prize is 1 November 2025 to 31 October 2026.

Putting children’s books at the centre of our culture

The Booker Prize Foundation announces the Children’s Booker Prize at a time when children’s reading for pleasure is reportedly at its lowest in 20 years, and as the UK government and the National Literacy Trust have announced a National Year of Reading 2026 to change the nation’s reading habits.

The prize is being launched to inspire more children to discover and read great contemporary fiction and will tackle the challenge in a number of ways.

These include:

consulting with children to inform the ongoing development of the prize
involving children directly in judging so that the winning book is a peer-to-peer recommendation, underpinned by the quality stamp of the Booker Prizes’ rigorous selection process
collaborating with experienced organisations including publishers, schools, libraries, and bookshops
ensuring that more young people have access to the best new children’s fiction through targeted gifting of the shortlisted and winning books, delivered by a range of partners
partnering with brands that children love, creating effective campaigns to engage them outside of traditional book and educational spaces
and tracking trends in children’s reading for pleasure to measure impact and keep the prize relevant.

Delivering the Children’s Booker Prize with partners

The Booker Prize Foundation will be working with publishers and a range of partners, including the National Literary Trust, The Reading Agency, Bookbanks, and the Children’s Book Project to gift and deliver at least 30,000 copies of the shortlisted and winning books each year to children that need them the most.

The Foundation is working with Beano Brain, specialists in kids and youth insight, consulting children on the development of the Children’s Booker Prize, which will include regular co-creation sessions with eight to 12 year-olds. It will also be working with the National Literacy Trust to measure longer term trends in children’s reading.

Industry support for the Children’s Booker Prize

News of the Children’s Booker Prize has been met with enthusiasm from key figures across the books world, including a range of children’s authors and illustrators who have held the position of Waterstones Children’s Laureate, as well as the Publishers Association, the Booksellers Association and Waterstones.

Joseph Coelho, Children’s Laureate 2022-2024, says:

‘I’m incredibly excited by the announcement of the Children’s Booker Prize. This is a brilliant way to invite children into the world of words through a celebration of books, authors and illustrators. I fully welcome a robust prize that celebrates children’s literature in a manner equal to that which adult literature receives and one that makes essential space for the voice of the child.’

Cressida Cowell, Children’s Laureate 2019-2022, says:

‘I am hugely excited about the launch of the Children’s Booker Prize. Children are the toughest critics out there, so literature for children has to be created with the greatest expertise. It has to be exciting, adventurous, funny and wise. And the stakes are the highest they’ve ever been, because children have more competition for their time than ever before: children’s authors and illustrators are fighting for the survival of a medium. Thank you to the Booker for acknowledging that they’re doing this with world-class creativity, and for supporting us all in our quest to get all children reading for enjoyment.’

Chris Riddell, Children’s Laureate 2015-2017, says:

‘It is great news that the prestigious Booker Prizes will honour a children’s book. The books we read as children stay with us and shape our future tastes in literature. It is exciting that the Children’s Booker Prize will consider the children’s books it chooses holistically – not only for the excellence of their prose and storytelling but the beauty of their design and illustration.’

Malorie Blackman, Children’s Laureate 2013-2015, says:

‘The Children’s Booker Prize is a timely and very welcome addition to the children’s book world. Fundamental to the appeal of the prize is the fact that children are integral to the judging process. Children are an honest, discerning audience who deserve the very best stories and this award will highlight and celebrate the literary excellence to which they are entitled.’

Jacqueline Wilson, Children’s Laureate 2005-2007, says:

‘It’s a marvellous idea to have a Children’s Booker Prize. Now, more than ever, children’s books need a huge boost. It’s so dismaying that only 30% of today’s children enjoy reading for pleasure – and yet there are so many exciting and enjoyable children’s books out there, many sinking without trace. I think a Children’s Booker Prize, like the Booker Prizes for adult fiction, will become a talking point, signposting more children, parents, carers and teachers to the best new children’s literature. The prize will also be a level playing ground, so that new sparkling talented writers will have the same chance of winning the sizeable prize as well as long-established authors. Three cheers for such an exciting project!’

Michael Morpurgo, Children’s Laureate 2003-2005, says:

‘A Booker for children! Great news for children and books! And it comes at a moment when there is much anxiety about the enjoyment of reading amongst our young. A Booker Prize for children will stimulate interest and excitement in books amongst children and amongst grownup children too, shining a light on great writing for children, and crucially, bringing more children to a love of reading, which is such a critical pathway to knowledge and understanding. A truly welcome innovation for all of us, young and old alike. Bravo the Booker!’

Anne Fine, Children’s Laureate 2001-2003, says:

‘When it comes to book prizes we all say, The More The Merrier, and especially when it comes to writing for children, which has all too often been the overlooked Cinderella of the book world.’

Bea Carvalho, Head of Books at Waterstones, says:

‘The Booker Prizes provide us with two of the most prestigious and impactful moments in the bookselling calendar, reliably creating bestsellers and setting the literary tone for the year ahead. At a time when children’s reading for pleasure is so vital, when we should all be doing everything we can to help spark and maintain a love of books amongst the younger population, it is a huge joy that the Booker Prizes are adding a prize for young readers to their roster. Children’s authors deserve to be celebrated and this prize will be a gamechanger for any writers who are elevated by its shortlists. Everyone at Waterstones will look forward to championing the Children’s Booker Prize, and to working closely with the Booker Prize Foundation on reaching young readers everywhere.’

Fleur Sinclair, President of the Booksellers Association for the UK & Ireland and owner of Sevenoaks Bookshop, says:

‘I’m 100% here for anything that shines a light on the joy, wonder and delight of children’s books! We all have nostalgic favourites from our own childhoods, but I’m especially delighted to have a brilliant new platform for children’s authors writing right now, and their newly published books. The Booker Prize has a long legacy of championing noteworthy books for adult readers, so I’m excited to see whole families, the older members and soon the young as well, coming together to read and celebrate great new books uplifted by the Booker Prize spotlight.’

Dan Conway, CEO of the Publishers Association, says:

‘The decline in children’s reading for enjoyment is a tragedy and we should all be doing our best to turn that trend around. Going into the National Year of Reading in 2026, it is so important that authors, publishers, booksellers, prizes, reading charities and all those invested in solving this societal issue support and reinforce each other for the greatest impact possible. The fact that the Booker has stepped up to the plate with the launch of the Children’s Booker Prize is hugely exciting. A high-profile award for children’s fiction is a great opportunity to showcase some of the brilliant books available for children and it could not be launching at a more important time.’

The impact of the existing Booker Prizes

The Booker Prize, first awarded in 1969, is the leading literary award in the English-speaking world, and has brought recognition, reward and readership to outstanding fiction for over five decades.

The 2024 winner Orbital by Samantha Harvey sold over 20,000 print copies in the UK in the week following its win on 12 November 2024, making it the fastest selling winner of the Booker Prize since records began. It was the bestselling title in the UK that week, topping the Audible audio and Amazon physical and eBook charts. Sales through Waterstones were more than double the volume of each of the last decade’s winners, up 3,000% the day after the announcement.

The UK publisher of Orbital, Vintage, reprinted 250,000 copies in response to the sales demand following its Booker Prize win and it remained top of the mass market fiction chart for eight consecutive weeks. Total sales of Vintage’s edition of Orbital across all formats and including its export markets and exclusive territories (South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and India) are now almost 750,000. That includes 357,000 copies of the hardback and paperback editions sold in the UK, up 3,867% since the book’s longlisting. Translation rights deals increased from eight before Orbital’s longlisting to a current total of 44 territories.

The International Booker Prize, the world’s most influential award for translated fiction, continues to build in global importance each year. The winners can expect a worldwide readership and a significant increase in profile and sales, including in the author’s home country.

The announcement of the 2025 winner, Heart Lamp, written by Banu Mushtaq and translated by Deepa Bhasthi – the first collection of short stories to win the prize and the first translated from Kannada – was reported in over 1,826 news stories across 60 countries around the world in the week after its win and the winners’ speech had over 26 million views online. The book rapidly sold out in the UK in the subsequent days, with the UK publisher And Other Stories immediately reprinting 40,000 copies.

According to And Other Stories, sales of the paperback have increased by 351% since it won the International Booker Prize 2025. Prior to the winner announcement in May 2025, it had sold 5,100 copies in the UK; since, it has sold over 23,000 copies. Prior to its longlisting, translation rights to Heart Lamp had been sold in eight languages, including seven Indian subcontinent languages with a further two English rights sales (in addition to the UK, US and India); that has now increased to an additional 13 languages, including five new Indian subcontinent languages.

The prize has helped to drive a boom in translated fiction in the UK: according to the Bookseller, sales have doubled since the International Booker Prize launched in its current form nine years ago, with ‘roughly £1 in every £8 spent through NielsenIQ BookScan’s Fiction category over the past year … on a translated title’. This is largely down to younger readers, with almost half of translated fiction in the UK bought by under-35s. The prize’s influence also extends to other awards, with five authors – Han Kang, Jon Fosse, Annie Ernaux, Olga Tokarczuk, and László Krasznahorkai – recognised by the International Booker Prize going on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Nominated works for the Children’s Booker Prize could also enter into a tradition of Booker Prizes adaptations. More than 74 books that have been longlisted or shortlisted for the Booker or International Booker Prize have been adapted for the big or small screen over the years, with several going on to win Oscars, BAFTAS and Emmys. They range from The Remains of the Day to Atonement, Normal People to The Handmaid’s Tale, Wolf Hall to Life of Pi, True History of the Kelly Gang to The Line of Beauty, The Underground Railroad to Small Things Like These, Hurricane Season to Elena Knows, and in the last year, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Harvest, and Hot Milk.

Join over 28,000 global readers in the Booker Prize Book Club on Facebook and sign up to the Booker Prizes Substack.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce is a multi award-winning author, screenwriter and the Waterstones Children’s Laureate 2024-2026 (managed by BookTrust). Millions, his debut children’s novel, won the prestigious Carnegie Medal. His other books include Cosmic, Runaway Robot, The Wonder Brothers and many more which have been shortlisted for a multitude of prizes. Frank is also a highly successful screenwriter and along with Danny Boyle, he devised the Opening Ceremony for the London 2012 Olympics. Frank is a lifelong champion of children’s books. In 2023 he launched a successful podcast with Nadia Shireen, The Island of Brilliant!, celebrating writing and illustration for children of all ages.

The Booker Prizes exist to celebrate the world’s best fiction. The symmetrical relationship between the Booker Prize and the International Booker Prize ensures that the Booker honours fiction on a global basis: outstanding fiction is highlighted by the prizes for English-speaking readers, whether that work was originally written in English (the Booker Prize) or translated into English (the International Booker Prize). The addition of the Children’s Booker Prize, supported by AKO Foundation, which recognises the world’s best fiction for children – both originally written in English and translated into English – means that readers can now see the Booker Prizes as a partner for life.

AKO Foundation, based in London, was established in 2013 by Nicolai Tangen, a native Norwegian who had previously founded AKO Capital, an investment business. The Foundation makes charitable grants towards causes which improve education, promote the arts, and combat climate change.

The Booker Prize is the world’s most significant award for a single work of fiction. This year’s judges are chaired by critically acclaimed writer and 1993 Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle. Doyle, who is the first Booker Prize winner to chair a Booker judging panel, is joined by Booker Prize-longlisted novelist Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀; award-winning actor, producer and publisher Sarah Jessica Parker; writer, broadcaster and literary critic Chris Power; and New York Times bestselling and Booker Prize-longlisted author Kiley Reid. They are looking for the best work of long-form fiction by writers of any nationality, written in English and published in the UK and/or Ireland between 1 October 2024 and 30 September 2025. Find out about the Booker Prize 2025 shortlist at the thebookerprizes.com here.

The International Booker Prize began life in 2005 as a biennial prize in recognition of an author’s overall contribution to world literature, with no stipulation that their body of work should be written in a language other than English. The winners of the prize in this format were Ismail Kadare, Chinua Achebe, Alice Munro, Philip Roth, Lydia Davis and László Krasznahorkai.

In 2015, after the rules of the original Booker Prize expanded to allow writers of any nationality to enter – as long as their books were written in English and published in the UK and/or Ireland – the International Booker Prize evolved to become the mirror image of the English-language prize. Since then, it has been awarded annually for a work of fiction, written in another language and translated into English. Winning author and translators have included Han Kang and Deborah Smith, Olga Tokarczuk and Jennifer Croft, and David Diop and Anna Moschovakis, among many others. The shortlist also brings great acclaim and global recognition to authors, often serving as a talent pool for lifetime achievement awards. The past four winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature were recognised by the International Booker Prize first.

The judges for the International Booker Prize 2026 are chaired by critically acclaimed Booker Prize 2025 longlisted-author Natasha Brown, one of Granta’sBest of Young British Novelists. Brown is joined on the judging panel by: writer, broadcaster and Oxford University Professor of Mathematics and for the Public Understanding of Science Marcus du Sautoy; International Booker Prize-shortlisted translator Sophie Hughes; writer, Lolwe editor and bookshop owner Troy Onyango; and award-winning novelist and columnist Nilanjana S. Roy.

This year’s judges are looking for the best works of long-form fiction or collections of short stories translated into English and published in the UK and/or Ireland between 1 May 2025 and 30 April 2026. A longlist of 12 or 13 books will be announced on Tuesday, 24 February 2026, with a shortlist of six books to follow on Tuesday, 31 March 2026. The winning book will be announced at a ceremony in May 2026.

Since 2020, the Booker Prizes has undergone a digital transformation, building an in-house digital team and developing a strategy to expand the reach and appeal of the prizes far beyond traditional audiences, and create a wealth of content optimised for social media.

The website, thebookerprizes.com – supported by Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and Bluesky accounts, as well as a YouTube channel and a Substack newsletter – is a unique online space which showcases the almost-700 exceptional books that have won – or been longlisted or shortlisted for – the Booker Prize and International Booker Prize. The website aims to be an entertaining and illuminating content destination that combines practical information about the prizes past and present with fresh and original features to bring the books and their authors to life, including an ongoing Monthly Spotlight series, encouraging readers new and old to visit and revisit titles in the ‘Booker Library’. The website’s average monthly active users have risen by 310% since 2022.

Since 2020, the total number of social followers across all Booker Prizes platforms has risen by 571%, with annual social video views increasing by over 23,000% over the same period. Newsletter subscribers have risen by 1,320% since 2020.

The Booker Prize Book Club is a dedicated online community with over 28,000 members from all over the world, who come together to find out more about and discuss the year’s nominated titles, as well as the almost 700 titles in the Booker Library.

The Booker Prize Foundation is a registered charity (no 1090049) established in 2002. Its purpose is to inspire people to read the world’s best fiction, driven by a simple belief – that great fiction not only brings joy to millions, it has the power to change the way we think about the world. It is responsible for awarding the Booker Prize and the International Booker Prize. Other aspects of the Foundation’s work include the funding of Braille and audio editions of Booker Prize books through the RNIB, the annual UEA Booker Prize Foundation Scholarship, PEN Presents x the International Booker Prize, which supports and funds translators from the Global Majority, and Books Unlocked, a long-standing reading initiative in prisons. In 2023, the award-winning singer-songwriter Dua Lipa visited HMP Downview to join a Books Unlocked reading group.

Crankstart, a charitable foundation, is the exclusive funder of the Booker Prize and the International Booker Prize.

Booker Group Ltd, which sponsored the prize from 1969 to 2001, is the UK’s leading food and drink wholesaler. The Booker Prizes license their name from Booker Ltd, and Helen Williams, a representative from Booker, sits on the Advisory Committee.

24 Oct 2025

“Kanchhi” by Weena Pun

02 09 , 2025 No Comments

Nepali writer Weena Pun’s writings have appeared in Himal Southasian, the Kathmandu Post, The Record, “House of Snow: An Anthology of the Greatest Writing About Nepal”, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of Stanford University and the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Cornell University. Her debut novel “Kanchhi” is published by Hachette India.

It was a pleasure speaking with Weena Pun on TOI Bookmark.

Here is a snippet of our conversation:

“…it was not easy. It took me a lot of drafts to make it seem like the scenes wrote themselves. Language was a problem. If I had to write a dialect, I would write it in Nepali first in longhand, then I would later translate it and then go back and edit it to ensure that they flowed well. “

Spotify link is given below.

Book blurb

In the misty foothills of Torikhola, Kanchhi, the only child of her mother, Maiju, refuses to play by the stifling rules of her hamlet. She befriends boys, writes letters to them, and opposes the shame imposed on her swelling ambitions and curiosity. There is a life beyond the forlorn valleys and gorges, and Kanchhi is intrigued by the possibilities. One cold November morning she leaves home – with two bags and some millet bread Maiju prepares for her. That, however, is the last anybody sees of her.

Now, a decade after Kanchhi’s puzzling disappearance, echoes of her defiance grow thin. Life has moved on. For one, the civil war has arrived at the hamlet’s doorstep. And yet, much has remained still. Maiju lights a lamp in front of the gods and feverishly prays for her daughter’s return. And the villagers, uncertain of what befell Kanchhi, continue to debate. Did she run off, chasing the highs and lights of the big city? Or did the cruelties of the ongoing civil war engulf her whole?

In this impressively sure-footed debut, Weena Pun brings to life the political and social tremors stirring the valleys of Nepal at the turn of the millennium, as well as the tenacious, tragedy-riven women of the time. A delicate and finely wrought saga, Kanchhi is an intimate exploration of vulnerable girlhood in turbulent territories.

***

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 145+ 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.

Some of the authors who have been interviewed are: Banu Mushtaq, Deepa Bhashti, 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, 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, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Andrew Miller, Dr Rachel Clarke, and Annie Ernaux.

2 Sept 2025

Kavitha Rao’s books

22 08 , 2025 No Comments

Kavitha Rao is a London-based author and journalist. Her work has appeared in the Guardian, New York Times, South China Morning Post, Mint, The Hindu and various other publications. She is the bestselling author of Lady Doctors. Spies, Lies and Allies is her latest books and is published by Westland Books.

We spoke on TOI Bookmark regarding her Spies, Lies and Allies. Here is a snippet:

Well, you just sink yourself in it. I mean when you are writing historical fiction this book is curious because as you pointed out, it has won a couple of prizes for historical fiction and both those prizes have a rule which is that it has got to be set sixty years before the date of publication. So, we were just kind of over a line. I don’t claim to be an expert, there is a lot of smoke and mirror involved, you try to get a feel and a sense of what it might have been. So yes it is research, reading, and the kind of stuff a scholar might recognise, but we are not scholars.

Listen to our conversation on the Times of India website and 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 145+ 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: Banu Mushtaq, Deepa Bhashti, 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, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Dr Rachel Clarke, Charlotte Wood, Catherine Chidgey, Andrew Miller, Sam Dalrymple, and Annie Ernaux.

22 August 2025

“The Land in Winter” by Andrew Miller

13 08 , 2025 No Comments

Andrew Miller is longlisted for The Booker Prize 2025. His novel, “The Land in Winter”, is a gorgeous historical fiction set in the terrible winter of 1962/63. It has already won the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2025 and Winston Graham Historical Prize 2025.

I have always enjoyed reading his novels. So, it was a privilege to converse with him. A freewheeling conversation about historical fiction and writing.

Here is a snippet:

“Well, you just sink yourself in it. I mean when you are writing historical fiction this book is curious because as you pointed out, it has won a couple of prizes for historical fiction and both those prizes have a rule which is that it has got to be set sixty years before the date of publication. So, we were just kind of over a line. I don’t claim to be an expert, there is a lot of smoke and mirror involved, you try to get a feel and a sense of what it might have been. So yes it is research, reading, and the kind of stuff a scholar might recognise, but we are not scholars.”

We recorded this TOI Bookmark episode a few days before his longlisting for The Booker Prize was announced.

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 142+ 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: Banu Mushtaq, Deepa Bhashti, 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, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Dr Rachel Clark, Charlotte Wood, Catherine Chidgey, Andrew Miller, Sam Dalrymple, and Annie Ernaux.

Sam Dalrymple’s “Shattered Lands : Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia”

16 07 , 2025 No Comments

A history of modern South Asia told through five partitions that reshaped it.

As recently as 1928, a vast swathe of Asia–India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal, Bhutan, Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait–were bound together under a single imperial banner, an entity known officially as the ‘Indian Empire’, or more simply as the Raj.

It was the British Empire’s crown jewel, a vast dominion stretching from the Red Sea to the jungles of Southeast Asia, home to a quarter of the world’s population and encompassing the largest Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Zoroastrian communities on the planet. Its people used the Indian rupee, were issued passports stamped ‘Indian Empire’, and were guarded by armies garrisoned forts from the Bab el-Mandab to the Himalayas.

And then, in the space of just fifty years, the Indian Empire shattered. Five partitions tore it apart, carving out new nations, redrawing maps, and leaving behind a legacy of war, exile and division.

Shattered Lands, for the first time, presents the whole story of how the Indian Empire was unmade. How a single, sprawling dominion became twelve modern nations. How maps were redrawn in boardrooms and on battlefields, by politicians in London and revolutionaries in Delhi, by kings in remote palaces and soldiers in trenches.

Its legacies include civil wars in Burma and Sri Lanka, ongoing insurgencies in Kashmir, Baluchistan, Northeast India, and the Rohingya genocide. It is a history of ambition and betrayal, of forgotten wars and unlikely alliances, of borders carved with ink and fire. And, above all, it is the story of how the map of modern Asia was made.

Sam Dalrymple’s book is based on research that includes previously untranslated private memoirs, and interviews in English, Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi, Konyak, Arabic and Burmese. From portraits of the key political players to accounts of those swept up in these wars and mass migrations, including common people, Shattered Lands is an attempt to revisit a pivotal moment in the Indian subcontinent’s history. Ideally it should be remembered as a moment of independence from the British colonial power but increasingly, particularly, post-1984*, it is remembered as “Partition”. Whichever way it is seen, the fact remains that this is a time that has had a massive impact on the nations it spawned. If modern generations remembered it as a moment of independence, then the hope, joy and being self-reliant would be a legacy. Constantly remembering it as a moment of partition ( a truth understandably), continues to stoke the mills of hatred, othering, and communalism, across generations, instilling prejudices that are inherited but are now manifesting themselves in a monstrously virulent form. The judicious choice of words, particularly when put on paper, and how we choose to remember has a long term impact and should be selected with care. Nevertheless, Shattered Lands : Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia is a must read. It is published by HarperCollins India.

Read an extract from the book that was published on Moneycontrol.

I interviewed him for TOI Bookmark**. There is always so much to learn from these conversations that we record for TOI Bookmark. Sam Dalrymple is a new voice that has burst upon the scene with his debut non-fiction Shattered Lands: : Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia. It is published by HarperCollins India. In less than a month of its release on 19 June 2025, it has created a stir globally.

This was the first audio podcast that Sam Dalrymple recorded for his book. We had a freewheeling conversation about his book, his research methodology and the early reception to his book.

Here is a snippet from the conversation:

So, the story I wanted to tell is the story of how 100 years ago today India encompassed not just India and Pakistan as we know today but also encompassed twelve nation states. You have got Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and Myanmar. And the idea that this was just the whole of India for British administered purposes. You have very real consequences of all these people being given Indian passports and invited into the Indian Army etc. Such that in the 1920s, you have many Burmese politicians are Indian nationalists, as are Yemeni politicians. You have Yemenis considering themselves as Indians which is a thing that we have completely forgotten.

Here is the episode of TOI Bookmark on Spotify:

Sam Dalrymple is a Delhi-raised Scottish historian, film-maker and multimedia producer. He graduated from Oxford University as a Persian and Sanskrit scholar. In 2018, he co-founded Project Dastaan, a peace-building initiative that reconnects refugees displaced by the 1947 Partition of India. His debut film, Child of Empire, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2022 and his animated series, Lost Migrations, sold out at the British Film Institute the same year. His work has been published in the New York Times, Spectator and featured in TIME, The New Yorker and The Economist. He is a columnist for Architectural Digest and, in 2025, Travel & Leisure named him ‘Champion of the Travel Narrative’. Shattered Lands is his first book.

16 July 2025

*1984 is a significant year in modern Indian history as on 31 Oct 1984, the then prime minister, Indira Gandhi was shot dead by her security guards. It resulted in the worst communal riots that many parts of the country, especially the capital Delhi had witnessed. Many Sikhs were killed. The violence was unimaginable. The flag marches. The silence. The pieces of burnt paper fluttering down quietly on to roof tops and terraces while one could hear mobs on the rampage in the distance. Everywhere that one looked, there was only smoke spiralling upwards to be seen. It was a mere thirty-seven years after Indian independence achieved on 15 August 1947. So, there were still many living who remembered the events of 1947. Coincidentally, at this time, the state television, Doordarshan, broadcast the TV adapatation of Bhisham Sahni’s classic Tamas. The concatenation of events was ghastly. At the time, in the camps set up for the victims fleeing the mobs or whose homes and families had been destroyed in the violence, suddenly memories of the trauma of partition came out. These were recorded by many, many organisations and individuals. It was very new. It was being documented for the first time. It made sense to do so. Probably no one realised the long term consequences of entrapping history to a word and the way it should be viewed in one sense at the cost of another instead of as a balanced perspective. Now, 1947 is mostly remembered as “Partition” and not “Independence”. Sad, but true.

** 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. Till date, I have recorded more than 138+ sessions with Jnanpith, Padma Bhushan, and Padma Shree awardees, International Booker Prize winners, Booker Prize winners, Women’s Prize for Fiction and Non-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: Banu Mushtaq, Deepa Bhashti, 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, Viet Thanh Nguyen, William Dalrymple, Abdulrazak Gurnah, and Annie Ernaux.

TOI Bookmark: Murzban Shroff

07 07 , 2025 No Comments

Murzban Shroff is a Mumbai-based writer. He has published his fiction with over 75 literary journals in the U.S. and UK. His stories have appeared in innumerable literary journals such as The Gettysburg Review, The Minnesota Review, The Saturday Evening Post, Chicago Tribune, LitMag, Manoa, and World Literature Today. He is the recipient of the John Gilgun Fiction Award and the Bacopa Review Fiction Award. He holds seven Pushcart Prize nominations, among the most honoured short story prizes in the U.S.

His story collection, Breathless in Bombay, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in the best debut category from Europe and South Asia, and rated by the Guardian as among the ten best Mumbai books. His novel, Waiting for Jonathan Koshy, was a finalist for the Horatio Nelson Fiction Prize and has been published in India, China, and the U.S. His India collection, Third Eye Rising, featured on the Esquire list of Best Books of 2021.

Shroff’s latest book, Muses Over Mumbai, a collection of 17 full-length stories, has received glowing endorsements from male writers such as Salman Rushdie, Jonathan Franzen, Robert Olen Butler, Ben Fountain, Amit Chaudhuri, and Jeet Thayil. It is published by Bloomsbury India.

I interviewed him on TOI Bookmark. Here is a snippet from the conversation:

I reserve the short story form for my issue-based fiction because I feel that when I am covering a territory like Mumbai, it is very difficult to have an overarching theme and weave it into a single piece of work. I feel Mumbai works best as a polyphony of class and cultures. There are multiple issues working at multiple levels; how do you best represent the diversity. Let me expand a bit on that, Jaya. If you look at Muses of Mumbai it has seventeen stories, out of which two are almost novellas, which means that they are about 15-17,000 words. Now each story is completely different from the other, not only in terms of subject matter and characters but also socio-economics and in terms of writing styles. Some I have used elements like memoir writing, used elements like essay, like whimsy. So the styles themselves represent the diversity and that is why I think the short story form works marvellously because short story is a marvellously promiscuous form of writing.

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. Till date, I have recorded more than 138+ sessions with Jnanpith, Padma Bhushan, and Padma Shree awardees, International Booker Prize winners, Booker Prize winners, Women’s Prize for Fiction and Non-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: Banu Mushtaq, Deepa Bhashti, 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, Viet Thanh Nguyen, William Dalrymple, Abdulrazak Gurnah, and Annie Ernaux.

7 July 2025

TOI Bookmark: Profs. Anjali Nerlekar and Ulka Anjaria

07 07 , 2025 No Comments

Anjali Nerlekar is Associate Professor at Rutgers University, and coeditor of Modernism/ Modernity. Most recently, she co-edited the Oxford Handbook of Modern Indian Literatures in 2024. She is the author of Bombay Modern: Arun Kolatkar and Bilingual Literary Culture (NUP, 2016; Speaking Tiger, 2017), and has also coedited a special double issue of Journal of Postcolonial Writing on “The Worlds of Bombay Poetry” and a special issue of South Asia: A Journal of South Asian Studies on “Postcolonial Archives.” She also continues the work of building “The Bombay Poets’ Archive” at the Rare Manuscripts Collection at Cornell University. Her research interests include Her research interests include multilingual Indian modernisms; modern Marathi literature; Indian English literature; Indo-Caribbean literature; translation studies; Caribbean and postcolonial studies; and Indian print culture.

Ulka Anjaria is Professor of English and Barbara Mandel Professor of Humanities at Brandeis University. She is also Director of the Mandel Center for the Humanities at Brandeis. Her research interests include South Asian literature and film, realism, and the global novel. She is the author of Realism in the Twentieth-Century Indian Novel: Colonial Difference and Literary Form (2012), Reading India Now: Contemporary Formations in Literature and Popular Culture (2019), and Understanding Bollywood: The Grammar of Hindi Cinema (2021), along with essays and chapters in several journals and volumes. She is the editor of A History of the Indian Novel in English (2015) and co-editor (with Anjali Nerlekar) of The Oxford Handbook of Modern Indian Literatures (2024). She is currently working on a monograph tentatively titled Bad Mothers, on gender, caste, and modernism in 20^th-century Indian literature.

Recently, they co-edited The Oxford Handbook of Modern Indian Literatures (Oxford Handbooks), published in India by Oxford University Press.

The Oxford Handbook of Modern Indian Literatures refutes the Anglocentrism of much literary criticism of the global South by examining “Indian Literature” as a multilingual, dialogic, and plural space constituted by both continuities and divergences. In forty-three chapters and with a team of scholars who exemplify the method of historically situated and theoretically rigorous literary criticism, this volume shows how the idea of Indian literature is a relational and comparative concept. Through readings of a vast diversity of multilingual literature in a range of genres, the chapters highlight contact zones and interchanges across seemingly sedimented boundaries. The Handbook provides an overview of the current state of modern Indian writing and features a range of texts and approaches from across India’s many languages and literary traditions, examining and amplifying recent critical attention to the multilingualism that is at the base of any curation of what could be termed, with qualification, “Indian Literatures.” The book ranges from the 19th century to the 21st, with especial focus on the centrality of gender and caste to Indian modernism and new generic formations such as graphic novels, autofiction, and videogames.

It was a pleasure speaking with the two professors on TOI Bookmark. Here is a snippet from the conversation:

One of the conversations we had when we went to India and talked to students about this book in September [2024], one of the questions students had was how can you subsume, and this was an example, how can you subsume Tamil Modernism under India? So we tried to explain as if we already know the term what India is? But in the actual chapters and in the actual work follows, its gets queried, dismantled, reformulated. For example, Tamil Modernism or the question of Tamil is featured here but then we also talk about Tamil in Sri Lanka and Tamil in Singapore. A chapter goes across India and Singapore. The border, contact zones of the borders is another concept that we always kept in mind. This idea of relationality and contact zones from which we started looking at the idea of what it is that is Indian or what that it is modern for example?

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 138+ 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: Banu Mushtaq, Deepa Bhashti, 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, Viet Thanh Nguyen, William Dalrymple, Abdulrazak Gurnah, and Annie Ernaux.

7 July 2025

TOI Bookmark podcast with Andaleeb Wajid

02 07 , 2025 No Comments

Andaleeb Wajid is a hybrid author, having published nearly 50 novels in the past 15 years. Andaleeb enjoys writing in a number of different genres such as young adult, romance, and horror. Andaleeb’s YA novel “Asmara’s Summer” was adapted for screen to become “Dil, Dosti, Dilemma” on Amazon Prime and other works are in the process of being optioned or adapted. Her YA novel, “The Henna Start-up” is the winner of the Neev Literature Festival Award 2024, Crossword Book Award 2024, and TOI Auther Award 2025, along with receiving honourable mention at the BK Awards, 2024.

She recently published her moving memoir “Learning to Make Tea for One: Reflections on Love, Loss and Healing”, published by Speaking Tiger Books.

I have known Andaleeb for years. It is absolutely marvellous to witness her growth as an author year on year. Hence, recording an episode of TOI Bookmark was extra special.

Here is a snippet from the conversation:

I really enjoy writing fiction. So, nonfiction as a rule I don’t like to approach. But this was different because I have also put so much of myself into the book. Which was why it was so difficult to write. When I write fiction I do tend to put parts of myself into the book but those are very miniscule parts. And this book took huge chunks of me. And I think it was supposed to be healing but at that time it did not feel that way. Now maybe in a couple of months I will be able to look at it.

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 138+ 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: Banu Mushtaq, Deepa Bhashti, 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, Viet Thanh Nguyen, William Dalrymple, Abdulrazak Gurnah, and Annie Ernaux.

2 July 2025

“A Man of Two Faces” by Viet Thanh Nguyen

16 06 , 2025 No Comments

Award-winning writer and academic Viet Thanh Nguyen is a name that many in the literary world are familiar with. As a Vietnamese-American, he is acutely aware of his two identities and the histories he carries within himself. This is one of the recurring themes of his memoir, A Man of Two Faces. He has written plenty of books, most notably his Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2016 The Sympathiser. It was recently turned into a TV series with Park Chan-wook and Robert Downey Jr. His books are published in India by Hachette India.

In 2023-24, Viet Thanh Nguyen delivered the prestigious Norton Lectures. In the lectures as well as in the discussions that follow, he addresses many of the aspects of being an immigrant in the USA that are at the heart of his moving memoir A Man of Two Faces.

We have recorded more than 134 episodes of TOI Bookmark. Each one is special and memorable. Every conversation is unique. It was an honour and a privilege to record this episode with Viet Thanh Nguyen. He is exceptionally busy with a demanding schedule. Yet, once we had figured out a mutually convenient time to record, across time zones, days and dates, he was immensely courteous and gave us his focussed attention. It did not seem as if he had been in back-to-back meetings/interviews during the day. It was Memorial Weekend in the USA, but he was working.

It was a fascinating conversation about reading and writing memoirs while discussing his book A Man of Two Faces. Also, how he had to think through himself, think through the history of his family that he was dealing with, and think through the language he was going to use.

Read an extract from the book published on Moneycontrol.

Incidentally, 30 April 2025 marked fifty years since the conclusion of the Vietnam War.

Listen to the podcast 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 134+ 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, Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 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 Bhashti, 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, Viet Thanh Nguyen, William Dalrymple, Abdulrazak Gurnah, and Annie Ernaux.

16 June 2025

“Apple in China” by Patrick Mcgee

06 06 , 2025 No Comments

‘Absolutely riveting’ Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads
‘Disturbing and enlightening’ Chris Miller, author of Chip War
‘Hugely important’ Rana Foroohar, author of Makers and Takers
‘A once-in-a-generation read’ Robert D. Kaplan, author of Waste Land

As Trump wages a tariff war with China, seeking to boost domestic electronics manufacturing, this book offers an unparalleled insight into why his strategy is embarrassingly naïve.

Apple isn’t just a brand; it’s the world’s most valuable company and creator of the 21st century’s defining product. The iPhone has revolutionized the way we live, work and connect. But Apple is now a victim of its own success, caught in the middle of a new Cold War between two superpowers.

On the brink of bankruptcy in 1996, Apple adopted an outsourcing strategy. By 2003 it was lured to China by the promise of affordable, ubiquitous labour. As the iPod and iPhone transformed Apple’s fortunes, their sophisticated production played a seminal role in financing, training, supervising and supplying Chinese manufacturers – skills Beijing is now weaponizing against the West.

Investigative journalist Patrick McGee draws on 200 interviews with former Apple executives and engineers to reveal how Cupertino’s choice to anchor its supply chain in China has increasingly made it vulnerable to the regime’s whims. Both an insider’s historical account and a cautionary tale, Apple in China is the first history of Apple to go beyond the biographies of its top executives and set the iPhone’s global domination within an increasingly fraught geopolitical context.

Read an extract from the book on Moneycontrol. The book has been published by Simon & Schuster India.

Listen to our conversation on TOI Bookmark* podcast.

Review

‘Apple is more than the world’s greatest company. It is integral to the whole culture of globalisation. Patrick McGee not only narrates the epic history of Apple, but explains how, in effect, it got taken over by China, the world’s greatest illiberal power. To call this book a page-turner is almost to diminish its importance. It is a once-in-a-generation read‘ — Robert D. Kaplan, author of the New York Times bestseller The Revenge of Geography and the forthcoming Waste Land: A World in Permanent Crisis, and Robert Strausz-Hupé Chair in Geopolitics at the Foreign Policy Research Institute

‘Absolutely riveting. An extraordinary story, expertly told – and one that has important implications for Apple, for tech and for global geoeconomics.’ — Peter Frankopan, Professor of Global History at Oxford and author of the bestselling The Silk Roads

‘Deeply researched, disturbing and enlightening, Apple in China reveals how Apple enabled China’s rise, seemingly at the cost of its own future. In these pages we watch as the world’s most profitable company gets outmaneuvered by the world’s most powerful dictator. Using an impressively broad palette, McGee paints a picture of Apple CEO Tim Cook resolutely trying to save costs by placing nearly all of the company’s advanced manufacturing base in Beijing’s grip, only to find it impossible to wriggle free’ — Chris Miller, New York Times bestselling author of Chip War

‘A masterpiece of investigative journalism, replete with revelations. Every iPhone owner will want to read this book, but no Apple employee will risk being seen with it. McGee shows how China played the long game, convincing Apple to invest on an unprecedented scale and, inadvertently, help build its grand authoritarian project. This book is a warning for anyone eager to do business in hostile countries.’ — Geoffrey Cain, author of Samsung Rising and The Perfect Police State, and a former sanctions investigator for the US Congress

‘There is little doubt that Big Tech companies – like the world’s richest and most influential one, Apple – wield as much power as many nation states. But what’s less well known is how these companies are themselves manipulated by the Chinese state for its own economic and political ends. In this hugely important new book, Patrick McGee shows us how Apple’s quest for wealth and power in China may in the end be the undoing both of the company and of America’s quest for technology supremacy’ — Rana Foroohar, Financial Times Global Business Columnist, CNN Global Economic Analyst, and author of Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business

‘A tour-de-force account of how the world’s most influential company empowered the inexorable rise of the regime that now shapes its – and our – future. Paced like a thriller and spanning the years from before Steve Jobs’s fateful decision to outsource production to more recent times which shine a fresh spotlight on Tim Cook’s careful wooing of Donald Trump, Apple in China captures every twist and turn of the tech giant’s off-kilter and decidedly off-script relationship with the authoritarian state. What will surprise many is how China ensnared a corporate titan by matching and then surpassing its knack for ruthless efficiency and global dominance’ — Megan Murphy, former Editor in Chief of Bloomberg BusinessWeek

‘A masterful and deeply reported portrayal of how Apple gained China and lost its soul’ — Isaac Stone Fish, author of America Second and CEO of Strategy Risks

Patrick McGee has been a journalist with the Financial Times since 2013, reporting from Hong Kong, Germany, and California. He led the FT’s Apple coverage from 2019 to 2023 and won a San Francisco Press Club Award for his deep dive into Apple’s HR problems. Previously, he was a bond reporter at The Wall Street Journal in New York. He has a Master’s in Global Diplomacy from SOAS, University of London, and a degree in Religious Studies from the University of Toronto. He resides in the Bay Area with his wife and two daughters.

6 June 2025

*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 142+ 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: Banu Mushtaq, Deepa Bhashti, 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, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Dr Rachel Clark, Charlotte Wood, Catherine Chidgey, Andrew Miller, Sam Dalrymple, and Annie Ernaux.

Annie Ernaux Posts