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.
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.
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.
‘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 Chinacaptures 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.
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!
