Harper Collins India Posts

“How We Grow Up : Understanding Adolescence” by Matt Richtel

23 08 , 2025 No Comments

The transition from childhood to adulthood is a natural, evolution-honed cycle that now faces radical change and challenge. The adolescent brain, sculpted for this transition over eons of evolution, confronts a modern world that creates so much social pressure as to regularly exceed the capacities of the evolving mind. The problem comes as a bombardment of screen-based information pelts the brain just as adolescence is undergoing a second key change: puberty is hitting earlier. The result is a neurological mismatch between an ultra-potent environment and a still-maturing brain that can lead to anxiety, depression, and other mental health challenges. It is a crisis that is part of modern life but can only be truly grasped through a broad, grounded lens of the biology of adolescence itself. Through this lens, Richtel shows us how adolescents can understand themselves, and parents and educators can better help.

For decades, this transition to adulthood has been defined by hormonal shifts that trigger the onset of puberty. But Richtel takes us where science now understands so much of the action is: the brain. A growing body of research that looks for the first time into budding adult neurobiology explains with untold clarity the emergence of the “social brain,” a craving for peer connection, and how the behaviors that follow pave the way for economic and social survival. This period necessarily involves testing—as the adolescent brain is programmed from birth to take risks and explore themselves and their environment—so that they may be able to thrive as they leave the insulated care of childhood.

Richtel, diving deeply into new research and gripping personal stories, offers accessible, scientifically grounded answers to the most pressing questions about generational change. What explains adolescent behaviors, risk-taking, reward-seeking, and the ongoing mental health crisis? How does adolescence shape the future of the species? What is the nature of adolescence itself?

Matt Richtel is a health and science reporter at the New York Times. He spent nearly two years reporting on the teenage mental-health crisis for the paper’s acclaimed multipart series Inner Pandemic, which won first place in public-health reporting from the Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism and inspired his book How We Grow Up: Understanding Adolescence. He received the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for a series of articles about distracted driving, which he expanded into his first nonfiction book, A Deadly Wandering, a New York Times bestseller. His second non-fiction book, An Elegant Defense, on the human immune system, was a national bestseller and chosen by Bill Gates for his annual Summer Reading List.

“The CIA Book Club: The Best Kept Secret of the Cold War”

18 08 , 2025 No Comments

The CIA Book Club: The Best Kept Secret of the Cold War by Charlie English is an extraordinary book. It is the account of the CIA Book Club that ran for decades. It’s sole purpose was to get literature and provide support to people in Eastern Bloc.

Charlie English began writing this book in January 2020 and spent nearly five years on it. The research entailed interviewing many of the people involved in running this programme, particularly in Poland, where it was most successful. He interviewed many people and accessed whatever declassified documents that he could, although many are still inaccessible. He even managed to speak to some former CIA personnel but was only offered as much information as they could legally provide.

The CIA Book Club argues that the cultural and ideological warfare that the CIA promoted via the books programme enabled the fall of the Iron Curtain and crumbling of the former communist countries. There are incredible titbits in this book that could have only been gained by having numerous conversations and with people remembering what they did, saw, and experienced. This is not a book that is based on dry documentation and research and trawling big data. In fact, one of the interviewees remarked that Charlie English’s interviewing style reminded them of the communist-era interrogation! Anyway, it was worth it if it meant unearthing a slice of history that was largely hidden. Another fact that was amusing was because the state and its secret police were misogynistic, they could not believe that women could be recruited in political activism or participate in underground publishing and dissemination of newspapers and books. So, even when facing leading women activists of the movement, the police would ignore them and mostly arrest the men. As a result, the programme thrived since the women were free to pursue whatever they wished to.

I spoke to Charlie Englishi earlier today for TOI Bookmark. The conversation will be uploaded on Spotify as soon as possible.

18 August 2025

“Great Eastern Hotel” by Ruchir Joshi

15 08 , 2025 No Comments

Ruchir Joshi spent twenty-five years writing this novel. It is meant to be read in the leisurely manner that it seems to have been written in. It is a history of Calcutta captured beautifully in words. The reader has to immerse themselves completely in it to get a sense of the landscape or even the characters. It is a very Bengali bhadra kind of literature. Hard to describe it to those who do not understand what “bhadra” is. Loosely put, cultured, Western upbringing while hanging on to your local cultural roots. An elegant balancing act between two cultures and yet making it your own. There will be something in this novel for everyone to appreciate but for me, it is Ruchir’s writing on food. He is always brilliant on food as is evident in the column he writes or his social media posts and it shows even in the novel. Worth savouring!

The Great Eastern Hotel is a history of Calcutta of the past, captured in words but with the eye of a filmmaker.

15 August 2025

“The Art of War and Peace : The Changing Face of 21st Century Warfare” by Dr David Kilcullen & Dr Greg Mills

03 08 , 2025 No Comments

How have the character and technology of war changed in recent times?
Why does battlefield victory often fail to result in a sustainable peace?
What is the best way to prevent, fight and resolve future conflict?

The world is becoming a more dangerous place. Since the fall of Kabul and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the US-led liberal international order is giving way to a more chaotic and contested world system. Western credibility and deterrence are diminishing in the face of wars in Europe and the Middle East, tensions across the Taiwan Strait, and rising populism and terrorism around the world. Can peace, mutual respect and democracy survive, or are we destined to a permanent chaos in which authoritarians and populists thrive?

Using decades of experience as policy advisors in conflicts in Iraq and across Africa, and on recent fieldwork in Israel and Taiwan, the authors analyse the nature of modern war, considering state-on-state and intra-state conflicts. They investigate how technology can be a leveller for small powers against larger aggressors and the role of leadership, diplomacy and economic assistance.

Weighing up past lessons, present observations and predictions about the future, The Art of War and Peace explores how wars can be won on the battlefield and how that success can be translated into a stable and enduring peace.

Sir Nick Carter, former UK Chief of Defence Staff says in his foreword:

“The strategic content is increasingly complex, dynamic and competitive. The free world, and the multilateral system that has assured our security and stability for several generations, are facing ever increasing and -proliferating threats from resurgent authoritarian powers, hostile alliances and non-state actors.

These threats blend old elements — competition for resources, territory and political power — with new approaches. Our rivals engage in a continuous struggle involving all the instruments of statecraft, ranging from what we call peace to the threat of nuclear war. Their strategy of ‘political warfare’ is designed to undermine cohesion to erode economic, political and social resilience, and to challenge our strategic position in key regions of the world.

…

The pervasiveness of information and the pace of technological change are transforming the character of warfare. Old distinctions between ‘peace’ and ‘war’, between ‘public’ and ‘private’, between ‘foreign’ and ‘domestic’, and between ‘state’ and ‘non-state’ are increasingly out of date. The triumph of the narrative increasingly determines defeat or victory.

….

[The authors comprise of] an American-Australian and a South African…a metaphor for the international cooperation necessary by which the efforts of good people can success over evil. …I had the privilege of working with both of them in Afghanistan, two men who care deeply about ending conflict, both brave to a fault.

This is a book about strategy, about how to plan, prevent and fight modern wars and, once the fighting has stopped, how to win the peace. It is a book about how to re-establish deterrence, a product of assiduous planning, painstaking training, selfless sacrifice and enlightened allies.

For there are no instant wins in standing up to authoritarianism.

…

Read an extract from the book on Moneycontrol. It is published by HarperCollins India.

Martin Niemoller, the German theologian and pastor, is best known for his opposition to the Nazi regime and his 1946 poem on the dangers of inaction in the face of terror: “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me — and then there was no one left to speak for me.”

Dr. David Kilcullen is Professor of International and Political Studies at the University of New South Wales, Canberra, Professor of Practice at Arizona State University, and CEO of the geopolitical risk analysis firm Cordillera Applications Group. He is a leading theorist and practitioner of guerrilla and unconventional warfare, counterinsurgency and counterterrorism and the author of five prize-winning books. He was awarded the 2015 Walkley Award (Australia’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize) for longform journalism for his war reporting on the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Dr Greg Mills heads the Johannesburg-based Brenthurst Foundation, established in 2005 by the Oppenheimer family to strengthen African economic performance. He holds degrees from the Universities of Cape Town (BA Hons) and Lancaster (MA cum laude, and PhD), and was, first, the Director of Studies and then the National Director of the SA Institute of International Affairs from 1994-2005. He is the author of the best-selling books Why Africa Is Poor and Africa’s Third Liberation. His writings won him the Recht Malan Prize for Non-Fiction Work in South Africa.

3 August 2025

“Naaga : Discovering the Extraordinary World of Serpent Worship” by K. Hari Kumar

22 07 , 2025 No Comments

Naaga arrived today, courtesy the publisher, Harper Collins India. It is being released on 25 July 2025.

Book blurb:

Who are the naagas and sarpas, the divine serpents of Indian mythology?

What secrets lie within their mythical realm, Naagaloka?

What is the nagamani, and what myths surround its legendary power?

K. Hari Kumar combines meticulous research with vivid storytelling to uncover the cultural, spiritual, and historical significance of serpent worship in India.

Drawing connections with belief systems across the subcontinent, Naaga offers a fascinating exploration of shared truths, striking contrasts, and the enduring reverence for these animals.

Embark on a journey into a world where serpents are protectors, adversaries and symbols of divine power-deities that continue to inspire awe and devotion in India’s spiritual consciousness.

K. Hari Kumar is a bestselling Indian author, screenwriter and filmmaker. With an impressive track record of being one of India’s top genre writers, his stories rooted in Indian folklore and mythology have captivated readers across the subcontinent.

K Hari Kumar’s collection of horror short stories, India’s Most Haunted – Tales of Terrifying Places, published by HarperCollins India is one of the highest selling horror story books in India. The Times Of India deemed it as a must-read horror book, and it was also listed in HarperCollins India’s hundred best books written by Indian authors. The Malayalam translation of India’s Most Haunted was published as Indiayile Prethalayangal by Mathrubhumi Books in March 2022. The book will be soon translated into Hindi as well. He wrote the honourary foreword for FlameTree Publishing’s anthology titled Asian Ghost Stories (UK, Simon & Schuster).

In addition to his accomplishments in literature, K. Hari Kumar has made notable contributions to the world of cinema as a screenwriter and creative consultant. His novel The Other Side of Her received critical acclaim when adapted into the web series Bhram, featuring the talented Kalki Koechlin. As a filmmaker, he has directed two short films, a documentary, a music video and the cinematic trailer of his books. K. Hari is also an international award nominated photographer. His photographs have featured on covers of his books.

Educated in Gurugram, K. Hari Kumar holds a B.Tech in Information Technology and a B.A in English Literature, highlighting his diverse academic background. He currently resides in Pune with spouse, where he continues to fuel his creative pursuits. Hari is currently working on a series of books on folk mythology that will be published by HarperCollins.

22 July 2025

“The Buddha’s Path to Awakening” Edited and translated from Pali to English by Sarah Shaw

21 06 , 2025 No Comments

The Buddha as man, animal, and god on the path to enlightenment.

According to ancient traditions, it takes countless lifetimes to become a Buddha. The Buddha’s own path to complete awakening was chronicled in five hundred and forty-seven stories known as the jātakas, which underwent numerous adaptations in the centuries after the Buddha’s lifetime. In the fifth or sixth century CE, in the region known as present-day Sri Lanka, an anonymous author wrote an introduction to these, recounting the history of a vow that prompted this great quest. This narrative, titled Jātakanidāna in Pali, preserves the oral traditions about the Bodhisatta, the one destined to become a Buddha in his final life. The text also functioned for centuries as a gateway to other early Buddhist teachings, offering valuable insights into the Buddha’s journey toward enlightenment.

The story begins when, in one of his lives as an ascetic named Sumedha, the Buddha vows to delay his own awakening until he can guide others toward their release from the cycle of rebirth. This vow sets him on a long series of lives—as man, animal, and god. At the culmination of his spiritual journey, he recalls his past lives, his teachings, and the establishment of the monastic community that would preserve and spread these teachings.

The Buddha’s Path to Awakening has become one of the most significant biographical works in the Buddhist tradition. This volume presents a new, authoritative translation, accompanied by the original Pali text.

It has been published by Murty Classical Library / Harper Collins India.

Sarah Shaw is a faculty member in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford.

21 June 2025

“The Questions of Milinda”, translated from Pali into English by Maria Heim

21 06 , 2025 No Comments

A Greek king and a Buddhist monk engage in a transformational philosophical dialogue.

The legendary conversation between the Greek King Milinda, traditionally identified as Menander, and the Buddhist monk Nagasena is believed to have taken place after Alexander’s campaign in India. The earliest versions of this dialogue originate from the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent, known as Greater Gandhara, where Buddhism had taken root as early as the reign of Emperor Ashoka in the third century BCE. While the historical authenticity of this exchange remains uncertain, the dialogue―known in Pali as Milindapañha―has endured for over two millennia and is regarded as one of the most revered texts in Theravada Buddhism.

Throughout their conversation, Milinda and Nagasena explore fundamental questions about the nature of the world, kingship, and the sources of knowledge. Milinda’s probing inquiries drive the dialogue, while Nagasena offers insights grounded in Buddhist teachings, gradually transforming the Greek king from a curious skeptic into a committed Buddhist.

This edition, published by Murty Classical Library of India / Harper Collins India, features a modern English translation of one of the most renowned works of ancient Buddhist philosophy, alongside the original Pali text.

Maria Heim is George Lyman Crosby 1896 & Stanley Warfield Crosby Professor in Religion at Amherst College.

21 June 2025

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

21 06 , 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.

The book has been published by Harper Collins India.

Read an extract from the book on Moneycontrol.

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.

21 June 2025

Jeet Thayil’s “The Elsewhereans: A Documentary Novel”

16 06 , 2025 No Comments

Jeet Thayil’s new novel The Elsewhereans: A Documentary Novel is being released by HarperCollins India on 23 June 2025. Jeet has been incredibly prolific in the past few months. He has published two volumes of poems including his stupendous collection I’ll have it Here. There are poems in this volume that bear witness to our new world. Jeet’s poetry is outstanding. The rhythm and performance element are pitch perfect with the words he finds to express his emotions. Hence, his novels are equally fascinating. Always expect the unexpected from Jeet where prose is concerned.

Here is the Spotify link to the TOI Bookmark podcast that I recorded with Jeet earlier this year.

I have just received an advance copy of his novel from the publishers and look forward to reading it asap.

‘Mercurial, witty, luminous’ – DEVIKA REGE

‘Thayil’s masterpiece’ – WILLIAM DALRYMPLE

Jeet Thayil’s The Elsewhereans is a genre-defying novel that melds fiction, travelogue, memoir, a ghost story, a family saga, photographs and much else into a tale that unfolds across continents and decades.

From the backwaters of Kerala to the streets of Bombay, Hong Kong, Paris and beyond, Thayil maps the restless lives of those shaped by separation – both the ones who leave and the ones left behind.

A hypnotic meditation on migration, loss, and the fragile threads of identity from one of the most brilliant voices in contemporary literature, The Elsewhereans is a novel of retrieval and reinvention – an elegy for vanished worlds, and a reckoning with the histories we inherit.

‘The Elsewhereans is a wonderfully rich evocation of the era of decolonization and non-alignment, and the peripatetic lives and multiple perspectives that it made possible. Reading it, I felt like I was meeting many ghosts from my own past.’ AMITAV GHOSH

‘Like the “river of three rivers” at its heart, The Elsewhereans surges forward in multiple narrative currents: autofiction, Kunstlerroman, mourning diary. Dispensing with conventional notions of plot, Thayil draws on real and imagined archives, testimonies and anecdotes to trace the wanderings of a family from Kerala to places as disparate as Bombay, Hanoi, Paris, Elmau and Algeciras. But it is above all his sentences – mercurial, witty, luminous – that pull us through each new and unexpected encounter. The result is a hauntingly lyrical meditation on migration, belonging and grief. The Elsewhereans is Thayil at his finest yet.’ DEVIKA REGE

‘How can a book so melancholy also be so exhilarating? The Elsewhereans blurs timezones and timelines as it traces the wanderings of a family across rivers and oceans, across silences and stories. It is equally attentive to the politics of nation-building and family caretaking. The centre of this dazzling spiral novel is deep love, examined with ruthless poetic precision, and found to be flawed but essential for survival.’ SHAHNAZ HABIB

‘Jeet Thayil just keeps getting better and better: this is writing of great skill and precision, charm and warmth, beauty and wit, taut as a coiled spring, laced with pin-sharp, pitch-perfect dialogue. The Elsewhereans could well be Thayil’s masterpiece.’ WILLIAM DALRYMPLE

Jeet Thayil is a poet, novelist, librettist and musician. He was born into a Syrian Christian family in Kerala. As a boy, he travelled through much of the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia with his father, T.J.S. George, a writer and editor. He worked as a journalist for twenty-one years in Bombay, Bangalore, Hong Kong and New York City. In 2005, he began to write fiction. The first instalment of his Bombay Trilogy, Narcopolis, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, won the DSC Prize, and became a bestseller. His book of poems These Errors Are Correct won the Sahitya Akademi Award. His musical collaborations include the opera Babur in London. His essays, poetry and short fiction have appeared in The New York Review of Books, Granta, TLS, Esquire, The London Magazine, The Guardian and The Paris Review, among other venues. Jeet Thayil’s most recent book of poems is I’ll Have It Here.

16 June 2025

“Mumbai’s Most Wanted” by Madhukar Zende and Jai Vijaya Madhukar Zende

13 06 , 2025 No Comments

It is the 1970s. Mumbai is in the underworld’s vice grip. Film stars, businessmen, traders and the common man-no one is safe from the mafia’s greed and wrath. But a determined, intelligent and no-nonsense policeman is about to bring them to justice … without ever firing a single bullet.

Assistant Commissioner of Police (Retd) Madhukar B. Zende is best-known for his sensational arrest of the serial murderer Charles Sobhraj, aka the Serpent. He is also lauded for successfully managing the violent riots in Mumbai that broke out in the aftermath of the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1993, and ushering in an era of peace.

But Zende has many more stories of crime and justice under his belt, and in this book, he gives readers a glimpse into what it meant to be a cop in the seventies and eighties. From the puzzling case of the murder of Shanta Devi to the kidnapping of a famous movie mogul to the capture of dark luminaries like Arun Gawli, Karim Lala, Haji Mastan and Babu Reshim, Mumbai’s Most Wanted is a riveting account of a supercop who brought some of the city’s most dreaded villains to their knees.

The book extract is taken from Madhukar Zende’s account of capturing Charles Sobhraj for the second time in his career. It is published on Moneycontrol. It has been published by HarperCollins India.

Madhukar Bapurao Zende served in the Mumbai Police from 1959 to 1996. Over an illustrious career, he became the first officer to win a Police Medal for Meritorious Service and a President’s Medal for Distinguished Service in successive years. He now spends his time between the homes of his three children and in Pune. Hours of exercise, intensely tough sudokus, cooking, and meeting family and friends are his passions. This is his first book. He was assisted in its writing by his son, Jai Vijaya Madhukar Zende.

13 June 2025

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