The Hindu on Books newsletter: Savarkar’s words, International Booker Prize buzz, book on Golwalkar and more

Welcome to this edition of The Hindu on Books Newsletter. The longlist of the International Booker Prize 2025, which considers long-form fiction or collection of short stories translated into English, will be announced later this evening. We will bring you the longlist of 12 or 13 books in the next edition, but there’s a buzz around previous International Booker winner Han Kang’s newly translated novel We Do Not Part (translated by E. Yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris), post her winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, Mircea Cărtărescu’s Solenoid, translated by Sean Cotter, which has already won the Dublin Literary Award for 2024, Geetanjali Shree’s Our City That Year, translated by Daisy Rockwell (both are previous winners with Tomb of Sand), Olga Tokarczuk’s Empusium, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Roque Larraquy’s The National Telepathy, translated by Frank Wynne, Ibtisam Azem’s The Book of Disappearance, translated by Sinan Antoon, in which the Israeli population wakes up one day to find that all Palestinians have disappeared, and a migration novel, Mohamed Sarr’s The Silence of the Choir, translated from the French by Alison Anderson. The shortlist of six books will be announced on April 8, and the winner on May 20. Chair of judges Max Porter told thebookerprizes.com that translation is a radical practice, ever more important and worthy of discussion in a polarised world. The other members of the jury are Caleb Femi, Sona Goyal, Anton Hur and Beth Orton. Last year, Jenny Erpenbeck won for Kairos, translated by Michael Hofmann.

In reviews we read Arun Shourie’s book on Savarkar, Easterine Kire’s new poetry collection, Sujit Saraf’s new timely novel set in the Andamans and more. We also talk to Dhirendra Jha on his book on Golwalkar, one of the chief architects of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

Books of the week

In The New Icon: Savarkar and the Facts (Penguin/Viking), Arun Shourie looked for the Hindutva ideologue’s writings on Hindus and Muslims, his views on untouchability, caste and cow worship. He read Savarkar’s books, including The Indian War of Independence, Six Glorious Epochs of Indian History, and Essentials of Hindutva, his other writings and addresses, several biographies, and decided to focus on “what Savarkar had written himself.” In range, depth and analysis, this book is a formidable study, notes Rajmohan Gandhi in his review. “Shourie wants today’s Hindus to know exactly what Savarkar said and wrote. Assess Savarkar through his own clear and often reiterated words, he says.” In a chapter titled ‘History is Made-Up’, Shourie shows that the widely believed story of how in 1910 Savarkar, then a prisoner of the British, escaped through a moving ship’s porthole and swam for liberty in the Mediterranean Sea is almost entirely fictitious. In fact, the ship was stationary and parked at the port of Marseilles in France when Savarkar got out through a porthole, only to be quickly recaptured.

Easterine Kire’s new collection of poetry Freerain (Penguin) treads the world lightly, navigating the contours of childhood, the pull of homelands, and the small intricate moments that lead towards a map of life, writes Siddharth Dasgupta in his review. The slender volume, he says, is deceptively simple at first read. “But within lie slow-burners — poems that grow more prosperous with time and repeat readings, opening up a vast continent of early morning fog, folkloric hunters, birds given to emotion, and trees that speak in language.” As much as Freerain is about stillness, “a sense of flux seems to be the central act in this soulful archiving of the world around us.”

Island (Speaking Tiger) by Sujit Saraf is a journey into an Andamanese heart of darkness that blends horror with dark humour, writes Sanjay Sipahimalani in his review. Given the government’s development plans for region, the novel feels especially timely. The protagonist, Mattoo, once “a rising star” in the Anthropological Survey of India, is reduced to selling fake artefacts in Port Blair. What led to his downfall? Is his bid to make contact with the isolated Sentinelese tribe one of the reasons? Sipahimalani notes that since the protagonist is an anthropologist himself, Saraf can deftly insert information about the Andamans, its history, and earliest inhabitants to fill in the necessary background. As with his past work, the novel draws inspiration from actual events, in this case the tragic 2018 encounter between American missionary John Chau and the Sentinelese.

Spotlight

CHENNAI : 16/04/2023 : 
ஆர்எஸ்எஸ் தொடங்கப்பட்டு 98-ம் ஆண்டு மற்றும் மகாத்மா காந்தி 153-வது பிறந்தநாளை முன்னிட்டு ஆர்எஸ்எஸ் அணிவகுப்பு பேரணி, டாக்டர் நல்லி குப்புசாமி விவேகானந்தா வித்யாலயா பள்ளி, கொரட்டூர்.
படம்: பு.க.பிரவீன்.
| Photo Credit:
PRAVEEN PK

Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar led the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) from 1940 until his death in 1973. With Golwalkar at the helm, the RSS spread its wings across the country. His book, ‘We or Our Nationhood Defined’, remained at the core of RSS ideology, ensuring that the “credo of Indian Muslims as a ‘foreign race’ wielded the most lasting ideological influence” on the RSS and generations of Hindu supremacist leaders. Continuing his study of the Indian Right, Dhirendra K. Jha puts the spotlight on the RSS ideologue in his new book, Golwalkar: The Myth Behind the Man, The Man Behind the Machine (Simon&Schuster). In an interview, he tells Sobhana K. Nair that even though the RSS publicly maintains an ambiguity about its relationship with Golwalkar’s ideological project, he continues to occupy the place of its chief ideologue, and the entire Sangh Parivar, including the ruling BJP, seems to be working in unison to achieve his vision of Hindu Rashtra as enshrined in his book. “For the first time since Independence, Golwalkar’s promise of denying Muslims citizens’ rights is being lived out, from the legislature to the rhythms of their daily lives. Politically, they have been virtually invisibilised. Efforts of the Sangh Parivar to direct hate towards them as a means to consolidate political power have further ghettoised and marginalised them. Even renting or buying properties in Hindu-majority areas is increasingly becoming difficult for Muslims. All this enjoys such widespread approval in the Sangh Parivar because it corresponds to Golwalkar’s ideas and the historical destiny he set out for the RSS — to convert India into a Hindu Rashtra.”

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• When Stephen P. Huyler was 16, he chose a sentence from Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf to predict his life’s trajectory. “Instead of narrowing your world and simplifying your soul, you will have to absorb more and more of the world and at last take all of it up into your painfully expanded soul, if you are ever to find peace.” At 19, he was travelling alone through France, Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan and India. In his memoir, Transformed by India: A Life (Pippa Rann), Huyler writes about his travels in India, and what he experienced during this exploration, and how it changed him.

• Spies, Lies and Allies (Westland Books) by Kavitha Rao tells the story of two revolutionaries, Virendranath Chattopadhyaya or Chatto and the brother of Sarojini Naidu, and M.N. Roy, the founder of Indian communism. Both met spies, dictators, assassins and bomb-makers and travelled in disguise to escape the British secret service, and Rao traces their journeys through pre and post-independent India.

• Susham Bedi’s A New World Romance (Zubaan), translated by Astri Ghosh, is a moving saga of love and limitations. Bedi has often focused on diaspora lives in her work, and this novel is part of the Women Translating Women joint series by Zubaan and Ashoka Centre for Translation.

• Through exercises, drawings, and questionnaires, the Kerala Sahitya Akademi award-winning V.M. Devadas’s A Pulp Fiction Textbook (Hachette India) delves into India’s underground sex toy trade, via stories narrated by characters who are long dead.