Thant Myint-U’s new book on his grandfather, the first non-white secretary-general of the UN, revisits an era when the institution inspired expectations of internationalist diplomatic leadership that have since faded away
‘India: 5,000 Years of History in the Subcontinent’ revisits millennia of Southasia’s past beyond dynasties and nationalist mythmaking, while raising larger questions about the intellectual traditions that shape historiography.
In ‘Satirical Tibet’, Timothy Thurston shows how comedians and rappers are using satire as a tool of resistance under Chinese authoritarianism and surveillance
How Manu Joseph’s ‘Why the Poor Don’t Kill Us’ falls short in diagnosing the ills of liberal India, and how the novelist turned provocateur has lost his way
Angela W Little’s book spans the original vision and contemporary debates around Sri Lanka’s system of free education, but fails to fully capture its intertwined dynamics of learning, politics and nationalism
Ravikant Kisana’s ‘Meet the Savarnas’ dissects dominant-caste notions of merit, intimacy and power, showing how caste survives beneath India’s claims to modernity
In ‘Native ball’, the artist presents life in Kerala through a deliberate mix of fact and fabrication, combining photography and text to evoke a kind of magical realism
Namit Arora and Romila Thapar on how identities in early and medieval India were formed, contested, and why a shared sense of “Indianness” may be a colonial-era development
From Panchayat-era moralism to donor-driven publishing, and today a rising crop of local initiatives, the shifts in Nepal’s children’s literature reflect the difficult history of the country itself
