Hachette will publish international authors like Stephen King (Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption); Martin Lindstrom (The Ministry of Common Sense); Damon Centola (Change: How to Make Big Things Happen) and Scott Haas (Ukeireru: Happiness and Acceptance through Japanese Wisdom).

Novels by Orhan Pamuk, Kazuo Ishiguro and Jhumpa Lahiri, a collection by Salman Rushdie and memoirs of Ravi Shastri, Girish Karnad and Priyanka Chopra are some of the highlights of 2021 that book lovers can look forward to. Another anticipated book of the year — “Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth” by Nigerian legend Wole Soyinka, his first novel in 48 years — will be published in September by Bloomsbury. A number of memoirs will come out during the year. They include “Enter Stage Right: The Alkazi / Padamsee Family Memoir” by Feisal Alkazi (Speaking Tiger); “This Life at Play” by Girish Karnad and Ravi Shastri’s memoir with Ayaz Memon (both HarperCollins); “The Untold Story of H D Deve Gowda” by Sugata Srinivasaraju (Penguin Random House), “Sach Kahun Toh” by Neena Gupta and “The Stranger in the Mirror” by Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra (Rupa).

Some of the children’s books lined up are “Hop On: My Adventures on Boats, Trains and Planes” by Ruskin Bond and “The Story of World Civilizations by Subhadra Sen Gupta” (both Talking Cub); “All Time Favourites for Children” by Ruskin Bond, “Let’s Go Time Travelling #2” by Subhadra Sen Gupta (both PRH) and “50 Greatest Stories for Older Children” and “100 Greatest Stories for Young Children” (Hachette India). The year will also see many cinema-related books like “Unscripted Conversations on Life and Cinema” by Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Abhijat Joshi (PRH), Diptakirti Chaudhuri’s “BollyGeek: The Crazy Guide to Bollywood Trivia” and the four-series “Bolly-Dates”, “Bolly-Places”, “Bolly-Characters” and “Bolly-Things” (Hachette) and a comprehensive guide to pregnancy by Kareena Kapoor Khan (Juggernaut). Culinary books include “Spiced, Smoked, Pickled, Preserved: Recipes and Reminiscences from India’s Eastern Hills” by Indranee Ghosh and Shubhra Chatterji’s “Rasa: The Story of India in 100 dishes” (both Hachette), “A Taste of My Life” by Chitrita Banerji (Pan Macmillan) and a sassy “All He Left Me Was A Recipe” by Shenaz Treasurywala (PRH). Penguin Random House India’s publishing list has Pamuk’s “Nights of Plague”, “Unfinished: A Memoir” by Chopra Jonas, Lahiri’s “Whereabouts”, “Languages of Truth” by Rushdie, “The Art of Bitfulness: Keeping Sane in the Digital World” by Nandan Nilekani and Tanuj Bhojwani and “Actually… I Met Them: A Memoir” by Gulzar among other titles. It will also publish Amitav Ghosh’s “The Nutmeg’s Curse: A Parable for a Planet in Crisis”, Bangladeshi writer Tahmima Anam’s “The Start -Up Wife”, “Eden An Indian retelling of Jewish, Christian and Islamic lore” by Devdutt Pattanaik, “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster” by Bill Gates, “Klara And The Sun” by Ishiguro, “First Person Singular” by Haruki Murakami, “The President’s Daughter” by Bill Clinton and James Patterson. HarperCollins India’s list has books like “The Last Queen” by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, “Club You To Death” by Anuja Chauhan, Nikita Singh’s “What Do You See When You Look In The Mirror?” and “Don’t Say It” by Malini Agrawal aka MissMalini. Rupa Publications will also come out with former vice president Hamid Ansari’s book “By Many A Happy Accident: Recollections of a Life” besides titles like Subramanian Swamy’s “Ayodhya and Beyond: National Hindutva Awakening”, Manish Malhotra’s memoir “One Big Blur”, Vinod Rai’s “The BCCI Story” and Yashwant Sinha’s “India’s Foreign Policy Blunders”. Sister publication Aleph will publish books like “Pride, Prejudice & Punditry: The Essential Shashi Tharoor” by Tharoor, Amitava Kumar’s “A Time Outside This Time”, Annie Zaidi’s “One of Them”, “It’s a Wonderful Life: Roads to Happiness” by Ruskin Bond and Deepti Naval’s memoir “A Country Called Childhood”. Some of the titles Simon & Schuster will publish include “Guru Dutt: An Unfinished Story” by Yasser Usman, “Shikwa-e-Hind: The Political Future of Indian Muslims” by Mujibur Rehman and Chandrahas Choudhury’s “The Taste of Literature”. “The Tale of the Horse: A History of India on Horseback” by Yashaswini Chandra, Sundeep Bhutoria’s “The Bera Bond”, “After I Was Raped: The Untold Lives of Five Rape Survivors” by Urmi Bhattacheryya and “Gangster State: The Rise and Fall of the CPIM in West Bengal” by Sourjya Bhowmick are some of the books to be published by Pan Macmillan. On Amaryllis’ list are “More Things in Heaven and Earth” by Kiran Manral, “I’m Old, I’m Wise and I Know My Shit” by Bevinda Collaco, Shivani Singh’s “Nalanda”, “It’s Also About Mynah” Rucha Chitrodia, Anvita Sudarshan’s “Beauty Queen: The Pathway to Pageantry” and “India and Faraway Lands: 5,000 Years of Connected History” by Ashutosh Mehndiratta. It will also come out with anniversary editions of classics like “Pride and Prejudice”, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and “The Arabian Nightmare”. Oxford will publish interesting titles like “The Kashmir Backchannel: How India and Pakistan Negotiated the Kashmir Deal from 2004 to 2007” by Happymon Jacob, “Militant Piety and Lines of Control: The Lethal Literature of the Lashkar-e-Taiba” by C Christine Fair, Ashis Nandy’s “Breakfast with Evil and Other Risky Ventures: The Non-essential Ashis Nandy” and Tauseef Ahmad’s “Islam and Democracy in 21st Century”. Some of SAGE Publications titles are “Alt-Right Movement: Dissecting Racism, Patriarchy and Anti-Immigrant Xenophobia” by Ipsita Chatterjee; “BJP-Led Regime In Assam: Saffron In The Rainbow” by Akhil Ranjan Dutta; and “How People Buy Online: The Psychology Behind Consumer Behaviour” by Seema Gupta. Speaking Tiger’s non-fiction books include “Locking Down the Poor: The Pandemic and India’s Moral Centre” by Harsh Mander; “Case Files: My Days in the CBI and IPS” by former CBI boss Amar Pratap Singh and “Winged Stallions and Wicked Mares: The Horse in Indian Myth and History” by Wendy Doniger. Some of its fiction titles are “The Loves of Yuri” by Jerry Pinto; “Travels With My Beloved Ghost” by Bulbul Sharma; “The Tombstone in My Garden: Stories” by Temsula Ao and “Last Light of Glory Days: Stories from Nagaland” by Avinuo Kire. Hachette will publish international authors like Stephen King (“Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption”); Martin Lindstrom (“The Ministry of Common Sense”); Damon Centola (“Change: How to Make Big Things Happen”) and Scott Haas (“Ukeireru: Happiness and Acceptance through Japanese Wisdom”). It will also publish “In Search of the Divine: Living Practices of Sufism in India” by Rana Safvi. Roli Books will come out with titles like an English translation of Abdul Ghaffar Khan’s autobiography in Pashto; “Fractured Freedom: A Prison Memoir” by Kobad Ghandy; “1946: The Indian Naval Uprising that Shook the Empire” by Pramod Kapoor and “City of Gated Walls: The Map of Shahajahanabad”, which has text by Swapna Liddle and visually curated by Pramod Kapoor. Among Niyogi Books’ titles are translations works of Indira Goswami’s “Five Novellas about Women” and Anita Agnihotri’s “Mahanadi: A novel about the river”; “Growing up Jewish in India: Synagogues, Customs, and Communities from the Bene Israel to the Art of Siona Benjamin” edited by Ori Z Soltes; and “Reflections on Mughal Art and Culture” by Roda Ahluwalia.

Source: The Indian Express