Rakhshanda Jalil on why Malik Muhammad Jaisi’s epic the
Padmavat came to be seen as an uncontested witness to its age

Rukmini Bhaya Nair wonders why
the perfidious priest in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmaavat was entirely neglected in the critical analyses
of the film

Ajay K Rao discusses Sanskrit commentaries on the Ramayana

Arjun Choudhuri reviews Pradip Bhattacharya’s translation of the
Moksha-dharma, part of the late P Lal’s translation series of the Mahabharata

Mahesh A Deokar tells us why neo-Buddhists are studying Pali

Satyanarayana Hegde finds a way to recover Ghalib from the ethnic ghetto

AR Venkatachalapathy on why “Tamil writers no more wait at bus stops”

Purushottam Agrawal underlines the importance of Shashi Tharoor’s thought-provoking explanation Why I Am a Hindu and the urgent need to “take back Hinduism”

Latha Jishnu’s appraisal of Sujatha Gidla’s memoir Ant Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India and the unresolved issue of caste within the Communist movement in India

Gurpreet Bal is all praise for Anshu Malhotra’s research and analysis in her study of Piro and the Gulabdasis

Politics: reportage and biographies

Seema Sirohi feels Michael Wolff’s “non fiction fiction” is precisely the kind of book the Trump White House deserved

Anikendra Nath Sen wishes Sheila Dikshit’s memoir was more revealing

M Rajivlochan looks at two contrasting “insider” views of Arvind Kejriwal and the Aam Aadmi Party by Mayank Gandhi and Pran Kurup

Nalin Mehta on why Boria Majumdar’s Eleven Gods and a Billion Indians is not just another cricket book

Shivshankar Menon recommends Amitav Acharya’s “necessary, topical and academically rigorous book on India and China’s engagement with Southeast Asia”

Shiv Kunal Verma welcomes Bertil Lintner’s long overdue counter narrative China’s
India War

Gautam Mukhopadhaya says Azeem Ibrahim’s arguments in The Rohingyas: Inside Myanmar’s Hidden Genocide meet neither the test of good analysis or realism

Dilip Simeon on Frank Dikötter’s “finely grained account” of The Cultural Revolution

Brij Tankha reviews Michael Meyer’s In Manchuria on the transformation of
China’s Northeast

Subir Bhaumik appreciates Sanjoy Hazarika’s narratives in Strangers No More

Jahnavi Barua endorses Rita Chowdhury’s Sahitya Akademi award-winning Chinatown Days, an English translation of her Assamese original Makum

Usha KR appreciates N Kalyan Raman’s translation of Perumal Murugan’s Tamil novel Poonachi, his first on his return from literary exile

Deepanjana Pal analyses Manu Joseph’s “thought-provoking social experiment” Miss Laila Armed and Dangerous

Kiran Nagarkar’s novel Jasoda is not one of his best, says Shashi Deshpande

Janice Pariat delves into Invisible Libraries to enquire about what our storehouses of knowledge reveal about ourselves

Lakshmi Kannan reviews Mridula Garg’s latest English novel The Last Email