The Listicle
Recent book releases that should be on your reading list
MURDERS MOST FOUL
MURDERS MOST FOUL
INDIA’S MOST DANGEROUS SERIAL KILLER: Shankariya Kanpatimar by Rakesh Goswami
PENGUIN/ EBURY PRESS Rs. 399 | 216 pages
India’s first recorded serial killer—Shankariya—was nicknamed ‘Kanpatimar’ because he hit all his victims on their temples or ‘kanpati’. Over 18 months in 1977-78, he killed nearly 70 people across Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana. He was eventually apprehended and hanged on May 15, 1979. The book dives deep into police files and contemporary reportage to piece together this sinister saga.
FLOWER POWER
FLOWER OF INDIA Ways of Seeing the Lotus By Devdutt Pattanaik
ALEPH BOOK COMPANY Rs. 399 | 104 pages
Aleph’s ‘Essential India Editions’ has kept its promise of supplying us with concise and discerning explainers by subject experts. In this one, Devdutt Pattanaik examines the place of lotus in India’s cultural imagination. He also informs us that while the lotus is popularly believed to be India’s national flower, it was never notified as such.
THE RATIONALIST
THE LIVER DOCTOR Stories of Love, Loss and Regeneration By Dr Cyriac Abby Philips
HARPERCOLLINS Rs. 499 | 408 pages
Known on social media as ‘The Liver Doc’, Dr Cyriac Abby Philips is a practising hepatologist who has made it his life’s mission to debunk pseudoscience and raise awareness about metabolic health. No matter if he upsets some people on the way. The good doc brings the same refreshing honesty to this book, which is memoir, science journal and philosophical treatise all rolled into one.
MAN OF THE TIMES
A STATESMAN AND A SEEKER The Extraordinary Life and Legacy of Dr Karan Singh By Harbans Singh
SPEAKING TIGER Rs. 999 | 512 pages
Few people who play a prominent public role have an internal life as intense as Dr Karan Singh’s. His family once ruled Jammu and Kashmir, but he embraced change and a life in politics while retaining a metaphysical bent, as this authorised biography shows.
PLANES OF CONSCIOUSNESS
UPANISHADS & J. KRISHNAMURTI By Sri M PENGUIN ANANDA Rs. 499 | 288 pages
In a slim volume dense with meaning, Sri M—a spiritual teacher and educationist who established the Satsang Foundation—writes about his close association with J. Krishnamurti, and how Krishnamurti’s radical teachings can be traced back to the wisdom of the Upanishads. Filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt’s memoir of his life with his spiritual mentor U.G. Krishnamurti, culled from journal entries by Sunita Pant Bansal, is rather more visceral, if also verbose. Here is a seeker drowning in the froth of his metamorphosis.
