For your reading pleasure, Merrchant brings you a list of intriguing must-reads for April.
#1. The Best Advice I Ever Got: Lessons From Extraordinary Lives
We all receive so much well-meant advice in the course of our lives.
But which, in retrospect, was the best?
Management consultant Frank Arnold asked over 100 leading individuals from various countries what the best advice was that they had ever been given.
The result: The Best Advice I Ever Got, is a collection of pearls of wisdom that warrants dipping into time and time again.
Author: Katie Couric
Publication: Random House
Price: INR 665.
#2. Great Yoga Retreats
Want to start your day with yoga?
Here’s your chance. “Great Yoga Retreats” features 32 dream locations all over the globe, many of them (such as in California, or in Thailand or Ibiza) which are quite easily reachable.
Each retreat is portrayed with its own infobox complete with useful contacts.
Author Kristin Rübesamen knows what she’s talking about, too: she’s trained, jivamukti yoga teacher.
Author: Kristen Rübesamen, Angelika Taschen
Publication: Tashcen
Price: INR 1106.
#3. Naphtalene: A Novel of Baghdad
Through the eyes of Huda, the author creates a beautiful mental landscape of Baghdad in the 1940s and 1950s.
Through her layered descriptions, the exiled author’s own stream of consciousness takes over, expanding not only into the life of the girl and her family but also of her street, neighborhood, and country.
Author: Alia Mamdouh
Translated by: Peter Theroux
Publication: The Feminist Press
Price: INR 1439.
#4. Sorting out Sid
Yashodhara Lal pens down the story of a young and successful corporate with a fantastic personal life on the surface which is slowly falling apart underneath.
Sid is on the verge of becoming the youngest VP at the age of 36, but finds himself alone, till Neha, a lovely single mother walks into his life.
This book is a mirror of today’s society.
Publication: HarperCollins
Price: INR 250.
#5. Suslov’s Daughter
Set against the backdrop of Yemeni history, the novel spans the independence of southern Yemen up to its unification in 1990 and the subsequent Arab Spring.
As a young man growing up under communism in South Yemen, Imran’s attraction to Hawiya, the daughter of a high-ranking official in the ruling Marxist party, sets him on a lifelong search for love and his own political ideology.
Author: Habib Abdulrab Sarori
Translated by: Elisabeth Jaquette
Publication: Darf Publishers
Price: INR 759.
#6. Royal Palaces of India
Tarun Chopra puts together a rich collection of pictures detailing the opulent lifestyle, rich architecture, and portraits of the timeless maharajas and their Royal families.
Some of the places that are featured in the book are I maid Bhavan Palace, Udai Bilas Palace, the Falaknuma Palace, and Lalita Mahalare.
Publication: Prakash Books
Price: INR 2,995.
#7. Menorahs and Minarets
Author Kamal Ruhayyim’s pivotal character, Galal, returns to Cairo after 10 years in Paris to find a society in transformation.
Caught between two identities and a lingering feeling that he no longer belongs in Egypt, his story becomes a gripping portrait of the older generation dictating how their children should live and love.
This novel concludes Ruhayyim’s compelling trilogy on Egypt’s storied past, revealing rare insight into the often ignored Jewish-Egyptian history.
Author: Kamal Ruhayyim
Translated by: Sarah Enany
Publication: Hoopoe Fiction
Price: INR 488.
#8. Girls of Riyadh
This may just be the most popular book on the list, but the fact that it lifted the veil off the secretive, often misunderstood and misinterpreted Saudi kingdom makes it an absolute must-mention.
This story about the lived, loved, ambitions, and desires of five Saudi women deserve a refresh, especially in the light of the new rules that “allow” women in Saudi Arabia to drive.
Pick up this book to understand and appreciate the vast impact of this small victory for womankind.
Author: Rajaa Alsanea
Translated by: Marilyn Booth
Publication: Penguin Books
Price: INR 350.
#9. The Aryavarta Chronicles book 2: Kaurava
With an intricate plot, the author weaves an unputdownable political thriller.
The novel approaches politics in a different light; third front supremacy and a fight for the Constitution.
Author: Krishna Udayasankar
Publication: Hachette India
Price: INR 350.
#10. The Tiller of Waters
An icon of contemporary Middle Eastern literature, Hoda Barakat is a voice for the Levantine region.
A comforting past and uncertain present come face-to-face as the novel’s hallucinating protagonist, Niqula Mitri, navigates Beirut in the midst of the Lebanese Civil War.
As Mitri struggles to come to terms with his new, he becomes a metaphor for the everyday struggles on the streets of war-torn Beirut.
This one’s a must-read.
Author: Hoda Barakat
Translated by: Marilyn Booth
Publication: American University in Cairo Press
Price: INR 1167.
#11. HUL Cry Rebel
Moving through a whirlwind of passion, greed, betrayal, and sacrifice, this narrative of the first mass rebellion against John’s Company brings back the first step of India’s independence.
Author: Sanjay Bahadur
Publication: Roli Books
Price: INR 395.
Related Article: (Un)Written in The Stars.
