1980s India

While Truth/Untruth doesn’t read like a regular Mahasweta Devi novel, no one else could have written it. Replete with the celebrated author’s nuances of right versus wrong, good versus evil, and rich versus poor, the emotions that surface here are omnipresent in all her works. Mahasweta Devi’s themes are specific, yet universal. They could take place anywhere in the world and, yet, are so intrinsic to Kolkata that their mysteries and drama could only unfold there. The Howrah Bridge in Kolkata. (HT Photo)…

Filmmaker and military historian Shiv Kunal Verma’s account of his life, Life of an Industani: Six Degrees of Separation, is, in equal measure, a thrilling account of India’s sociopolitical landscape from the 1980s to the present. 575pp, ₹995; BluOne Ink Verma, who started as a reporter-photographer for a Delhi magazine, witnessed the riots that followed former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984. He rode his scooter around Delhi, urging people in power to step in to help, and photographing the city…