カテゴリー: Books
My friend Jai Verma, who has died aged 75, was a poet, a writer and cross-cultural organiser who served as a bridge between her country of origin – India – and Nottingham, her chosen home.In 2003, Jai co-founded Kavya Rang (Colours of Poetry), a multil…
The Future I Saw, a Japanese graphic novel by Ryo Tatsuki, declared a major disaster would occur on 5 July 2025A grim prediction made in a manga first published a quarter of a century ago is being blamed for a dramatic fall in holiday bookings to Japan…
Rare early editions of book by communist party chairman, who shunned the idea of wealth, set to fetch £1m at auctionThe thoughts of Mao Zedong, published in 1964 under the title Quotations, are considered the blueprint for Chinese communism and a guide…
After spending four years meeting people all over the country, Vicky Roy’s new book, Everyone is Good at Something, contains 100 inspirational life stories to raise awareness and combat taboosPhotographs by Vicky RoyFor Bikram Bhattarai, getting to sch…
For over a century, poets, publishers and printers filled this Delhi district’s narrow lanes. But as profits plummet, bookshops are being replaced by kebab shopsInside one of the oldest bookshops in Delhi’s Urdu Bazaar, Rafiq Ahmad, a film critic and w…
Book banned since 1988 is ‘selling out’ after import bar was overturned due to missing paperworkSalman Rushdie’s 1988 novel The Satanic Verses – which led to a fatwa threatening his life, forcing him into hiding for a decade – has finally returned to b…
As stores that were spaces for open discussion have been forced to close, new ventures spring up overseasOn 24 November, exactly two years after a fire in an apartment building in Xinjiang killed 10 people and sparked a wave of historic protests across…
Government unable to produce ‘untraceable’ notification against 1988 novel when citizen brought matter to courtWriting to the then Indian prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, in October 1988, Salman Rushdie lamented that Indian democracy had become “a laughin…
The flow of knowledge to Europe on maths, astronomy and much more has gone unacknowledged by historians. In AD628, an Indian sage living on a mountain in Rajasthan made one of the world’s most important mathematical discoveries. The great mathematicia…
As the ‘civic hacker’ who became Taiwan’s first transgender cabinet minister, she is used to breaking boundaries. What can the rest of the world learn from her vision of a happy and inclusive web?Audrey Tang didn’t have the easiest of starts in life. T…
Over 200 signatories urge government to reverse decision enabling action against writer under anti-terrorism lawMore than 200 Indian academics, activists and journalists have published an open letter urging the Indian government to withdraw last week’s…
Official from ruling BJP party allows action against Booker winner under controversial anti-terrorism lawIndian authorities have granted permission for the prosecution of the Booker prize-winning Indian novelist Arundhati Roy over comments she made abo…
An ex-UK envoy’s compelling account of the chaotic military withdrawal from the country is full of telling details, while Seierstad’s latest work drives home the cruel reality of women’s lives after the return of Taliban ruleIn August 2021, Britain’s l…
The Norwegian writer on meeting the Taliban, her fears for girls’ education, and the legal battle that ensued after the publication of her bestselling bookThe author Åsne Seierstad’s cool, shaded garden, within walking distance from the centre of Oslo,…
My poems were written in anger after Tiananmen Square. But what motivates most prison writing is a fear of forgetting. Today I am free, but the regime has never stopped its war on wordsMost of my manuscripts are locked up in the filing cabinets of the …