Read This: Books under the Radar is a weekly post written by a guest author – often a friend of mine, someone I’ve met on my writerly travels, or an author I admire – who recommends three books they think deserve more recognition. If you’re interested in buying any of the books, please click on the covers and give these hidden gems some love.

Read This: Jane Borges

What I hoped for with Read This: Books under the Radar is starting to happen. A previous guest, Susmita Bhattacharya selected Bombay Balchão by Jane Borges, and when Jane saw and liked my post on Instagram, I asked her if she would like to take part and select three books of her own. And here we are! Here’s what she has to say about herself:

Jane Borges is a senior Indian journalist, author and oral historian. In 2022, she won the RedInk Award for Excellence in Indian Journalism. Her debut novel, Bombay Balchão (2019), was shortlisted for the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puruskar instituted by India’s National Academy of Letters, and Atta Galatta Bangalore Literature Festival Book Prize. She has also co-authored the non-fiction Mafia Queens of Mumbai: Stories of Women from the Ganglands (2011) with S. Hussain Zaidi. A chapter from the book was adapted into the Bollywood film Gangubai (2022) by Sanjay Leela Bhansali. She is the co-founder of Soboicar, an oral history archive chronicling the lives of Catholics who migrated from the Konkan to Mumbai. She lives in Mumbai. 
Here are Jane’s recommendations:

A Respectable Woman by Easterine Kire

I remember feeling a multitude of emotions when reading this particular novel by Easterine Kire. The author’s writings usually focus on the lived realities of people from Northeast India, a region that’s home to several beautiful small states, which continue to experience government apathy. The ethnic violence in the state of Manipur over the last year and more, is a recent case in point. This indifference also trickles down to the powerful literature emerging from here, which often doesn’t find space in the mainstream. A Respectable Woman is a fine example of how literature can play an important role in bridging this divide, and acquainting us with the unfamiliar. The book, set in the author’s home state Nagaland, is stitched together through fragments of broken, forgotten memories of the protagonist Khonuo, who has lived through the Battle of Kohima, fought during the Second World War and won by the allies. It takes Khonuo over 40 years to confront that past, and recreate it for her daughter—the serenity of life once lived, the trauma of war, the struggle of the people to rehabilitate themselves in a new world, and the challenges they continue to face even as their past catches up with them. Kire’s prose is simple, evocative and subtle, and draws from local storytelling traditions. 

Kintsugi by Anukrti Upadhyay

As a bilingual author—she writes in Hindi and English—Anukrti Upadhyay straddles these two worlds with an effortlessness and flair that is so very rare to find among contemporary Indian writers. And I deeply admire her for that. I found this particular novel to be intensely feminist, as it puts the focus back on the dreams, love and desires of women. It doesn’t have a singular protagonist, and moves between lives of different people, seeking different things, around the same time, in different worlds, predominantly Japan and Jaipur (India). Named after the ancient Japanese art of mending broken objects with gold, the novel opens in the busy market area of Jaipur, where Haruko arrives as an apprentice to study jewellery design. As she gets acquainted with Leena, her mentor’s daughter, she draws her into her craft and opens her to new dreams and possibilities. Through her chance encounter with Prakash, a doctor, Haruko also becomes aware of his fiancee, Meena, a student of literature in Tokyo, who refuses to return to India and settle into quotidian life of home and marriage. Meena is mending her own heart. One would wonder what a Japanese art of repair with gold has to do with the story. But the manner in which Upadhyay joins these fragmented lives together, embellishing it with her lyrical prose and multi-layered story, is nothing short of magic you see happen with the art of Kintsugi.  

Names of the Women by Jeet Thayil

Poet-author Jeet Thayil is most celebrated for his poetry and his Man Booker Prize shortlisted novel, Narcopolis. But one of my personal favourite literary works of his remains Names of the Women, which turns the New Testament of the Bible on its head, giving voice to the women who are otherwise relegated to brief mentions in the book. The novel opens with Jesus on the cross, addressing Mary of Magdala, who was the first to witness his return from the dead. He asks her to “write” his story for what it is, and to spread his message. As the story unfolds, we are confronted with the stories of 15 women whose lives overlapped with Jesus’s. The book is remarkable, provocative and daring in its ability to challenge and counter the content and form of a sacrosanct text like the Holy Bible. And yet, it doesn’t feel sacrilegious. Perhaps, a fitting rebuttal for that deliberate omission. I remember interviewing the author for this book, and he put it very simply. He said that all the female voices were silenced in the Bible. “Not one has received the attention and imaginative empathy she deserves… I’ve always wanted to correct that imbalance, to give the women of the Bible equal space.”  

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I haven’t read or even heard of any of these but isn’t this what Books under the Radar is all about? Any here that catch your eye? And if you’d like to be told about future Read This recommendations, you can follow me on Instagram, or subscribe to my newsletter.

More Read This: Books Under the Radar

Lou Morrish author of Women of War
Francesca Ramsay author of Pinch Me
Sarah Leipciger author of Moon Road
Tim Chapman university librarian
Juliet West author of The Faithful
Lindsay Hunter author of Hot Springs Drive
Gina Chung author of Sea Change
Susmita Bhattacharya author of Table Manners
Vanessa Harbour author of Safe
Freya North author of The Unfinished Business of Eadie Browne
Judith Heneghan author of Birdeye
Clare Mackintosh author of I Promise it won’t always Hurt like This
Barney Norris author of Undercurrent
Jo Leevers author of The Last Time I saw You
Alice Winn author of In Memmoriam