Love Jihad
Debunking propaganda myths, restoring truths – Hindustan Times
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Swallowing the Sun
“Change is disquieting for those in positions of power and complacency”: Lakshmi Puri – The Indian Express
Read MoreThe Hindu Lit Fest 2024
Shashi Tharoor on his love for language and words in conversation with David Davidar | The Hindu Lit Fest 2024
Read MoreThe Collected Stories of Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury’, translated from the Bengali by Lopamudra Maitra
“For children: Short stories written (and illustrated) by Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury in translation” – Scroll
Read MoreThe India Cookbook
“Read: A Recipe Of Hyderabadi Biryani From Shabana Azmi” – SheThePeople
Read MoreThe Greatest Malayalam Stories Ever Told
“The Greatest Malayalam Stories Ever Told”—A compendium of stories that reflect Kerala’s progression” – The Week
Read MoreThe Assamese
“This Legendary Tapestry Travelled Over Centuries From Assam to Britain. But Will it Ever Return?” – The Wire
Read MoreThe Greatest Malayalam Stories Ever Told
“The Greatest Malayalam Stories Ever Told: A language’s vision, depth, appetite for storytelling” – The Tribune
Read MoreThe Indian Cat
“The Indian Cat: Stories, Paintings, Poetry, and Proverbs By BN Goswamy” – Outlook
Read MoreThree Countries, Three Lives
“October nonfiction picks: Six recent books that look at aspects of Indian history through new lenses” – Scroll
Read MoreThe Greatest Punjabi Stories Ever Told
“An honest celebration of the Punjabi short story” – The Tribune
Read MoreThe Less You Preach, the More You Learn
“Shashi Tharoor is at his wittiest and wisest in his new book on aphorisms” – The Week
Read MoreThe Peacemakers
‘These stories offer us hope that it is possible to rise above the hatred and violence’ – The Tribune
Read MoreHow Prime Minister Decides
‘How Prime Ministers Decide’ delves into tackling of pulls and pressures – The New Indian Express
Read MoreShe, the Leader
‘Inside Track by Coomi Kapoor: Allied problems, Cong-AAP ties & Hema Malini’s cross with BJP’ – The Indian Express
Read MoreA Plain Blunt Man
‘Misappropriated and misunderstood: The life of Sardar Patel’ – Nation Herald
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A fresh retelling brings 69 stories from the ‘Panchatantra’ to a new generation of readers
A fresh retelling brings 69 stories from the ‘Panchatantra’ to a new generation of readers. – Scroll.in
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Aleph Book Company Announces Children’s List
Aleph Book Company is delighted to announce the launch of its children’s book list. ‘We have long wanted to add children’s books to our publishing mix—Stephen Alter’s Great Indian Children’s…
Read MoreAleph Book Company, Highlights 2022
Click here to view highlights from our catalogue for the next year: Aleph Book Company — Highlights 2022
Read MoreNehru The Writer | Pride, Prejudice, and Punditry
Perhaps the most underestimated quality of Jawaharlal Nehru—whose life has seen more than its fair share of both hagiology and denigration—was his extraordinary achievement as a writer. Having delved extensively into…
Read MoreNew Kings Of The World
PART ONE ‘I think I’m able to fulfill each latent desire of a woman in whatever role she comes in front of. I’m able to make a mother feel nice,…
Read MoreThe Extended Mind – An Excerpt | Who Are We by Rajesh Kasturirangan
The Indian mind is shaped both by biology and by society. Nothing about human biology makes it specifically Indian but without those capacities there wouldn’t be a mind to be…
Read MoreBorn a Muslim | Ghazala Wahab | An Excerpt
My most vivid childhood memories pertaining to religion are of Ramzan, the month of fasting which culminates in the biggest festival of Muslims—Eid. For several years (from the time I…
Read MoreFree Choice | The Misadventures of Mullah Nasruddin | An excerpt from Teaching a Horse to Sing
A new bakery opened up on the main street in Aks¸ehir, the same road that Nasruddin and his classmates took on their way to and from school. The aroma of…
Read MoreJNU Stories | Udaya Kumar: The Classroom
For someone who had stayed away from many lectures during undergraduate and postgraduate years, I was surprised to find myself attending most of my classes in JNU. I don’t think…
Read MoreThe Aleph Decade
Sublime books make known the unimaginable universe, or parts thereof, within their pages and further kindle it in the minds of readers. Every great book that we were able to…
Read MoreGazing Eastwards by Romila Thapar
THE START OF THE RETURN JOURNEY VIA YUMEN We are journeying back. I am sitting in a hotel room in Yumen, drinking cup after cup of jasmine tea….
Read More‘Lord of the Rubble’ by Mohan Rakesh from ‘The Greatest Hindi Stories Ever Told’
They had come to Amritsar from Lahore after seven-and-a-half years. Attending the hockey match was an excuse, they were more interested in seeing those houses and bazaars that had become…
Read MoreWhy Gandhi Still Matters: An Appraisal of the Mahatma’s Legacy
OF CASTE AND AMBEDKAR Perhaps no one was personally closer to Gandhi than his English friend Charlie Andrews, whom he first met in South Africa in 1912. In August 1942,…
Read MoreJean Drèze’s Preface to ‘Rumble in a Village’
At first sight, Palanpur is as dull a place as its name suggests. I’m not talking of the hill station called Palampur in Himachal Pradesh, or of the headquarters of…
Read MoreThe Crisis Within: On Knowledge and Education in India
The Colonial Indian Self-image An ancient civilization with amazing wealth of philosophical, literary and scientific treatises and unparalleled continuity of ‘the life of the mind’, India nonetheless was not at…
Read MoreThe Idea of India
At the stroke of midnight on 15 August 1947, India won her independence from the British empire and a nation was born.Over the past seventy-three years, our country has struggled…
Read More‘Idgah’ by Munshi Premchand
Premchand (Dhanpat Rai Srivastav, 1880-1936) was one of India’s greatest writers. He wrote in Hindi and published over a dozen novels and nearly 300 short stories.
Read MoreDHONI TAKES INDIA TO THE SUMMIT – An Excerpt from Mihir Bose’s ‘The Nine Waves’
Three days before India played England at Lord’s in the first of the four Test series in July 2011 a dinner was held in honour of Mahendra Singh Dhoni at…
Read MoreThe Island of Self – Thich Nhat Hanh
When the Buddha was eighty years old and knew he wasn’t going to live much longer, he offered the practice of the ‘island of self ’ to his students. He…
Read MoreSuffering And Happiness Are Not Separate – Thich Nhat Hanh
When we suffer, we tend to think that suffering is all there is at that moment, and happiness belongs to some other time or place. People often ask, ‘Why do…
Read MoreMany Indians have not been told who the architect of India’s economic reforms really was
At an interaction with students at a university near Delhi, in the winter of 2015, I asked the audience what the year 1991 meant to them. A young man replied…
Read MoreHOW WE GOT HERE – Excerpted from ‘Dragon On Our Doorstep’ by Pravin Sawhney and Ghazala Wahab
On the evening of 6 August 1947, with the partition of the subcontinent looming, a party to bid farewell to officers assigned to the Pakistan Army was in full swing…
Read MoreBlanks on the Map – An Excerpt from Shiv Kunal Verma’s ‘1962: The War that Wasn’t’
This treaty of 1842 settled the boundary between Ladakh and Tibet in unequivocal terms leaving no cause for any kind of border dispute in this region. * Arguments and counter-arguments…
Read More#DystopianTales: ‘A Lockdown Fantasy’ by Cyrus Mistry
During bewildering times such as the present, the divide between fiction and reality is increasingly blurry and we turn to stories to make sense of our predicament. With our brand-new…
Read MoreAn extract from ‘The New World Disorder And The Indian Imperative’ by Dr Shashi Tharoor & Dr Samir Saran
What Next? If we seek with trepidation to avoid the pitfalls of history, the key questions we must ask are: how do global governance frameworks that were shaped in the…
Read More#DystopianTales: ‘Mr Pisharody’ by Manu Bhattathiri
During bewildering times such as the present, the divide between fiction and reality is increasingly blurry and we turn to stories to make sense of our predicament. With our brand-new…
Read More‘The Book of Indian Kings’ – Olio Series
Ranjit Singh, Maharaja of the Punjab* by Khushwant Singh *Ranjit Singh, the greatest monarch of the Sikhs, was born in 1780 and died in 1839. This extract is taken from…
Read More‘How I Became a Tree’ by Sumana Roy – An Excerpt
TREE TIME At first it was the underwear. I wanted to become a tree because trees did not wear bras. Then it had to do with the spectre of violence….
Read More#DystopianTales: ‘Doggy and Me’ by Tejaswini Apte-Rahm
During bewildering times such as the present, the divide between fiction and reality is increasingly blurry and we turn to stories to make sense of our predicament. With our…
Read More‘Rebati’ by Fakir Mohan Senapati from ‘The Greatest Odia Stories Ever Told’
But oft some shining April morn Is darkened in an hour, And blackest griefs o’er joyous home, Alas! unseen may lower. —Rev. J. H. Gurney ‘Rebati! Rebi! You fire that…
Read MoreEid Feast Special: Noormehali Pulao – A recipe from ‘The Lucknow Cookbook’
Image source: Emirates 24/7 NOORMEHALI PULAO SERVES: 8 PREPARATION TIME: 1 HOUR INGREDIENTS Basmati rice (long-grained and old) ½ kg, soaked in water for 45 minutes Paneer (cottage cheese) 1…
Read MoreEid Feast Special: Mutton Biryani – A recipe from ‘The Lucknow Cookbook’
Mutton Biryani SERVES: 8–10 PREPARATION TIME: 1½ HOURS INGREDIENTS Basmati rice (long-grained and old) 500 gms Mutton puth ka gosht 500 gms (short loin chops) Onions 3 medium, finely chopped…
Read More#DystopianTales: ‘Breaking News and Broken People’ by Amitava Kumar
During bewildering times such as the present, the divide between fiction and reality is increasingly blurry and we turn to stories to make sense of our predicament. With our brand-new…
Read More‘The Kabuliwallah’ by Rabindranath Tagore
My five-year-old daughter talked all the time. It had taken her a year after her birth to master the language, and since then she has not wasted a second of…
Read More‘Coming Out As Dalit’ by Yashica Dutt – An Extract
For some Dalits, Ambedkar is an actual prophet who changed the course of their history and future. But despite his outstanding political career and invaluable contribution to Dalit rights, Ambedkar’s…
Read More‘Akbar’ by Ira Mukhoty
THE MEMORY–KEEPERS ‘Write down whatever you know of the doings of (Babur) and (Humayun)’. This ordinary phrase sounded innocuous enough and gave no indication of the seismic rumble it actually…
Read More‘A Ballad of Remittent Fever’
The House of the Ghoshals The river lay ahead. A blue current. A densely-wooded hill sloped upwards on the left. A boy of thirteen or fourteen lay on the ground,…
Read More‘Swimmer Among the Stars’ by Kanishk Tharoor
As a rule, the last speaker of a language no longer uses it. Ethnographers show up at the door with digital recorders, ready to archive every declension, each instance of…
Read More‘A Matter of Rats’ by Amitava Kumar
PATALIPUTRA I would not have turned to writing if I was able to draw. When I was thirteen or fourteen, and attending school in Patna, I had not yet given…
Read More‘The Blue Lotus: Myths and Folktales of India’ by Meena Arora Nayak
POSTOMONI, THE OPIUM GIRL There was a rishi who lived alone by the Ganga. His only companion was a mouse that he had found in his palm-tree hut and had…
Read More‘Plassey: The Battle that Changed the Course of Indian History’ by Sudeep Chakravarti
BUSINESS AND POLITICS: THE LAY OF THE LAND ‘And that we keep an Extraordinary lookout…’ The eighteenth century, when the nawabs of Bengal and John Company came into their own,…
Read More‘Em and the Big Hoom’ by Jerry Pinto
‘Someone turned on a tap’ Dear Angel Ears, Outside the window, a Marathi manus is asking mournfully if anyone would like to buy salt. Or at least that’s what I…
Read More‘The Angel’s Beauty Spots’ by KR Meera
I Angela was killed in front of her children. Her husband was the killer. He thrust the knife deep into her fair-skinned, well-rounded belly again and again. She writhed like…
Read MoreAnimalia Indica
A HORSE AND TWO GOATS R. K. NARAYAN Of the seven hundred thousand villages dotting the map of India, in which the majority of India’s five hundred million live, flourish,…
Read MoreThe Greatest Urdu Stories Ever Told
THE SHROUD by Munshi Premchand Outside the hut, father and son sat in silence in front of the firepit already gone cold. Inside, Budhya, the son’s young wife, kept thrashing…
Read MoreThe Greatest Bengali Stories Ever Told
The Discovery of Telenapota by Premendra Mitra If Saturn and Mars—it must be Mars—are in conjunction, you too, can discover Telenapota some day. In other words, if a day or…
Read More‘Modern South India’ by Rajmohan Gandhi
TIPU (1750–1799) Shorter than his father, darker in the skin and possessing larger eyes, Tipu wore (Wilks informs us) ‘a plain unencumbered attire, which he equally exacted from those around…
Read More‘City Adrift’ by Naresh Fernandes
ONE For months, the front pages had warned of imminent doom. Bombay was reeling under an explosion of ‘pollution, crowds and noise’, noted one pessimist. Predicted another, ‘The urban landscape…
Read More‘The Portrait of a Lady’ by Khushwant Singh
My grandmother, like everybody’s grandmother, was an old woman. She had been old and wrinkled for the twenty years that I had known her. People said that she had once…
Read More‘Finely Chopped Dill’ – A short Story from Cyrus Mistry’s ‘Passion Flower’
Jacintha was angry with the world for making her what she had become. In particular, it was a few individuals she held responsible. Sons of whores, daughters of bitches, may…
Read More‘Manto & I’ by Nandita Das
Being a ‘Woman Director’ Up until a few years ago, the label of being a ‘woman director’ used to upset me. When asked, “How is it to be a woman…
Read More‘Indian Cultures as Heritage’ by Romila Thapar
Knowledge as Heritage It is repeatedly said that education is critical to the making of a civilization. In its different forms through the centuries it has been and is…
Read More‘Pilgrim Nation’ by Devdutt Pattanaik
Introduction Once upon a time there was a boy called Shravan-kumar who travelled with a bamboo sling on his shoulders. On either side of this sling were two baskets….
Read More‘A Suitable Boy’ by Vikram Seth
Chapter 1 1.1 ‘You too will marry a boy I choose,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra firmly to her younger daughter. Lata avoided the maternal imperative by looking around the great…
Read MoreThich Nhat Hanh Series
‘[Thich Nhat Hanh] shows us the connection between personal, inner peace and peace on earth.’ —His Holiness the Dalai Lama Thich Nhat Hanh is one of the best known Zen…
Read More‘Rhododendrons In The Mist’ by Ruskin Bond
Blood-red, the fallen blossoms lay on the snow, even more striking when laid bare. On the trees they blended with the foliage. On the ground, on those patches of recent…
Read MoreVaishnodevi: Waiting for Ram – An Excerpt from Devdutt Pattanaik’s ‘Pilgrim Nation’
After a long crawl, through a narrow cave, in the hills of Jammu, you finally arrive at Vaishnodevi, embodied as three outcroppings of rock, draped with red cloth with gold…
Read More‘An Era of Darkness’ by Shashi Tharoor
THE LOOTING OF INDIA Durant’s outrage – the conquest of India by a corporation – the East India Company – the deindustrialization of India – destruction of Indian textiles…
Read MoreUNCERTAIN ALTITUDES: An Excerpt from Stephen Alter’s ‘Wild Himalaya’
Mountains are often defined by their height, though the summit of a peak is nothing more than the point where it ends, giving way to clouds and sky. The true…
Read MoreSher Singh and the Hot-Water Bottle: An Excerpt from Ruskin Bond’s ‘A Gallery of Rascals’
It’s been many years since Sher Singh, of village Solti, came to my rescue. At the time I was living right at the top of the Landour hill, in a…
Read MoreSuperhuman River: Re-Enchantment at Gaumukh
In the summer of 2009, I trekked to the Gangotri glacier, the rapidly melting source of the Bhagirathi—one of the two glacial streams that join to form the Ganga….
Read MoreWHY GANDHI STILL MATTERS
Many decades ago, back in 1948, when Gandhi was killed by an assassin’s bullets, the world responded with shock, grief and tribute. Today, seventy years later, he continues to be…
Read MoreKalpana Sharma on the narrative around violence against women in India
From the rape of Mathura, a young tribal girl, by two policemen in Desaiganj, Maharashtra, in 1972, to the brutal sexual assault and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Kathua,…
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Celebrating 550 years of Guru Nanak
Guru Nanak, the first of the ten Sikh Gurus, was a sixteenth-century reformer and the founder of Sikhism. He challenged ritualism and shows of piety and attacked the citadels…
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Fatima Bhutto in conversation with Shah Rukh Khan – An Excerpt from ‘New Kings Of The World’
There is a vast cultural movement emerging from the Global South and sweeping all before it. India’s Shah Rukh Khan, after all, is the most popular actor in the…
Read MoreBooks to add to your Diwali festivities
What do your reader friends expect on Diwali (or any other occasion or no occasion actually)?
Read MoreNot Just Another Story – An Excerpt
The poignant chronicle of three generations of sex workers—Saraju, Malati and Lakshmi—takes us from a village in Bangladesh to a refugee camp in India in the years before the…
Read MoreThe Legacy of Gandhi
The year 2019 marks the 150th anniversary of Gandhi’s birth. Whether or not you agree with all his views and whether you hail him as a mahatma or not, his…
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Grey Sunshine – Epilogue by Shaheen Mistri, CEO, Teach For India
7 August 2019 India is battling an educational crisis of unprecedented proportions. Half of the country’s Standard 5 students cannot read a Standard 2 level text in their native language….
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Walking the Roadless Road: Exploring the Tribes of Nagaland – An Excerpt
Walking the Roadless Road: Exploring the Tribes of Nagaland is a comprehensive history of the Naga tribes who live within the borders of Nagaland. Starting with an overview of migration…
Read MoreAleph Olio Series
One of the meanings of the word ‘olio’ is ‘a miscellany’. The books in the Aleph Olio series contain a mélange of the finest writing to be had on a variety…
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Life Lessons
India has produced some of the world’s greatest religious leaders, sages, saints, philosophers and spiritual thinkers. They were monks, nuns and renunciates, nationalists and reformers. No one religion had a…
Read MoreThis Unquiet Land: The Cost Of War
The Kargil conflict had exposed a woeful moment of under-preparedness—both in the intrusions going undetected for as long as they did and the damage that years of neglect and miles…
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Bestsellers
FICTION Muhammad Umar Memon, The Greatest Urdu Stories Ever Told Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy David Davidar, A Clutch of Indian Masterpieces Mini Krishnan, Tell Me a Long, Long Story Arunava Sinha, The Greatest…
Read MoreBusiness is seduction
When King Dashrath’s wives bear him no children and Lompad’s kingdom suffers drought, both are advised to get Rishyashring to perform a yagna. Rishyashring cannot perform a yagna unless he is married…
Read MoreHello world!
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