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Consider these new titles for your next read

The old drift
Namwali Serpell
Hogarth, 2019, pp 576, Rs 499
In the Great Zambian Novel, the lives of three
generations of families — one black, one brown, one white — unfold over 200 years. Their lives become
entwined as each is plagued by a curse.
Also expect a Marquez twist in it.

The 108 Upanishads
Roshen Dalal
Penguin, 2019, pp 425, Rs 399
This is a well-researched primer on the
108 Upanishads, philosophical treatises that
form a part of the Vedas, the revered Hindu
texts. The author explains the concepts
at the core of each Upanishad.

Instructions for a Funeral
David Means
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019, pp 208, Rs 999
In a return to his most-loved form, short story, the
author writes on fatherhood, marriage, a homeless brother, the nature of addiction, and the death of a friend at the hands of a serial-killer nurse. He even transmutes a fistfight in Sacramento into a tender, life-long love story.

Caste as social capital
Prof R Vaidyanathan
Westland, 2019, pp 131, Rs 299
This examines the workings of caste through
the lens of business, economics and
entrepreneurship. It interrogates the role caste
plays in the economic sphere in terms of facilitating the nuts and bolts of business and entrepreneurship: finance, markets and workforce.

Bangkok wakes to rain
Pitchaya Sudbanthad
Sceptre, 2019, pp 358, Rs 1,475
In this tapestry of lives around a building in
Bangkok, time collapses and the stories of a
missionary, a jazz pianist, savvy teenagers et
al mesh with each other with the backdrop of
the ever-changing city.

Zucked
Roger McNamee
Harper Collins, 2019, pp 336, Rs 599
This is the dramatic story of how a noted
tech venture capitalist, an early mentor to
Mark Zuckerberg and investor in his
company, woke up to the serious damage
Facebook was doing to our society and set
out to try to stop it.

Sing to it
Amy Hempel
Scribner, 2019, pp 160, Rs 1,466
Replete with moments of revelation and
transcendence, this collection of short stories
introduces us to characters who are lonely
and looking for connections. In Greed, a spurned wife examines her husband’s affair with a married woman.

Act natural: A Cultural History
of Misadventures in Parenting
Jennifer Traig
Harper Collins, 2019, pp 352, Rs 1,487
Moving from ancient Rome to Puritan
New England to the Dr Spock craze of mid-century America, the author explores historical and
present-day parenting techniques ranging
from the misguided to the nonsensical,
to the truly horrifying.