8 books with delectable cover designs that are a must-have to brighten up your bookshelf

Tags: Aleph Book Company, Literary Fiction, Manjul Publishing House, Non Fiction, Penguin India

“Do not judge a book by its cover”. An old adage. But how can you not want to pick up a book at a bookstore or add-to-cart if it has an absolutely yummy cover design? A lot of hard work goes into designing the covers, and we are sure you give it a second thought before purchasing a book. So here’s a list of books, of stunning creations of cover designers aka the wondrous people who help you adorn your shelves and often go unapplauded.

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Title: The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey

Author: Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar

Publisher: Aleph Book Company

Price: 399

Pages: 220

Blurb:

The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey by Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar is the story of the Baskeys—the patriarch Somai; his alcoholic, irrepressible daughter Putki; Khorda, Putki’s devout, upright husband, and their sons Sido and Doso; and Sido’s wife Rupi. Equally, the novel is about Kadamdihi, the Santhal village in Jharkhand in which the Baskeys live. For it is in full view of the village that the various large and small dramas of the Baskeys’s lives play out, even as the village cheers them on, finds fault with them, prays for them, and most of all, enjoys the spectacle they provide.

An astonishingly assured and original debut, The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey brings to vivid life a village, its people, and the gods—good and bad—who influence them. Through their intersecting lives, it explores the age-old notions of good and evil and the murky ways in which the heart and the mind works.

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Title: Impetuous Women

Author: Shikhandin

Publisher: Penguin

Price: 399

Pages: 202

Blurb:

Impetuous Women is about women who step across the Lakshman Rekha, whose transgressions fly in the face of the establishment, the patriarchy, and often their own families and loved ones. From two housewives who play a potentially lethal game of keeping up to an expert baker who serves revenge with chocolate sprinkles on top; from a stern hostel warden who examines her relationship with the teenagers she must surveil to a grouchy widow shuts out the world; and from a couple madly in love and desperate for a bit of privacy to a tender bond between a husband and wife, these stories create an unforgettable portrait of modern-day India and the experiential realities of being impetuous, of being women. This darkly comic, thrillingly tragic collection of stories is sensuous, bittersweet, and whimsical by turns, and always wildly, subversively original.

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Title: Godaan

Author: Munshi Premchand

Publisher: Manjul Publishing House

Price: 250

Pages: 366

Blurb:

Premchand is the most famous Hindi novelist and Godaan is Premchand’s most celebrated novel. Economic and social conflict in a north Indian village are brilliantly captured in the story of Hori, a poor farmer and his family’s struggle for survival and self-respect. Hori does everything he can to fulfill his life’s desire: to own a cow, the peasant’s measure of wealth and well-being. Like many Hindus of his time, he believes that making the gift of a cow to a Brahman before he dies will help him achieve salvation. An engaging introduction to India before Independence, Godaan is at once village ethnography, moving human document and insightful colonial history.

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Title: The Black Magic Women

Author: Moushumi Kandali

Publisher: Vintage Books

Price: 299

Pages: 200

Blurb:

In the recent past, many writers have acquainted readers with the composite culture of Assam. Moushumi Kandali makes a similar attempt in The Black Magic Women, but with a stark difference. She brings her characters out of Assam and places them in the mainstream, capturing their struggle to retain their inherent ‘Assameseness’ as they try to assimilate into the larger society.The stories makes one pause, think and debate issues that range from racial discrimination (‘The Fireflies Outside of the Frame’) to sexual harassment (‘The Hyenas and Coach Number One’, ‘Kalindi, Your Black Waters . . . ‘) to the existential and ideological dilemma induced by the state’s complex sociopolitical scenario (‘The Final Leap of the Salmon’). The title story is revealing of how mainstream India perceives Assamese women-as powered with the art of seduction and black magic-as a result of which they face social discrimination that can range from racial slurs to physical abuse.The writer ventures into a surrealistic mode, using a generous sprinkle of fable, myth and metaphors to deliver a powerful punch. With all the shades of emotion these ten stories from the North-east evoke, the reader cannot remain a passive observer.

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Title: Once Upon a Curfew

Author: Srishti Chaudhary

Publisher: Penguin eBury Press

Price: 350

Pages: 304

Blurb:

It is 1974. Indu has inherited a flat from her grandmother and wants to turn it into a library for women. Her parents think this will keep her suitably occupied till she marries her fiancé, Rajat, who’s away studying in London.

But then she meets Rana, a young lawyer with sparkling wit and a heart of gold. He helps set up the library and their days light up with playful banter and the many Rajesh Khanna movies they watch together.

When the Emergency is declared, Indu’s life turns upside down. Rana finds himself in trouble, while Rajat decides it’s time to visit India and settle down. As the Emergency pervades their lives, Indu must decide not only who but what kind of life she will choose.

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Title: Sunlight On A Broken Column

Author: Attia Hosain

Publisher: Penguin India

Price: 399

Pages: 336

Blurb:

Laila, orphaned daughter of a distinguished Muslim family, is brought up in her grandfather’s house by orthodox aunts who keep purdah. At fifteen she moves to the home of a ‘liberal’ but autocratic uncle in Lucknow. Here, during the 1930s, as the struggle for Indian independence intensifies, Laila is surrounded by relatives and university friends caught up in politics. But Laila is unable to commit herself to any cause: her own fight for independence is a struggle against the claustrophobia of traditional life, from which she can only break away when she falls in love with a man whom her family has not chosen for her. With its beautiful evocation of India, its political insight and unsentimental understanding of the human heart, Sunlight on a Broken Column, first published in 1961, is a classic of Muslim life.

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Title: The Body Myth

Author: Rheea Mukherjee

Publisher: Penguin Hamish Hamilton

Price: 499

Pages: 240

Blurb:

Mira is a teacher living in the heart of Suryam, the only place in the world the fickle Rasagura fruit grows. Mira lives alone, and with only the French existentialists as companions, until the day she witnesses a beautiful woman having a seizure in the park. Mira runs to help her but is cautious, for she could have sworn the woman looked around to see if anyone was watching right before the seizure began. Mira is quickly drawn into the lives of this mysterious woman Sara, who suffers a myriad of unexplained illnesses, and her kind, intensely supportive husband Rahil, striking up intimate, volatile and fragile friendships with each of them that quickly become something more.

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Title: Rumble In A Village

Author: Luc Leruth, Jean Drèze

Publisher: Aleph Book Company

Price: 699

Pages: 308

Blurb:

Rumble in a Village starts out as a murder mystery but the narrative soon broadens into an entertaining and insightful fictional look at life in an Indian village. Peopled with colourful characters such as the seemingly innocent Babu who befriends Anil and starts working for him; the village headman, Rampal; Kishan Lal, who teaches Anil about farming and life in Palanpur; Captain, an army man who drops mysterious hints about the murder and much else; Ashok Kumar, the lawyer who helps Anil make sense of the property he has inherited; the beautiful and dedicated teacher, Smita; the obnoxious police superintendent, BKS; and many others (including a bad tempered billy-goat), the novel, based on Jean Drèze’s observations as a young researcher in a real-life village, paints a compelling portrait of the darkness and light that invest the lives of villagers in northern India.

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Tags: Aleph Book Company, Literary Fiction, Manjul Publishing House, Non Fiction, Penguin India

Amritesh Mukherjee

Amritesh doesn't know what to do with his life, so he writes. He also doesn't know what to write, so he reads. Gift him a book if you chance upon him and he'll love you forever.