Best books of 2024

Columnists and book critics of the Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle give their verdict on the titles that left an impression or otherwise made an impact.

MANI SHANKAR AIYAR

Ira Mukhoty’s The Lion and The Lily is a fascinating look in an era that has not been much written about: the effective collapse of the Mughal empire after Ahmad Shah Abdali sacked Delhi to the rise and eclipse of Awadh which marked the high point of the synthesis of Hindu and Muslim culture. A useful antidote to the Sangh Parivar’s historical illiteracy.

Mani Shankar Aiyar is a former minister of panchayati raj of India and a memoirist

KRISHNA SHASTRI DEVULAPALLI

For me, this year’s important book has been Dan Sinykin’s Big Fiction: How Conglomeration Changed the Publishing Industry and American Literature. As an annoyingly persistent chronicler of all that’s wrong with the Indian lit-pub world for over a decade, this book, ironically a book that’s mostly about all that’s wrong with book publishing in the US, gave me hope. One of the chief insights for me was that writers and readers need to look to independent publishing to be valued and find literature of value respectively.

Krishna Shastri Devulapalli is a novelist, columnist, playwright and screenwriter

SHUMA RAHA

My non-fiction pick of 2024 is Knife: Meditations after an Attempted Murder, Salman Rushdie’s sharp-as-a-cutlass account of him trying to make sense of the brutal stabbing attack on him that took place at Chautauqua in New York in August 2022. What elevates the book and makes it a joy to read is Rushdie’s thoughts on art, creative freedom, religious fanaticism, authoritarianism and also, his own purpose as an artist after he has had a second chance at life. Written in the first person, Knife is a rare glimpse into Rushdie the man and Rushdie the artist.

Shuma Raha is the author of the novel The Swap

RANJONA BANERJI

To look back is a pleasant and upsetting journey: All the books that I wanted to review but went to other writers! But then, from my own box of treasures, I find two that made the biggest impression on me in 2024. Indrajit Roy’s Audacious Hope reminded us that Indian democracy can be saved, and that we have it in us to fight back. Citizens have risen before and therefore can again. From the public to the personal, Amitava Kumar’s Yellow Book is a whimsical journey, part travelogue, part academic, part observations. Insights into the writer’s mind, an impressionist experience.

Ranjona Banerji is a part-time reader and full-time observer, also a journalist

PARSA VENKATESHWAR RAO JR

Anita Desai’s novella, Rosarita (Picador India), is a tense retelling of the suppressed elements of past, where she connects the experiences in Mexico and India, of a mother and daughter at different times. The connection between Mexico and India carries a deeper resonance, historically and emotionally than it appears to be on the surface. The beauty and apparent serenity of the surface is broken by the images of the past. And the effect is explosive because Desai’s prose is quiet and clear. It is a book you want to start reading again once you finish it.

Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr is a senior journalist and columnist

SHREYA SEN-HANDLEY

I put William Dalrymple’s The Golden Road (2024) on my Christmas wishlist this year, and sure enough, Santa delivered! Sitting on my bedside TBR pile, it’ll be my first read of 2025. And while I’m looking forward to it, there are books I’ve devoured this year that are still on my mind and may never leave. Ann Patchett’s The Dutch House (2019) is profound, powerful, and moving, and yet such an easy, flowing read, that It will outlast most “books of the year” by centuries. Another one that’ll make book wishlists for a good long while is Bonnie Garmus’ wonderfully entertaining Lessons in Chemistry (2022). Don’t wait for Santa — get ’em now!

Shreya Sen-Handley is an award-winning memoirist and short fiction writer, as well as a playwright, illustrator and columnist

PRANAY SHARMA

The most fascinating book I read this year is historian Josephine Quinn’s magisterial, myth-shattering, account of How the World Made the West — a 4,000-year history. With a bold, well-researched narrative, Quinn tells us there was never a single Western or European culture. The Western values of freedom, justice, rationality and tolerance were a product of links with a much larger world in Asia, Africa and South America. It was a globalised world that made the West, not the other way around.

Pranay Sharma is a Kolkata-based senior journalist

VARUN ANDHARE

Early this year, I was blown away by the naturalist Yuvan Aves’ wonderfully affecting Intertidal,

which I found to be not just open-hearted, but also open-eyed and open-eared exploration of his

life and work around the coast and marshlands of Southern India. In the soft lyricism of his prose,

Aves has much in common with my favourite fiction title of the year: Anne Michaels’ Booker-

nominated novel Held. Set in 1917 and onwards, amidst two great wars and the churn of the

century, Michaels uses a time when our ideas around science and faith were relatively fluid to

eruditely unsettle them anew.

Varun Andhare teaches critical writing at Ashoka University, Sonepat

INDRANIL BANERJIE

Of the three dozen or so books I read this year, few were new releases. Of the new ones, a work that stood out was former RBI governor, Raghuram Rajan, and Rohit Lamba co-authored work Breaking the Mould: Reimagining India's Economic Future published in early 2024 by Penguin. I thought it was an important book and extremely relevant for India’s economy which appears to have hit another roadblock. One might not agree with their suggestions but it is a work that should not be ignored. It is a volume of ideas and good intentions, and meant to be read with an open mind.

Indranil Banerjie is a Delhi-based senior journalist

SHUBHDA CHAUDHARY

Daybreak in Gaza: Stories of Palestinian Lives and Culture is not just a book — it is Gaza’s enduring heartbeat, echoing across the world. A searing testament to resilience, the book defies documentation while standing as an act of resistance. In a time when ordinary Gazan voices are being wiped out of existence, this collection, edited by Mahmoud Muna and Matthew Teller, and supported by UNRWA’s Juliette Touma and Gazan journalist Jayyab Abusafia, tells the stories of real people who refuse to submit to unimaginable loss.

Shubhda Chaudhary is an independent scholar, teacher and global affairs specialist

SHASHI WARRIER

Percival Everett offers a new perspective on slavery in his James, a retelling of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. It’s told by Jim, the slave who accompanies Huck Finn through his adventures as he flees an abusive and alcoholic father. The James of the title is the inner Jim, a man far superior to his masters. James, for all his advantages, is a mere chattel. When his mistress sells him, but not his family, he escapes. James tells of James’s long and tortuous road to freedom, a story that strikes a chord in anyone ever subjected to the tyranny of the mediocre.

Shashi Warrier is the author of The Last Hangman and 15 other books