ME & MY SHELF

Former editor of Elle and Debonair Amrita Shah, is the author of Ahmedabad: A City in the World (2015), Vikram Sarabhai: A Life (2007), Telly-Guillotined: How Television Changed India (2019) and, most recently, The Other Mohan in Britain's Indian Ocean Empire (2024).

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The Sailor from Gibraltar

BY MARGUERITE DURAS, Open Letter Modern Classics, ₹1,362

A man dumps his dull job and girlfriend and takes off with a rich American woman, who is scouring the world for a former lover.

The two fall in love, but keep searching for the mythical 'sailor from Gibraltar,' an ideal that becomes both an escape from, and a purpose for, living.

Portraits and Observations: The Essays of Truman Capote

Modern Library, ₹1,323

Truman Capote is one of my favourite writers. I love his novels—The Grass Harp, Breakfast at Tiffany's and others. But he is at his most distinctive in nonfiction. This collection has his sharply observed portraits, travel sketches and some of his most stylish narrative nonfiction.

A Writers Life

BY GAY TALESE, Random House, ₹1,870