WOMEN'S PRIZES WINNERS, TALKING TO JHUMPA LAHIRI, AUDREY TRUSCHKE'S NEW BOOK AND MORE

Welcome to this edition of The Hindu on Books Newsletter. The Women's Prizes for Fiction and Non-Fiction were announced last Thursday, and the winners are Yael van der Wouden for The Safekeep (Viking), a fictional account of Dutch society post World War II and the Holocaust, and Rachel Clarke for The Story of A Heart (Simon&Schuster).

- 

Calling organ donation an act of radical generosity, Dr. Clarke writes the story of Kiera and Max. When one nine-year-old tragically dies, the parents ensure another lives with the help of their child's heart. Read the review of The Safekeep - it had been shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2024 and lost out to Samantha Harvey's Orbital; and the shortlisted books of the Women's Non-Fiction Prize.

In reviews, we find out more about Audrey Truschke's new book on Indian history over five millennia, Perumal Murugan's essays on his teaching experience and more. We also talk to Jhumpa Lahiri who is translating Ovid's Metamorphoses.

Frederick Forsyth, the British author of The Day of the Jackal and other bestselling thrillers, passed away after a brief illness last Monday. He was 86. When The Day of the Jackal came out in 1971, the book propelled Forsyth into global fame. It was made into a film in 1973 starring Edward Fox as the Jackal and more recently a television series starring Eddie Redmayne and Lashana Lynch. In 2015, Forsyth told the BBC that he had also worked for the British intelligence agency MI6 for many years, starting from when he covered a civil war in Nigeria in the 1960s.

Books of the week

Audrey Truschke's latest book, India: 5000 Years of History on the Subcontinent (Princeton University Press/PRH), offers a panoramic view of subcontinental history, from early signs of life to the 21st century, documenting the most important political, social, religious, intellectual, and cultural events.