Me & My Shelf

Manjula Padmanabhan is an author, playwright, artist and cartoonist. She won the 1997 Onassis Award for Theatre, in Greece, for her play Harvest. Her comic strip Sukiyaki appears in Chennai’s BusinessLine. Her books include The Island of Lost Girls and two collections of plays, Blood And Laughter and Laughter And Blood.

- Saptak Choudhury

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass

BY LEWIS CARROLL, Penguin Classics, ₹250

These two small books contain a vast universe of ideas—about a child’s limitless imagination of finding friends and battling fears. About the games that rule all our lives, the mirrors that distort reality and the delights of fantasy.

Maus: A Survivor’s Tale

BY ART SPIEGELMAN, Penguin UK, ₹999

A searing representation told through drawings, of Jews living through the horror years of Nazi Germany. Most of the characters are represented as animals. This visual device heightens the pathos and suspense, whilst also providing a soft, self-deprecating humour: The Jews are mice, for instance, while the Nazis are cats.

The Complete Maus Maus studies the bloody pawprints of history and tracks its meaning for all of us.