HT reviewers pick their best reads of 2025

This year, HT reviewers found themselves immersed in everything from children’s books to a prescient 1,100-year-old Arabic text about dogs being more intelligent, capable than humans, and a debut collection of short stories from Kashmir.

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Historical fiction set in the Tudor court, an introspective novel on mothers and daughters, and a meticulously reported work on the family of aristocrats who lived in a hunting lodge in Delhi also make it to this excellent reading list.

The space between caretaking and captivity

Arunima Mazumdar

British author Deborah Levy's Hot Milk is a novel that lives inside 25-year-old anthropology student Sofia’s head. A memory, in fact, fragmented, sensory and unreliable. Add to that her mother Rose’s mysterious illness that occupies the liminal space between caretaking and captivity. Together, the mother-daughter duo spends a summer in Almeria in the south of Spain so Rose can undergo dubious treatments at a wellness clinic. The book was released in 2016 and, this year, Rebecca Lenkiewicz's film adaptation on Mubi made me return to it. Here's the thing: in words, one finds relat-ability; in an audiovisual setup, however, there isn’t much room for imagination.

From giving Rose’s mysterious condition a name to altering the ending, the film, in many ways, fails to capture the book's weight. Its layered symbolism and intellectual scaffolding lose meaning in sight of a more definitive approach. The mother-daughter relationship, queer desire and medical gaslighting are themes that sort of float in the backdrop, and Sofia and Rose’s toxic relationship takes the forefront. Full marks, however, to the atmospheric elements that capture Almeria in all its light and sandy glory.

Rural India found in translation

Akankshya Abismruta

Rural India doesn’t have much representation in Indian fiction in English. But, every once in a while, a book comes along that offers startlingly fresh insight into village communities. One such work is