Traveling South Asian Literary Festival
Apple in China -
The Capture of the World's Greatest Company
Apple in China - The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company by Patrick McGee reveals how Apple, once weeks from bankruptcy, bet on China and poured over $275B into building its precision-manufacturing ecosystem. Drawing on hundreds of interviews, McGee shows how Apple’s engineers helped train millions of Chinese workers, shaping both iconic products and the rise of competitors like Huawei and BYD. Ultimately, the book explores the tension between Apple’s ethos of personal freedom and its deep dependence on a government that suppresses those very freedoms.
The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World
The Golden Road by William Dalrymple is a riveting, cross-disciplinary masterpiece that blends history, archaeology, and anthropology through intimate human stories and sweeping civilizational shifts. Spanning more than a millennium from 250 BC, it illuminates India’s far-reaching influence across Asia in religion, mathematics, art, architecture, and cultural thought. Dalrymple’s introduction of ideas like the “Indosphere” reshapes how we understand India’s global impact—making this a rare book that truly changes how we see the world.
To Save and to Destroy: Writing as an Other
To Save and to Destroy: Writing as an Other gathers Viet Thanh Nguyen’s six Harvard Norton Lectures into a powerful blend of criticism and autobiography that explores what it means to be “the other” in literature, politics, and society. Drawing from his experiences as a refugee and scholar, Nguyen interrogates identity, borders, and belonging, offering expansive insights into Asian American identity and global solidarity. Ultimately, the essays argue for the urgent creation of literary and worldly communities—transforming horror and displacement into beauty, art, and collective connection.
Women Who Wear Only Themselves: Four Travelers on Their Sacred Journeys
Arundhathi Subramaniam’s three interconnected books—Wild Women, Women Who Wear Only Themselves, and The Gallery of Upside Down Women—explore women’s mystical traditions, contemporary sacred journeys, and Subramaniam’s own spiritual inquiries. Through an expansive anthology, intimate interviews, and her own witty, probing poems, she illuminates centuries of women mystics across diverse traditions and the modern seekers who echo them. Together, these works celebrate the sacred feminine and offer women readers resonant reflections of longing, belonging, and spiritual becoming.
Sweet Malida
Zilka Joseph, an Indian American poet currently living in Ann Arbor, Michigan, explores food, religion, and the history of Bene Israel Indian Jews in "Sweet Malida." The volume, consisting of nineteen pieces in prose and poetry, is dedicated to her ancestors, parents, and the eminent Indian English poet Nissim Ezekiel who, like Joseph, hails from the Bene Israel Indian Jewish community.
Inside the Mirror
Inside the Mirror by Parul Kapur is a poignant exploration of women's agency and ambition set against the backdrop of 1950s Bombay’s dynamic art scene. At the heart of the novel lies the struggle of twins, Jaya and Kamlesh, to carve out their identities within the confining societal norms of the time.
Forgive Me, Dear Papa and Other Poems
Shyamasri Maji dedicates her debut collection of poetry "Forgive Me, Dear Papa and Other Poems” to her ‘incurably romantic self.’ She explains her notion of ‘romantic’ as being imaginative, reflective, puerile, rebellious, and emotional. It is through this feminist lens that Maji navigates the complexities of womanhood, societal expectations, and the conflict between tradition and individuality.
On the Edge: 100 Years of Hindi Fiction on Same-Sex Desire
This collection of sixteen stories translated from Hindi into English maps the trajectory of gay and lesbian narratives in modern Indian literature from the 1920s to 2022. Ruth Vanita, the translator, and editor of the volume, ushered a new era in gender and sexuality studies with her works such as Same-Sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and History (Ed. with Saleem Kidwai, 2000) and Love’s Rites: Same-Sex Marriage in India and the West (2005). The collection unfolds different shades of “chaah,” a Hindi word referring to both love and desire, in romantic relationships between men and between women.