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The twelvemonth ends with grim tidings that radical aren’t speechmaking enough. As feverish studies are connected to analyse however artificial quality is impacting the satellite of books, writers are exploring ideas that resonate with these fraught times. With equality nether threat, books crossed genres and themes — memoir, history, environment, caste studies, tech, medicine — person tried to supply an knowing of modern society.
For instance, historiographer Audrey Truschke offers a panoramic presumption in India: 5000 Years of History connected the Subcontinent; Sam Dalrymple (Shattered Lands) puts the spotlight connected the play from 1928 to 1971 successful the subcontinent and Asia, to explicate wherefore the bequest of partitions lingers; and in The Caste Con Census, Anand Teltumbde argues against a caste count, saying it volition not annihilate caste but support it going.
Several books analyse the plight of Palestinians against the mightiness of Israel successful Gaza, similar a postulation edited by Fatima Bhutto and Sonia Faleiro (Gaza: The Story of a Genocide). In a twelvemonth of warfare and unimaginable loss, present are the apical 10 non-fiction books of 2025, immoderate holding retired anticipation against each odds.
‘Is a River Alive?’ by Robert Macfarlane
Macfarlane imagines rivers not arsenic resources, but arsenic a surviving entity with rights. He studies 3 rivers — the Rio Los Cedros successful an Ecuadorian cloud-forest, the “wounded creeks, lagoons and estuaries” of Adyar successful Chennai, and the Mutehekau Shipu astatine Nitassinan, homeland of the Innu people, successful Canada — and the threats they face. But though rivers “are easy wounded”, Macfarlane shows that if fixed a chance, they heal themselves with singular speed. “Hope is the happening with rivers,” helium insists.
‘The Tamils: A Portrait of a Community’ by Nirmala Lakshman
This is simply a profoundly researched relationship of the Tamils and their history. The Tamils, writes Lakshman, are inheritors of a disaggregated civilization and history, stemming from divers humanities experiences of caste and community. “But they unite broadly successful the affectional bandwidth of connection and peculiar sentiments.” Calling it a “genre-bender”, The Hindu review said: “One of the finer sections successful the publication is devoted to exploring the conception of the tinais, the 5 chiseled earthy regions of past Tamilakam that, astatine once, determined idiosyncratic lifestyles portion reflecting divers taste ecosystems. One mode to work it is to see tinais as a model for some separateness and interconnection, a moving taxable in The Tamils.”
‘Meet The Savarnas: Indian Millennials Whose Mediocrity Broke Everything’ by Ravikant Kisana
The writer combines memoir, societal observation, ethnographic insights and taste exposition to clasp a reflector to savarna supremacy. “Think of southbound Asia — India particularly — arsenic afloat of radical sitting successful a cramped and soiled basement… looking up astatine what is simply a solid ceiling for them but is, successful fact, a level supra successful which lives a precise tiny radical of people.” The radical supra are the savarnas, who “have entree to each the switches successful each the rooms of the house, including the basement. They power connected the lights and power them disconnected astatine will”.
‘One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This’ by Omar El Akkad
The publication follows a viral tweet enactment retired by the Egypt-born, U.S.-based writer successful October 2023, days aft the Hamas onslaught connected Israel and Israel’s convulsive effect against Palestinians successful Gaza. “One day, erstwhile it’s safe, erstwhile there’s nary idiosyncratic downside to calling a happening what it is, erstwhile it’s excessively precocious to clasp anyone accountable, everyone volition person ever been against this,” helium posted connected societal media. As an migrant successful the West, helium was soon questioning everything, peculiarly wherefore a immense bulk of the Western world’s governmental powerfulness centres were enacting a “campaign of progressive genocide” against the Palestinian people. El Akkad’s non-fiction debut, which won the National Book Award this year, is simply a “break-up letter” to the West and its ideas of state and justice.
‘Mother Mary Comes to Me’ by Arundhati Roy
Roy, who won the 1997 Booker Prize for her novel, The God of Small Things, wrote this memoir aft she mislaid her mother, Mary Roy. She was 89, and had lived a beingness of tumult, gathering a schoolhouse from scratch successful Kerala’s Kottayam, warring for women’s adjacent rights nether Christian inheritance laws, and besides being idiosyncratic who could not beryllium “put nether neat divisions”. The writer and her member had to contend with their mother’s bouts of asthma and convulsive rage. Roy near location astatine 18, she writes, to proceed loving her mother. In an interview, she says, “...if your ain parent is the danger. Then you don’t spot anything.” Did she get immoderate benignant of closure successful her analyzable narration with her mother? Yes and nary — and that’s wherefore the memoir.
‘Careless People: A Story of Where I Used to Work’ by Sarah Wynn-Williams
This is simply a devastating representation of Meta (Facebook) and the reckless ways of its leadership, peculiarly Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg. A erstwhile Director of Global Public Policy astatine the company, Wynn-Williams’s relationship of Facebook’s relation successful planetary events, including the 2016 U.S. statesmanlike predetermination and the genocide of the Rohingya radical successful Myanmar, is chilling. As a reappraisal successful The Hindu notes, her publication is an indispensable starting constituent to recognize the mode societal media platforms tin signifier not lone idiosyncratic lives but full nations and planetary movements.
‘Dapaan: Tales from Kashmir’s Conflict’ by Ipsita Chakravarty
The author-journalist gathers stories from places successful Kashmir, “walls, parks, marketplaces, quality pages, web pages”, earlier they are erased. In a twelvemonth erstwhile determination were respective books connected Kashmir, including Mehak Jamal’s Lōal Kashmir: Love and Longing successful a Torn Land and City of Kashmir: Srinagar, a Popular History by Sameer Hamdani, and aft the government banned 25 books written connected Kashmir, Chakravarty’s endeavour to support live stories of erasure is poignant and important. As Jamal says successful her review: In a onshore wherever authoritative narratives effort to overwrite lived truth, each retelling is an assertion of presence, of existing.
‘Called by the Hills: A Home successful the Himalaya’ by Anuradha Roy
The writer brings live the mountains, and the joys — and perils — of surviving successful adjacent proximity to the wild. The scenery is stunning, and Roy’s beauteous h2o colours embellish the pages. It’s her archetypal non-fiction publication aft 5 fabrication titles. It draws from mag articles, and jottings successful diaries of her archetypal years successful Ranikhet successful the Uttarakhand mountains. In a speech with The Hindu, Roy says she thinks of the publication arsenic a “travelogue by idiosyncratic who stopped travelling, and stayed successful the spot she was penning about”.
‘Empire of AI’ by Karen Hao
This publication is simply a cautionary communicative astir 1 of Silicon Valley’s astir spectacular occurrence stories, the motorboat of ChatGPT successful 2022. Hao had been investigating the satellite of AI for years and soon she turned to the startup OpenAI and Sam Altman, the antheral who “made it each happen” and routinely announced its slate of products. At forums, Altman harps connected the “transformative and beneficial” aspects of the technology. In her author’s note, Hao writes that the publication tells the wrong communicative of OpenAI, “a illustration of a technological ambition turned into an aggressive, ideological money-fuelled quest;... a meditation connected power.”
‘The Dark Secrets of Johnson&Johnson’ by Gardiner Harris
Harris uncovers the unsafe practices crossed the company’s repertoire of drugs and products, from babe pulverization to metal-on-metal hep implants, each adversely impacting the wellness of users. Chillingly, the institution continued to marketplace them, afloat cognisant of the harmful effects. In a speech with The Hindu, Harris explains the modus operandi: “J&J, aboriginal on, would find retired that its merchandise was dangerous, would fell those dangers not lone from the public, but from the FDA [Food and Drug Administration] and different regulatory agencies, knowing that it could effect successful a fig of deaths.”
sudipta.datta@thehindu.co.in
