The Blog of Small Things

Name : OTP please! Author : Vandana Vasudevan     Year of Publication : 2025     Genre : Non-fiction, Economics, Society     Rating : *** ( 3 stars out of 5) The author pens a well-researched tome on gig workers and online commerce - a theme hitherto unexplored in developmental literature. The book documents the travails of such workers across South Asia through patient one-to-one interviews (from Swiggy delivery boys to Amazon warehouse workers) and emotion-based chapters (guilt, anxiety, freedom etc). The author resists broad brushstrokes and paints a mixed picture of this new world with words of caution about it's future.  This book is an important addition to our understanding of jobs and development in the South Asian perspective.

  Name : Chronicle of an Hour and a Half Author : Saharu Nusaiba Kannanari     Year of Publication : 2024     Genre : Fiction, Novel     Rating : **** ( 4 stars out of 5) The debutant author spins a lyrical narrative set in small town Kerala covering nearly 200 pages of events which happen within 90 minutes. The structure of the novel - a new narrator every chapter- adds to the frenzy. A tempest-hit village in Areekode(or is that the right spelling?) smells an affair while the woman's husband is away in the Gulf, feeds poison on Whatsapp and turns into a mob baying for blood. The result is a heady (and scary) work of fiction which sounds eerily close to reality in our rabid times. A new and original voice has arisen in the Indian Fiction horizon and Saharu Nusaiba Kannanari is here to stay.