In the solo play Adhura, Vivek Vijayakumaran explores how, even as we idolise historical and mythological figures, life tests the ideals they embody. Do these tests still liberate us, or do they become burdens that make it harder to make choices? By Sravasti Datta

Satire: The solution to AI mimicking humans is to have humans mimic the AI that mimics the human. From Vikram Chandra and Salman Rushdie to mythological adventures and a popcorny topsy-turvy romance, here is our preview of the 15 hottest and thoroughly fraudulent Indian books for the 2025 summer. By Karan Madhok

Sanket Mhatre poems in A City Full of Sirens address and interrogate the relations between ‘the eternal’ and ‘the transient’ in a nuanced manner, tearing into the expansive multiplicities of singular moments. By Ankush Banerjee

In his latest work, Salman Rushdie expertly flirts with the line between fact and fiction, declaring all living beings—including those reading his book—may be ‘characters’ in a grander historical fiction. When nothing is real, stories are the only reality. By Karan Madhok

What is the purpose of the Mahabharata? In his short, succinct volume Mahabharata: The Epic and the Nation, G.N. Devy tackles the biggest questions behind one the greatest epics ever composed. By Karan Madhok

Why Shashi Tharoor’s satirical 1989 masterpiece The Great Indian Novel—which married India’s recent history with The Mahabharata—is as relevant as ever in today’s polarising times. - by Atulya Pathak

‘It was late October, too late for shepherds, and we had the mountains to ourselves.’ Read Zachary Conrad’s vivid narrative of another perilous and rewarding hike in the Himalaya.