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

In the run-up to the 2024 elections, the films that hit the big screens, the books showcased on the windowfronts, and the music crawling into our ears, has mostly sung the songs of propaganda. It’s art without dissent; art that rages for the machine. By Karan Madhok

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

An essay on art and analysis by Dhani Muniz: “Art was never art in the way that food has always been food; or perhaps, rather, it is a vast restaurant at the end of the universe in which we are all picky eaters.”