And just to remind you, our special guest star in this mini-series on the troubles @empirepoduk.bsky.social is @praddenkeefe.bsky.social , the author of Say Nothing, now a major series on @netflix.com He had @willdalrymple.bsky.social had me spellbound.

Deepest condolences to you and your family! 🙏🏾

During my latest trip around the sun this is perhaps my favourite click anyone else took.

The curse if ridiculous expressions when once trading is for once absent (part of my dyspraxia profile) and the 7 month bump is hidden by the clever camera angle.

Arresting cover.. promises to be a fabulous read going by the threads junior Dalrymple has been posting on history from across the subcontinent!

Can’t – as they say – make this shit up.

Gosh!

In other breaking news, magnolias are in full bloom around here.

Neil Postman's six questions to ask of any new technology. (Written in 1999.)

Nothing more satisfying than arranging the different editions of your books in new bookshelves

Table for one

@etihadairlines.bsky.social experience at #LHR

Issue 59 of The Bombay Literary Magazine is here!

bombaylitmag.com/current-issue/

Doors of old (North) Kolkata

The Museum of Innocence is an ode to obsessive, unrelenting, passionate love - except none of these words quite convey its intensity or perseverance. What best describes such love is the concept & term Ishaq عشق that we find in classical Persian, Urdu, Hindi & Punjabi poetry. 1/4

Hard to get clearer views with so much light pollution in the cities but a very bright Venus and fairly bright Mars and Jupiter visible in the Lahore night sky

#planetaryalignment

Believe it or not but the very first #ElifShafak that I’m reading. I was dissuaded & not interested earlier for multiple reasons. Only just started but this one seems very much up my alley - multiple historical periods, ancient history, a common thread & elegant prose. Let’s see.

Watching One Hundred Years of Solitude, spooling the episodes out slowly so as to let the memory of the book return.

Many years ago, GGM set conditions for film-makers: the entire book must be filmed, but only one chapter, two minutes long, was to be released each year, for one hundred years.

A story of our time - Irish writer Paul Lynch’s #BookerPrize 2023 winning novel #ProphetSong is a dark, dreary & deeply compelling exploration of a democratic polity getting overtaken by an authoritarian government & degenerating from order into disorder, ruled based 1/4

A Nabokov character on writing about India. From ‘Laughter in the Dark’ (1938).

Father Christmas comes to Kalighat to delight the children of sex workers.

This year he gave sweets amid such excitement - next year we will work to deliver meaningful gifts to all.

A great pleasure to read out a chapter from my forthcoming recreation in English of my novel #GhuroobeShehrKaWaqt that has appeared in the 8th edition/vol of the Aleph magazine. #Alephmagazine remains Pakistan’s foremost literary magazine in English & is always a wonderfully 1/2

Some months ago I uploaded my first vlog on books I am reading and which I really like. I am grateful to those who have enjoyed and appreciated my book vlogs, especially students. This is that first vlog. I am glad that the #KitabDost series has steadily progressed. 1/2

echoes & originals: from the first batches The short story writing program I launched in mid-November concluded classes for its first batches yesterday. Here's a report...

The short story writing program I launched in mid-November concluded classes for its first batches yesterday. Here's a report.

open.substack.com/pub/tanujsol...

"It’s a devil’s bargain, being a writer. You’re committed to exposing yourself and your family to the outside world, for money." Loved reading Hanif Kureishi's interview (with Hari Kunzru) in The Paris Review.

The Stillness of the Backwaters-
Kumarakom, Kerala 2024

Thread to keep an eye on.

Wow

'I Saw Ramallah' by Mourid Barghouti, tr. Ahdaf Soueif, describes the poet's return to the 1967 Palestinian territories after 30 years. It is a document of loss, but to read it after another two decades, knowing what has happened and is happening, makes it almost unbearable.

even when you're stuck in traffic at dusk in Albuquerque's South Valley.....

Photo of the day #10

Diplomat on a dhoti.