Scroll.in’s January 4, 2025 list recommended six recently published Indian nonfiction books, ranging from essays and community history to oral interviews and newspaper history. The list is a snapshot of books chosen for the start of 2025—not a current release calendar or a guide to present-day availability. Scroll said its information came from publishers. Read Scroll’s original list.
Six books, six different ways into nonfiction
The recommendations cover subjects from climate and literature to regional culture, queer lives, and the history of Indian newspapers. The descriptions below reflect how Scroll presented the books in its 2025 list.
| Book | Author or editor | Form and focus |
|---|---|---|
| Wild Fictions: Essays | Amitav Ghosh | Essays on literature, language, environment, travel, and history |
| The World After Gaza | Pankaj Mishra | Geopolitical history and commentary on violence, memory, and power |
| The Tamils: A Portrait of a Community | Nirmala Lakshman | History and culture of Tamil communities in India and the diaspora |
| Rama Bhima Soma: Cultural Investigations into Modern Karnataka | Srikar Raghavan | Regional cultural and political history |
| Whistling in The Dark: Twenty-Five Queer Interviews | Edited by R Raj Rao and Dibyajyoti Sarma | Interviews with LGBTQI+ people across different backgrounds |
| Pratap: A Defiant Newspaper | Chander Mohan and Jyotsna Mohan | History of the Urdu newspaper Pratap and Hindi counterpart Vir Pratap |
Essays on literature, language, and the environment
Wild Fictions: Essays by Amitav Ghosh
Scroll described this collection as moving among literature and language, climate and environment, human lives, travel, and discovery. Its examples include the commodification of cloves, Bengal’s mangrove forests, multilingualism, and histories shaped by imperial violence. That range makes it the list’s broadest essay-led entry: a fit for readers interested in how culture, ecology, and history intersect.
History and power beyond a single national frame
The World After Gaza by Pankaj Mishra
Scroll presented Mishra’s book as an examination of Middle East violence through competing historical memories, including the Holocaust, slavery, colonialism, and decolonisation. In the article’s account, Mishra also addresses unequal valuation of lives, Western support for Israel, far-right movements, and shifts in global power. These are descriptions of the book’s argument as presented by Scroll, not neutral or uncontested findings.
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Tamil identity across history and diaspora
The Tamils: A Portrait of a Community by Nirmala Lakshman
The book’s stated scope includes Tamil history, society, culture, and identity, as well as diaspora communities in Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, Canada, the UK, and the US. Scroll’s description says nearly 90 million people worldwide identify as Tamil. The article does not identify the original data source or its year, so that number should be understood as a figure reported by Scroll rather than an independently substantiated estimate.
Modern Karnataka through culture and politics
Rama Bhima Soma: Cultural Investigations into Modern Karnataka by Srikar Raghavan
Scroll described Raghavan’s book as a survey of modern Karnataka. Its subjects include the Kannada renaissance, literary and intellectual figures, political change, television and theatre, and the state’s left-wing and Naxalite histories. It offers a regional lens for readers looking at how public culture and political life have developed together.
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Queer lives in a collection of interviews
Whistling in The Dark: Twenty-Five Queer Interviews, edited by R Raj Rao and Dibyajyoti Sarma
The collection brings together interviews with people from varied LGBTQI+ backgrounds, professions, and family situations. Scroll said the conversations span urban and small-town India and were conducted at different times over more than two decades. Its form makes personal testimony—not a single continuous historical narrative—the central way into the subject.
The history of two newspapers
Pratap: A Defiant Newspaper by Chander Mohan and Jyotsna Mohan
Scroll’s account follows the Urdu newspaper Pratap from its 1919 launch through its closure in 2017, alongside its Hindi counterpart Vir Pratap. The article says the book covers the papers’ family leadership and episodes including the Independence movement, the Emergency, and Operation Blue Star. These details are the list article’s summary; broader historical claims about the newspapers should be checked against the book or primary historical sources.
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How to use this list
Choose by subject and form: Ghosh for wide-ranging essays; Mishra for a contested geopolitical argument; Lakshman for community history and diaspora; Raghavan for Karnataka’s cultural and political landscape; Rao and Sarma’s collection for interview-based accounts; or the Mohans’ book for newspaper history. Scroll’s article provides descriptive summaries, but not ISBNs, full bibliographic records, formats, prices, or current stock information. Readers should check a publisher or bookseller for those details.
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