It's that time of the year again when we as a species collectively try to
condense our impressions of the year gone by in the form of lists, highlights
of the year so to speak. Psychology says we are pattern-seeking beings who
love the comfort of hierarchical presentation of information for ease of
consumption and comprehension.
If you, like me, also struggle with finding a balance between your hobby of
buying books and your hobby of reading books, hopefully this list will make
your next trip to the bookstore a little bit easier. So here it is, my list of the
10 most impactful books of 2023, in no particular order:
1. The Fraud by Zadie Smith (Fiction)
Starting this list off with a personal favourite, we have Smith with her
sixth novel. Although a work of historical fiction based on an actual
criminal trial that held the 1870s Victorian English population
enthralled, this book is very much a reflection and meditation on the
contemporary global political climate. Based on the Tichborne Trial
where an Australian butcher claimed to be the missing legitimate heir
to the vast baronetcy of the Tichbornes, the novel unfolds around a
Scottish housekeeper and a key witness in the trial—a man raised in
slavery on a Jamaican sugar plantation—embroiled in the complexities
of the idea of the construction of truth. Smith’s piercing insight on
identity and race relations, and a keen eye for sardonic humour shine
bright in this briskly paced narrative that is saturated with deception,
class dynamics and the blurry distinction between authenticity and
fraudulence.
2. Prophet Song by Paul Lynch (Fiction)
Winner of the Booker Prize 2023, Lynch has described this book as an
attempt at ‘radical empathy’ that pulls the reader into the experience
of surviving in a society embroiled in political crisis. After the year we have had, we could all use a bit of that, eh? The narrative opens on a
fateful rainy night in Dublin where Eilish Stack, a scientist and mother
of four, opens her front door to find officers from the Garda National
Immigration Bureau, come to interrogate her trade unionist husband.
With her husband absconding, Eilish becomes entangled in the
grotesque reality of a society on the verge of a total collapse. Ireland
faces a dire political fate as its government hurtles towards tyranny.
Prophet Song is a chilling narrative that presents a terrifying vision of
a nation at war with itself and a devastating portrayal of a mother’s
desperate attempts to safeguard her family.
3. Roman Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri, translated by Todd Portnowitz
(Fiction)
A doyenne of diasporic literature in English, Lahiri has captured the
ethos of the lives and stories of Bengali immigrants in the USA,
drawing heavily from her own experiences as a first generation
immigrant in the country, in multiple short stories and novels over the
past two decades. In recent years, she has been living in Rome, Italy,
and has been writing extensively in Italian, her adopted language.
Roman Stories is the latest one of this series of Italian writings. In this
collection of short stories, Lahiri extends many of her recurring
concerns—identity, place, displacement, alienation and otherness—as
she grapples with the ideas of home and exile. This is a pertinent book
to our times as it covers everything from the anti-immigrant stance
being enforced by several countries to far-right propaganda to casual
displays of religious intolerance that is moulding the worldview of
young impressionable minds on the daily.
4. Illegitimate Authority: Facing the Challenges of Our Time by
Noam Chomsky and CJ Polychroniou (Non-fiction)
The distinguished theoretical linguist and public intellectual, Chomsky,
has always had his finger on the pulse of the world. In this series of
insightful interviews with Polychroniou, Chomsky delves into the
pressing issues of our times, the most troubling of which is perhaps
the rapid erosion of the concept of democracy, particularly in the USA,
and escalating geopolitical tensions. He scrutinizes the steady wearing
away of the social fabric and the fragments and diplomatic strains
within the Biden administration, the contested authority of the US Supreme Court, origins of the War in Ukraine, the still ongoing
repercussions of the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as the urgent need
for an international action on the climate crisis. This book lays out a
blueprint for how we, the common masses, can come together and
take a stand against injustice.
5. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride (Fiction)
Set in 1972, workers in the construction site of a new development
project in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, unearth an unexpected skeleton at
the bottom of a well. The mystery of the skeleton’s identity and how it
wound up where it is found conceals closely guarded secrets amongst
the residents of Chicken Hill, a ramshackle neighbourhood where
immigrant Jewish and African Americans coexist peacefully in their
shared aspirations and challenges. The plot centres on a Jewish
couple—a theatre owner and a manager at the Heaven and Earth
Grocery Store— and a Black man who join hands to shield a deaf
orphaned boy from the preying clutches of the state authorities when
they seek to institutionalize him. As the narrative progresses and the
lives of these characters intertwine, the struggles faced by those
existing in the underbelly and on the fringes of white, Christian
America become evident, shedding light on the lengths they go to for
survival. If Jordan Peele’s 2017 film Get Out gave you the heebie-
jeebies, you won’t be very surprised when the truth about the
involvement of Pottstown’s white establishment in the events of
Chicken Hill is revealed. But you will find a bit of hope and assurance
in that even in the bleakest of hours, love and community—depicted
here as heaven and earth—provide sustenance, in a display of a
profound faith in humanity that is typical of McBride’s writing, which
you will find in his previous two novels The Good Lord Bird (2013) and
Deacon King Kong (2020) as well.
6. Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (Fiction)
If you love Charlie Brooker’s dystopian anthology TV series Black
Mirror (2011-present), this novel is for you. Chain-Gang All-Stars is a
dystopian satire where death-row inmates engage in televised duels
for a shot at freedom (Reminds you of Bing from the Black Mirror
episode ‘Fifteen Million Merits’ entering the talent show Hot Shot?).
The reader is drawn into the deliriously enthusiastic audience, and is made complicit in the bloody spectacle. The society that this book is
set in is a hyperbolic reflection of contemporary USA, chiselled to
farcical extremes. In the middle of this, a poignant love story unfolds
between two top competitors grappling with the dilemma of choosing
between companionship and freedom. The skilfully fleshed out fight
sequences emphasize the potential ease with which we could become
accustomed to such a disturbing reality, if or when it comes to that
(Remember the chants of “Do it! Do it!” from the audience members of
Hot Shot that Bing met?). As with any dystopian narrative, you will
recognize what real world issues the novel is mocking and at the same
time you will wish that you could just ignore that cognisance and read
it as purely a work of imagination. This is Adjei-Brenyah’s debut novel,
following his 2018 short story collection Friday Black, which dealt with
the nuances of the Black identity in the contemporary world.
7. The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness and the
Tragedy of Good Intentions by Jonathan Rosen (Non-fiction)
The post-pandemic world has, at long last, facilitated some sustained
conversation on mental health in recent years. In light of this, Rosen’s
memoir is a brilliant take on friendship and love laced together by self-
delusion, which works as a commentary on how the western world
deals with mental illness and all that it entails. The narrative chronicles
a meticulous account of Rosen’s enduring friendship with his fellow
Yale batch-mate Michael Laudor, a Law graduate known for his efforts
to de-stigmatise schizophrenia, during his time at university and
beyond it. The narrative takes a chilling turn when Laudor, amidst
making headlines for his rehabilitation work, fatally stabs his pregnant
girlfriend with a kitchen knife, leading to his incarceration in a
maximum-security psychiatric hospital. Drawing from an extensive
range of sources— legal and police records, medical studies,
interviews, diaries and Laudor’s own writings—Rosen inquires into the
thin, blurry line that separates brilliance from madness. This memoir
takes a deep dive into the intricate policy issues related to
deinstitutionalization and the ethical obligations of the same at the
societal level, and emerges as a deeply thoughtful indictment of a
society that values profit, makeshift remedies and conveniently
optimistic endings at the cost of the arduous path of authentic care.
8. Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein
(Non-fiction)
The venerated social critic and activist, Klein, discovers one day that a
woman who shares her name but espouses views that are drastically
different and repugnant to her own is repeatedly getting mistaken for
her. Although Klein initially dismisses this as too absurd to be true, the
situation quickly takes a dark turn and plunges her into a distorted
reality. She obsessively begins to follow social media threats and
insults from her doppelganger’s followers, pondering over what it
means to have a stable identity, or a lack thereof, as a means of
engaging with the larger world. Klein’s journey of uncovering the
identity of her doppelganger takes her to the bizarre mirror world of
everything from conspiracy theories to anti-vaxxer movements to
wellness influencers to far-right propagandists, exposing in the process
our collective shift to a polished virtual reality where public shaming
and deep fake proliferation thrive. This distressing reflection of our
times is a serious dark comedy, urging readers to scrutinize their own
reflections in the mirror. It resonates with those who have ever found
themselves in internet rabbit holes, questioning politics and urgently
seeking a refocus on what truly matters in life and in the world.
9. How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair (Non-fiction)
In this breathtaking memoir, Sinclair recounts her childhood in a
coastal Jamaican village in a draconian Rastafarian
household—dreadlocks, no jewellery, modest clothes and preparation
for eventual wifedom—on the fringes of a touristy pleasure hub. Raised
by a reggae musician father who is suspicious of the ‘corrupting’
influence of the West on his daughter, Sinclair yearned for more than
what seemed predetermined for her. This memoir captures her journey
of self-determination and a refusal to conform to a submissive role.
10. Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa, translated
by Eric Ozawa (Fiction)
Books about bookshops and booksellers are having a moment at the
moment, as are books on the slow life and healing, and books by
Japanese authors. Combine all three and you have Days at the
Morisaki Bookshop. Nestled in a quiet corner of an aging wooden
building on a secluded street in Jimbocho, Tokyo, the Morisaki Bookshop is a haven for booklovers. It is run by Takako’s eccentric
Uncle Satoru whose pride and joy lie in the shop’s impressive
collection of second-hand books, where he invests all his emotions and
energy since his wife left him five years ago. It is here that a
heartbroken Takako finds solace and refuge when she learns of her
boyfriend’s upcoming marriage to someone else and comes to live
rent-free—quite reluctantly—in the small room above the bookshop. As
Takako begins her journey of healing, she is taken aback to discover
new worlds inside the stacks of books that the shop houses and the
community of readers that it attracts. Despite the romanticised picture
of bookshops and booksellers that it portrays, this book is a
celebration and jubilant assertion of the restorative and transformative
powers of reading.
Hah! You thought the list ends here! Surprise, there’s more to it!
No list (however short!) of the most impactful books of a particular year is
complete without including the books that find a resurging popularity in their
readership due to their ability to reflect on the contemporary human
condition.
So here are my honourable additions to my previously explored top 10 most
impactful books of 2023-
1. On Palestine by Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappé (Non-fiction)
The Israel-Palestine conflict that is ongoing at the moment has been
around seven decades in the making. Many books, articles, journals,
photo essays etc. have been made about the subject at its various
watershed moments (2008, 2012, 2014, 2021, and the latest one
starting on 7 th October 2023). Chomsky and Pappé’s book, published in
2015, is essential reading for anyone looking to understand the history
of this conflict and the need of the hour to call for a permanent
ceasefire.
2. The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Emily
Wilson (Epic poetry)
Homer’s epic poems The Iliad and The Odyssey, written around 8 th
Century CE, are the foundational texts for classical Greek literature,
and have been venerated for generations. Ever since their first
published translation in English in 1598, these two texts have been seminal in the study of Literature and of the human condition in
general. But in its long and storied legacy, Wilson, a Professor of
Classical Literature at the University of Pennsylvania, is the first ever
woman to translate The Odyssey (2018), and one of the very few
women to have translated The Iliad (2023), into English and she does
so brilliantly. She brings a fresh perspective to these texts from
antiquity that is at once bold, gentle, fierce and elegant. Wilson’s take
on The Iliad earned top spots on several prestigious book roundups of
this year.
3. Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh: India’s Lonely Young Women
and the Search for Intimacy and Independence by Sharanya
Bhattacharya (Non-fiction)
2023 was the year of Shah Rukh Khan’s much anticipated return to the
big screen with three releases- Pathaan, Jawan and Dunki. It is,
understandably, fitting that a book with his name in the title should
feature somewhere on this list. Before you dismiss this book as some
inane waffle on Bollywood and its celebrities, let me tell you that this is
actually a piece of social science research into the gender dynamics of
the modern Indian workforce. Bhattacharya presents in-depth
interviews she has conducted with financially independent Indian
women from various socio-economic backgrounds, spanning over
years of contact, and their quotidian battles for freedom. The one
common ground between these women is that they are all fans of
Khan and his icon shapes their perception of beauty, men, money,
marriage and the economy. This book won the prestigious Skoch India
Economic Forum Prize for Literature among other accolades. Pro-tip-
this book is best paired with Caroline Criado Pérez’s 2019 book
Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men.
Okay, this is definitely the end.
Happy reading!
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