The Wise Owl Picks
The June Reads
Here are some books The Wise Owl has taken note of this month...
Winner of the Edgar award
Steven Johnson’s The Infernal Machine is a riveting, cinematic chronicle of a forgotten era of domestic terrorism and the birth of modern policing. Set against the turbulent backdrop of early 20th-century New York, the book masterfully captures the high-stakes clash between anarchist radicals and reformist forces in law enforcement. Johnson’s protagonists—Police Commissioner Arthur Woods, Inspector Joseph Faurot, and undercover detective Amadeo Polignani—are compelling figures, each committed to revolutionizing a police force entrenched in Tammany-era corruption and brutality.
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Through a narrative that stretches from Alfred Nobel’s invention of dynamite to the anarchist bombings that rocked New York, Johnson offers a nuanced, deeply researched account of how early forensic science and surveillance techniques were deployed to counter escalating violence. The book also brings vivid life to radical figures like Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, whose ideologies and actions shaped the volatile political atmosphere.
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A timely, thought-provoking work, The Infernal Machine resonates with contemporary debates about extremism, civil liberties, and policing. Johnson excels at connecting past and present, showing how history often echoes itself. Bursting with fascinating detail and journalistic clarity, this Edgar Award–winning nonfiction is both educational and thrilling—history at its most urgent and alive.
In I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home, Lorrie Moore delivers a haunting and genre-defying novel that blurs the boundaries between life and death, memory and reality. At its heart is Finn, a schoolteacher grappling with his brother Max's impending death in a New York hospice. But when a call from an old flame sends him on a surreal road trip, Moore pivots from realism to the uncanny, infusing the narrative with ghostly presences and existential dread, all leavened by her signature wit.
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Moore’s prose is precise yet poetic, laced with mordant humor and deep emotional resonance. Her voice—playful, elegiac, and cuttingly observant—guides the reader through a metaphysical meditation on grief, love, and the absurdity of being. The novel dances between tones and timelines, resisting tidy resolutions in favor of something more fractured and true: a reflection of consciousness itself.
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This is not a book for those seeking conventional plot or comfort. Rather, it is a daring, unclassifiable work that rewards the reader with flashes of brilliance and aching insight. I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home is a testament to Moore’s singular literary imagination—strange, sharp, and unforgettable.
Dr Nishi Chawla's seventh collection, ‘Random Circles of Belief’ addresses issues of race, religion, and gender in a philosophical and exploratory manner. In her new collection of poems, Dr Chawla provides many brilliant examples of what has often been called 'the poetry of witness.' The poet here is the truth-teller who exposes the social prejudices that often, even if unconsciously, define and shape our opinions and worldviews. Her attempt, even while being conscious of the essential aesthetic function of poetry, is to sensitize her readers to the injustices that surround us and to which we often turn a blind eye - to evade the risk that confrontation with discrimination inevitably involves.
Her Asian-American identity adds to her sensitivity to racial, religious, and gender-based oppression that others around her often find natural. If making the invisible visible is one of the main functions of poetry, Nishi Chawla's poetry performs that function in a unique and admirable fashion. Nishi can only hope to sensitise her readers through her poetry, about the need not to marginalise anyone based on the colour of one's skin and those belonging to minority religions. Rather than make her poems solely a protest against the injustices of our society that privileges one skin colour over others, she has used her poetic pen more to awaken the hope for human freedom from racial and religious biases.
Review by K Satchida
The May Reads
Here are some books The Wise Owl has taken note of ...
Shortlisted for International Booker Prize 2025
Heart Lamp is a luminous and unflinching debut in English from Banu Mushtaq (trans: Deepa Bhasthi), whose voice rings out with rare clarity and compassion. In twelve masterfully observed stories, Mushtaq lays bare the inner lives of Muslim women and girls in southern India, navigating the tender, sometimes brutal currents of family, faith, and societal expectation. Her background as a journalist, lawyer, and activist is palpable—each story pulses with lived experience, ethical urgency, and the hard-won humor of survival.
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Mushtaq’s style is a revelation: colloquial yet lyrical, sharp yet deeply empathetic. Her characters—mothers masking heartbreak, mischievous children, self-important clerics—live and breathe beyond the page, rendered with sly wit and an aching tenderness. The worlds she builds are as vivid as they are fraught, often with a single, devastating turn of phrase.
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Heart Lamp is both a searing critique of entrenched inequities and a celebration of the quiet, everyday resilience that sustains communities. It is no wonder the collection has stirred controversy and won acclaim in equal measure. In an age hungry for more expansive literary visions, Mushtaq offers one that is utterly her own—fearless, compassionate, and enduring. This collection is not just important; it is unforgettable.
In Why We Die, Nobel laureate Venki Ramakrishnan offers a profound exploration of one of life's most fundamental mysteries: mortality. With clarity and intellectual rigor, Ramakrishnan distills the latest biological research into a compelling narrative about why aging and death are not merely inevitable, but biologically purposeful.
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Drawing from evolutionary theory, genetics, and recent advances in biotechnology, he deftly explains how death, paradoxically, may be essential for life to evolve and flourish. Yet, as scientific efforts to delay aging accelerate, Ramakrishnan does not shy away from the moral and existential dilemmas these innovations provoke. Should we strive for immortality? What might we lose—individually and collectively—if we succeed?
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What sets this book apart is Ramakrishnan’s humane perspective. He balances the marvels of cutting-edge science with a sober meditation on the meaning of a well-lived life. Instead of promising miracles, he urges readers to seek longevity through healthier living while remaining mindful of the natural limits that define our humanity.
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Why We Die is a lucid, thought-provoking, and deeply humane inquiry into the science and philosophy of mortality. It leaves readers not fearing death, but better understanding its place in the intricate story of life itself.
Winner of Nobel Prize
Review by Aditi Panwar
Din about Chins, authored by Dr. Santosh Bakaya, is a sparkling collection of vignettes of a mother-daughter relationship, written with wit, humor, and heartwarming candour. Brimming with love and laughter, the reader seamlessly becomes a part of the mother-daughter interaction, crying and laughing with the mother at her young daughter's pranks, applauding the spunk of the daughter, and her compassion for the underprivileged.
Although a collection of prose pieces, it has a certain lyrical cadence that appeals to the heart.
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Every parent can identify with the visually powerful scenes- the first tottering step of the child, her first lisping words, her first attempts to form letters, her first tattoo, and her first crush. The book enchants and intrigues, and every mother sees her child in the writer's daughter- in the way she throws tantrums, and is concerned about her parents as she grows up, the way she turns into her mother's mother, asking her to wear socks, exactly the way she used to coerce her into wearing socks when she was a kid.
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Right from the prologue to the epilogue, the book captivates the reader, effortlessly universalising the mother-daughter relationship.
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It is undoubtedly a must-read for every parent.
The April Reads
Here are some books The Wise Owl has taken note of ...
WINNER OF THE 2024 PULITZER PRIZE
Nathan Thrall’s A Day in the Life of Abed Salama is a profoundly moving and meticulously reported narrative that captures the tragic entanglements of life in Palestine. At its core, the book follows Abed Salama, a Palestinian father, as he embarks on a harrowing journey to locate his son, Milad, after a devastating school bus accident on the outskirts of Jerusalem. What unfolds is not just a personal odyssey but a piercing examination of the deep inequalities, bureaucratic roadblocks, and human suffering that define life under occupation.
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Thrall’s storytelling is immersive, weaving together the perspectives of Jewish and Palestinian characters whose fates become entwined in the aftermath of the crash. The book does not just recount a single day’s tragedy but exposes the systemic forces that shape daily life in Israel and the West Bank. Through compassionate and razor-sharp prose, Thrall paints a vivid picture of grief, resilience, and the inescapable weight of history.
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More than a journalistic account, A Day in the Life of Abed Salama is a searing indictment of an unequal system and a tribute to ordinary people caught in its grip. It is a must-read for those seeking to understand the lived realities behind the headlines.
Miranda July’s All Fours is a bold, exhilarating meditation on reinvention, intimacy, and female autonomy. At 45, the novel’s protagonist—a semi-famous artist—sets out on a road trip from LA to New York but almost immediately abandons her plan, holing up in a roadside motel where she embarks on an unpredictable, deeply personal detour. What begins as an impulsive pause morphs into a surreal journey of self-discovery, where the boundaries of sexual, romantic, and domestic identity blur in July’s signature offbeat style.
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July’s prose crackles with wry humor, acute observations, and an uncanny ability to capture the absurdity of human desire. Her protagonist’s exploration of pleasure, power, and agency is rendered with a mix of vulnerability and comedic sharpness, making the novel both deeply personal and universally resonant. The narrative defies convention, shifting between moments of stark emotional honesty and playful, even surreal, experimentation.
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With All Fours, July once again proves her mastery in reimagining the familiar, turning an ordinary midlife reckoning into an exhilarating act of defiance. This novel is both wildly entertaining and profoundly alive, offering a fresh, unfiltered look at the complexities of womanhood, creativity, and freedom.
SHORTLISTED FOR BRITISH BOOK AWARDS 2025.
Amitav Ghosh’s Wild Fictions is an illuminating collection of essays that seamlessly blends history, ecology, language, and literature into a compelling tapestry of ideas. Spanning twenty-five years of Ghosh’s intellectual pursuits, the book offers sharp insights into the entanglements between colonialism, environmental degradation, and cultural storytelling. Through topics as diverse as the commodification of spices, the resilience of Bengal’s mangrove forests, and the fluidity of multilingualism, Ghosh challenges the reader to reconsider the narratives that shape our understanding of the world.
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What makes Wild Fictions especially powerful is its ability to connect seemingly disparate themes into a cohesive argument about the urgent need for empathy, sensitivity, and a reimagined relationship with nature. Ghosh’s writing is both erudite and accessible, balancing meticulous research with personal reflection and lyrical prose. His critique of imperial violence is not merely historical but deeply relevant to contemporary climate crises, exposing the enduring consequences of exploitative systems.
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With his signature moral clarity and intellectual depth, Ghosh presents a striking vision for a world in which human stories and ecological realities are inseparably linked. Wild Fictions is not just a collection of essays—it is a call to rethink how we inhabit and narrate our planet’s fragile landscapes.
The March Trio
Here are some books The Wise Owl has taken note of ...
Samantha Harvey’s Orbital is a mesmerizing and contemplative novel that takes readers on an introspective journey through space and time. Set aboard the International Space Station over a single day, the novel follows six astronauts as they orbit Earth, experiencing the vastness of the cosmos while reflecting on their lives below.
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Harvey’s prose is lyrical and immersive, weaving together moments of awe, longing, and existential wonder. The novel’s structure—fluid and almost meditative—mirrors the weightlessness of its setting, creating an ethereal reading experience. Rather than focusing on plot, Orbital delves into the fragility of human existence, the insignificance of borders from above, and the paradox of being closer to the universe yet farther from home.
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A novel of ideas and atmosphere, Orbital is a profound meditation on perspective, time, and what it means to be human in the face of infinity. Harvey has crafted a quiet yet deeply resonant
Han Kang’s Greek Lessons is a deeply introspective novel that explores language, loss, and human connection. The story follows a woman who, after a profound personal tragedy, loses her ability to speak. She enrolls in a Greek language class, where her teacher—a man slowly losing his eyesight—becomes attuned to her silence. Their fragile bond unfolds through fragmented narratives, reflecting themes of memory, grief, and the limitations of communication.
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Han’s prose, translated by Deborah Smith and Emily Yae Won, is lyrical and meditative, capturing the raw interiority of her characters with poetic precision. Like The Vegetarian and Human Acts, this novel is haunting in its quiet intensity, immersing readers in an emotional landscape where words are both refuge and barrier. Greek Lessons is a profound meditation on the power of language and the ways in which human beings seek connection, even in silence and solitude.
Sangeeta Sharma’s Under the Sapphire Sky is a luminous poetry collection that seamlessly blends classical elegance with contemporary insight. With a keen eye for both the micro and macro, Sharma navigates themes of nature, existential reflection, and modern dilemmas with lyrical precision. Her poetry, rich in imagery and intellectual depth, evokes the spirit of literary greats like Rumi and Yosa Buson while retaining her own distinct voice.
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Sharma’s exploration of ecology, alienation, and mortality resonates deeply, offering both poignant personal reflections and broader cultural observations. Her dual heritage as a Canadian of Indian origin infuses the collection with a unique sensibility, bridging seasonal contrasts and diverse worldviews. This collection is not only a poetic journey but also a heartfelt plea for environmental stewardship and human connection. Thought-provoking and evocative, Under the Sapphire Sky is a compelling read that will captivate poetry lovers and thinkers alike.