Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Sanjay Sipahimalani @sansip.bsky.social · 19h

The Pushkin job: unravelling the mystery of the theft of Russian classics from libraries across Europe.

The crimes began after the invasion of Ukraine, with Putin’s speech evoking the “culture and values, experience and traditions of our ancestors”.

www.theguardian.com/books/2025/o...

The Pushkin job: unmasking the thieves behind an international rare books heist

The long read: Between 2022 and 2023, as many as 170 rare and valuable editions of Russian classics were stolen from libraries across Europe. Were the thieves merely low-level opportunists, or were bi...

www.theguardian.com

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Sanjay Sipahimalani @sansip.bsky.social · 1d

A Palestinian writer would be great, but somehow I don’t see it happening. Happy to be proved wrong!

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Sanjay Sipahimalani @sansip.bsky.social · 1d

Intimidating behaviour towards bookshop owners on the rise. This is the pathetic world we live in.

www.thebookseller.com/news/intimid...

Intimidating behaviour towards bookshop owners on the rise – BA survey

More than half of bookshop owners responding to a survey by the Booksellers Association say they have noticed an increase in intimidating behaviour towards themselves or their staff.

www.thebookseller.com

Sanjay Sipahimalani @sansip.bsky.social · 1d

In Japan, satori sedai, or “enlightened generation”; in China, tang ping, or “lying flat”; in South Korea, geunyang swim, or “just rested”.

Across Asia, a retreat from a system that demands ever more but offers ever less.

www.scmp.com/week-asia/li...

www.scmp.com

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Sanjay Sipahimalani @sansip.bsky.social · 1d

Nobel Prize for Literature prediction: “I’m gonna guess the Indian writer Amitav Ghosh.”

www.the-berliner.com/books/how-to...

How to figure out who will win the Nobel Prize for Literature - The Berliner

Caring about the Nobel Prize in literature is cool. Betting on the outcome is even cooler.

www.the-berliner.com

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Sanjay Sipahimalani @sansip.bsky.social · 3d

"Instead of showing what ideas have to teach us about life, Steven Pinker holds a gun to life’s head and demands it conform to his thought experiments." Becca Rothfeld eviscerates 'When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows...'

www.washingtonpost.com/books/2025/1...

Review | To Steven Pinker, human knowledge is just a game

In ‘When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows...,’ the best-selling cognitive scientist writes about an interesting subject but gets sidetracked by hobbyhorses

www.washingtonpost.com

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Sanjay Sipahimalani @sansip.bsky.social · 4d

If Kiran Desai’s new novel were a mansion, it would be an estate with many wings built in different styles, full of interconnected rooms and hidden passages.

My review, in which I also take a stab at comparing it with Vikram Seth’s ‘A Suitable Boy’.

scroll.in/article/1087...

Booker Prize 2025: ‘The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny’ is a mapping of displacement and desire

Kiran Desai won the Booker Prize in 2006. Should she win this year, she’ll become the first Indian author to receive the honour twice.

scroll.in

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Sanjay Sipahimalani @sansip.bsky.social · 6d

“Formidable female novelists, ghastly literary men, a faith-shaken poet, eunuchs, pirates, horny wolves, international terrorists.”

The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction shortlist.

www.thebailliegiffordprize.co.uk/inside-the-c...

The Prize announces 2025 shortlist

The Baillie Gifford Prize rewards excellence in non-fiction writing, bringing the best in intelligent reflection on the world to new readers.

www.thebailliegiffordprize.co.uk

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Sanjay Sipahimalani @sansip.bsky.social · 6d

📷: Michael Nichols/National Geographic

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Sanjay Sipahimalani @sansip.bsky.social · 7d

"Wherever, everywhere, anywhere": Jasmine Vojdani
asks Merve Emre, Becca Rothfeld, and other book critics, authors, Substackers and editors how they find the time to read books.

linkst.thecut.com/view/6356a9c...

Every product is independently selected by our editors. Things you buy through our links may earn us a commission.

linkst.thecut.com

Sanjay Sipahimalani @sansip.bsky.social · 8d

Hard to believe.

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Sanjay Sipahimalani @sansip.bsky.social · 9d

A pleasure to once again surrender to the chiselled -- and sometimes chilling -- elegance of Banville’s prose.

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Sanjay Sipahimalani @sansip.bsky.social · 9d

Happy to see Booker-shortlisted Andrew Miller recommend Rainer Maria Rilke’s ‘The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge’, an early example of a novel in fragments.

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Sanjay Sipahimalani @sansip.bsky.social · 10d

Zimbabwean writer and filmmaker Tsitsi Dangarembga: “we have a system governing the planet that is based on the extraction of value. What makes you think that system is going to respect borders?”

english.elpais.com/eps/2025-09-...

Tsitsi Dangarembga: ‘We are never completely free; we have moments of freedom’

The writer and filmmaker from Zimbabwe decries the destruction caused by colonialism in her country, and looks to rebuild an identity that has been shattered

english.elpais.com

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Sanjay Sipahimalani @sansip.bsky.social · 10d

"What if the origins of modern yoga...were based on fabricated histories and lineages, and fascist, white supremacy?" In the Hindu, Sanjukta Sharma reviews Stewart Home's 'Fascist Yoga'.

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Sanjay Sipahimalani @sansip.bsky.social · 12d

That’s better than this one, I felt.

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Sanjay Sipahimalani @sansip.bsky.social · 12d

Wrote about RF Kuang's 'Katabasis': more clever than compelling.

thewire.in/books/alices...

Alice’s Adventures in the Nether World are Clever, But Sometimes Too Clever For Their Own Good

R.F. Kuang’s latest novel after Yellowface takes the reader down to Hell, which is full of metaphors and shifting landscapes.

thewire.in

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Sanjay Sipahimalani @sansip.bsky.social · 12d

Great cover: Mohammed Hanif’s forthcoming novel.

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Sanjay Sipahimalani @sansip.bsky.social · 13d

The daily news.

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Sanjay Sipahimalani @sansip.bsky.social · 13d

The “fashionable turn” toward Thomas Bernhard? How he would have hated that.

dirt.fyi/article/2025...

Saint Bernhard

King of complaints.

dirt.fyi

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Sanjay Sipahimalani @sansip.bsky.social · 13d

Roddy Doyle, 2025 Booker Prize jury chair, has some gripes.

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Sanjay Sipahimalani @sansip.bsky.social · 14d

Ruchir Joshi recommends five of the best historical novels set in India, including Mukul Kesavan’s under-appreciated ‘Looking Through Glass’.

fivebooks.com/best-books/b...

The Best Historical Novels Set in India

The filmmaker and author Ruchir Joshi selects five of the best historical novels set in India, including modern classics by Rushdie and Seth.

fivebooks.com

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Sanjay Sipahimalani @sansip.bsky.social · 14d

Booker Prize judge Chris Power on the shortlisted titles.

www.theguardian.com/books/2025/s...

As a Booker prize judge I helped whittle 153 books down to a shortlist of six. Here’s why you should read them | Chris Power

Ben Markovits, David Szalay, Kiran Desai, Andrew Miller, Susan Choi and Katie Kitamura’s books will all take you on enthralling journeys

www.theguardian.com

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Sanjay Sipahimalani @sansip.bsky.social · 15d

“The almost lost art of phrase-making attracts the scorn of only those who have never made up a stylish phrase in their lives, as if style, somehow, had become taboo, a menace to people, gods,and cars.”

- Paul West, ‘In Defence of Purple Prose’

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Sanjay Sipahimalani @sansip.bsky.social · 15d

Publishing today.

(By Jeremy Nguyen.)

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