India, Dec. 26 -- From insightful explorations of the peculiarities of the Indian Internet in Anurag Minus Verma's The Great Indian Brainrot to Rudraneil Sengupta's The Beast Within, a police procedural set in the National Capital Region, there were many superb reads across categories this year. Which is why I'm not even attempting to pick a single favourite book of 2025.

Ghee Bowman's The Great Epinal Escape about hundreds of soldiers of the British Indian Army breaking out of a prison camp in France, dodging the German army, and trudging 100 km to freedom in Switzerland, recovers a brilliant shard of history. "It's really interesting for me as a historian to ask why is it that this particular event has been pretty much forgotten until ...