India, May 2 -- For a book about contemporary journalism, Siddharthya Roy's The Company of Violent Men has an aptly clickbaity title. The violent men rarely materialise - instead, there is a succession of bloviating men. They initially harbour a suggestion of violence or grand conspiracies, but later turn out to be empty vessels with noisy promises.

However, in a world full of enticing baubles, clickbait can be useful. Roy's book might rarely feature violent men, but it does tell us a lot about the men whom prevailing narratives or journalists eager to concoct a story might arbitrarily deem violent. In its pages, we meet refugees, small-time wheeler-dealers, and civilians going about their lives amid a vortex of conflict or dispossession...