Champaca’s Book of the Month
Editor’s note: We feature the brilliant recommendations of our partner, the Champaca Bookstore, in the Read section twice a month. FYI: Champaca is an independent women-run and founded bookstore and children's library in Bangalore.
Ghosts, Monsters and Demons of India
Do you love listening to ghost stories? We certainly do! But even as ardent fans of the horror genre, we realised that there is little we know about the ghost stories that exist in India’s rich oral traditions. So with our fourth edition of the Champaca Book Subscription—where we are reading and curating boxes around the annual theme of ‘Reading India’—we decided to begin with horror.
‘Ghosts, Monsters and Demons of India’ written by J Furcifer Bhairav and Rakesh Khanna and brought to us by Chennai-based Blaft Publications is a delightfully creepy book that collects 353 evil entities and their subtypes, alphabetically. Some of these, like the chudail or dayan, are names we have heard of. But a majority of the book is dedicated to documenting the flesh-eating monsters, witches, and shape-shifting spirits that loiter around our country’s mountains, cities, seas and forests.
Join us in the fourth edition of our Champaca Book Subscription to receive this book (and more!) in your mailbox and be part of a community of book lovers!
A fine collection from our shelves
Are you reading with us in the Champaca Reading Challenge? We’ve put together a list of prompts designed to help us, and you read widely and more diversely. This month, we’re reading books that are set in two countries (at least)! We love picking prompts that encourage multiple possibilities. For this one, there’s a wealth of books to choose from – immigrant narratives, travel memoirs, or even just a book where the protagonist takes a plane ride. Read on for our recommendations.
The Immortal King Rao: It's the 1950s. In an Indian village, a child is born into a family of Dalit coconut farmers. Named King Rao, the child grows up to be the most accomplished tech CEO in the world and, eventually, the leader of a global, corporate-led government. King’s daughter, Athena, reckons with his legacy—literally, for he has given her access to his memories. With climate change raging, Athena believes that saving the planet and its Shareholders is the order of the day. She sets about to tell the truth. ‘The Immortal King Rao’, written by a former Wall Street Journal technology reporter, Vauhini Vara is a novel that cuts across the boundaries between literary and speculative fiction, the historic and the dystopian, and confronts how we arrived at the age of technological capitalism and where our actions might take us next.
Atlas Of An Anxious Man: Blending travel writing and memoir, ‘Atlas of An Anxious Man’ by Austrian author Christoph Ransmayr consists of seventy pieces, each an impression of a different place beginning and beginning with the phrase, “I Saw”. From Java caves to facing the rapids of the Mekong river, and the cold islands of the south pacific sea, the book put together the experiences of various continents, landscapes, and philosophies.
Everything the Light Touches: In ‘Everything that Light Touches’ by Janice Pariat, we meet Shai, a young Indian woman who travels to North East India and forges a connection with the lives and ways of living of an indigenous trip. We also meet Evelyn, a Cambridge student, inspired by Goethe’s botanical writing travels to the Himalayas, and Linnaeus, a botanist who finds peace in Lapland. Drawing from scientific ideas and botanical themes, the many themes the book explores are the contrasts between capitalism and community living, modern and colonial India, and urban and rural life.
Life at champaca
Summer showers in Bangalore formed a lovely backdrop as we hosted a plethora of events at our store – we made our own comics, listened to poetry and attended insightful sessions by academicians and library educators. In June, from book launches to crafty workshops, we have an exciting line-up of events — check them out here! If you’re in Bangalore, we invite you to come to our lush, leafy store, attend the events and browse through our shelves with cold tender coconut water/ a hot cup of coffee, as per the whims and fancies of the ever-changing Bangalore weather!
And as always, you can find us, our book recommendations, and keep up with our upcoming events, on our website, Instagram, and Twitter!
