Recent Books in News: Authors, Prizes and Exam Questions

The correct answer is C, Pankaj Mishra. Pankaj Mishra is an Indian essayist and novelist who writes on politics, history and ideas, and The World After Gaza is his book on how the conflict in West Asia is read differently in the West and in the formerly colonised world. His better known earlier works are Age of Anger and From the Ruins of Empire. Option A is wrong because S. Jaishankar, the External Affairs Minister, wrote The India Way and Why Bharat Matters, both on India's foreign policy. Option B is wrong because Aishwarya Pandit is a historian of modern India and did not write this title. Option D is wrong because Amitabh Kant, a former chief executive of NITI Aayog, writes on development and administration, including Made in India. When such a question offers three Indian writers of non-fiction, match the subject of the book to the writer's usual field.

The correct answer is C, Dr. V I Mathan. The book tells the story of the Christian Medical College at Vellore, one of India's oldest teaching hospitals, and it was written by Dr. V I Mathan, a physician long associated with that institution. Option A is wrong because Romila Thapar is a historian of ancient India whose books include Early India and Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas, not institutional histories of hospitals. Option B is wrong because Atul Gawande is an American surgeon and writer known for Being Mortal, Complications and The Checklist Manifesto. Option D is wrong because Devi Shetty is the cardiac surgeon who founded the Narayana Health chain and is in the news for low-cost surgery, not as the author of this book. In questions about an institution's history, the author is usually a person from that institution.

The correct answer is A, S. Jaishankar. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, India's External Affairs Minister and earlier the Foreign Secretary, wrote Why Bharat Matters, in which he explains India's place in a changing world order; his earlier book, published in 2020, is The India Way: Strategies for an Uncertain World. Option B is wrong because Shashi Tharoor's recent titles are Ambedkar: A Life and Pride, Prejudice and Punditry, and his best known book on colonial rule is An Era of Darkness. Option C is wrong because Nirmala Sitharaman, the Finance Minister, is not the author of this book. Option D is wrong because Jairam Ramesh writes political biography and environmental history, including Indira Gandhi: A Life in Nature. Both books by Jaishankar are frequently asked, so learn the pair together. Note also that the option list here is made of four Indian public figures who have all written books.

The correct answer is C, Raghuram Rajan. Raghuram Rajan, who was Governor of the Reserve Bank of India from 2013 to 2016, wrote Breaking the Mould with the economist Rohit Lamba, arguing that India should build on services and skills rather than copy the manufacturing path of East Asia. Option A is wrong because D. Subbarao, Governor before Rajan, wrote Who Moved My Interest Rate and Just A Mercenary. Option B is wrong because Urjit Patel, Governor after Rajan, wrote Overdraft: Saving the Indian Saver. Option D is wrong because Y. V. Reddy wrote Advice and Dissent: My Life in Public Service. All four Governors have written books, which is exactly why the options look alike, so fix each title with its author rather than remembering the list of Governors alone.

The correct answer is A, Geetanjali Shree. Her Hindi novel Ret Samadhi, translated into English by Daisy Rockwell as Tomb of Sand, won the International Booker Prize in 2022 and became the first book originally written in any Indian language to do so; the prize money is shared equally by the author and the translator. Option B is wrong because Mamta Kalia is a Hindi novelist and poet, but she has not won this prize. Option C is wrong because Krishna Sobti, the author of Mitro Marjani and Zindaginama, won the Jnanpith Award in 2017 and died in 2019, before this prize was given. Option D is wrong because Mridula Garg, who wrote Chittacobra and Miljul Mann, is a Sahitya Akademi awardee rather than a Booker winner. Note the difference between the two Booker prizes: one is for fiction in English, the other for a translation.

The correct answer is B, Banu Mushtaq. Heart Lamp gathers short stories written in Kannada by Banu Mushtaq, and it won the International Booker Prize in 2025; it was the first collection of short stories to take that prize. Option A is wrong, though it is the closest distractor, because Deepa Bhasthi is the translator who carried the stories into English and therefore shares the prize with the author rather than being the author. Option C is wrong because Vaidehi is a senior Kannada writer of short fiction who did not write this book. Option D is wrong because Sara Aboobacker was a Kannada novelist of an earlier generation, known for Chandragiriya Teeradalli. Papers set this question by placing the translator among the options, so read whether the question asks for the author or the translator.

The correct answer is B, Shashi Tharoor. Shashi Tharoor, the writer and parliamentarian, wrote Ambedkar: A Life, a short life of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar; his other recent books include Pride, Prejudice and Punditry, and his earlier works are An Era of Darkness and Why I Am a Hindu. Option A is wrong because Ramachandra Guha wrote India After Gandhi, Gandhi Before India and Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World. Option C is wrong because Christophe Jaffrelot is a French political scientist who has written on Indian politics and on Ambedkar as a thinker, but not this title. Option D is wrong because Gopalkrishna Gandhi's books include Of a Certain Age and his writing on Gandhi's associates. Tharoor's titles appear so often in papers that the whole list is worth one line of revision.

The correct answer is C, Han Kang. The South Korean writer Han Kang received the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2024 for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical trauma, and she is known for the novel The Vegetarian. Option A is wrong because Jon Fosse, the Norwegian dramatist and novelist, received the prize for 2023. Option B is wrong because Annie Ernaux of France received it for 2022. Option D is wrong because Abdulrazak Gurnah, born in Zanzibar and settled in Britain, received it for 2021. Because the options in this question are simply the winners of the neighbouring years, the only safe preparation is to learn the year with the name in order: Gurnah, Ernaux, Fosse, Han Kang. Remember also that the literature prize is announced by the Swedish Academy in Stockholm.

The correct answer is A, Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex. Spare is his own account of his life in and away from the British royal family, and the title refers to the old saying about an heir and a spare, the second son. Because it is a memoir, the author is the subject himself. Option B is wrong because Prince William, the elder brother and heir to the throne, has not written such a book. Option C is wrong because King Charles III has written on architecture, farming and the environment, including Harmony, but not this memoir. Option D is wrong because Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, wrote the children's book The Bench, not Spare. This question is a test of one distinction: a memoir belongs to its subject, while a biography belongs to the writer who studied that subject.

The correct answer is B, Walter Isaacson. The American writer Walter Isaacson, who had earlier written the authorised life of Steve Jobs and books on Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein and Benjamin Franklin, published his biography of Elon Musk in 2023 after following him for two years. Option A is wrong, though it is the strongest distractor, because Ashlee Vance wrote an earlier biography of Musk, published in 2015 with a different title. Option C is wrong because Michael Lewis writes on finance and sport, including The Big Short and Moneyball. Option D is wrong because the book is a biography, not a memoir, so it is written by another person and not by Musk. Isaacson's name is worth remembering along with the subjects he has written about, since papers ask the pairing both ways.

The correct answer is B, Samantha Harvey. Orbital, a short novel that follows six astronauts through a day of orbits around the earth, won the Booker Prize in 2024 for the British writer Samantha Harvey. Option A is wrong because Paul Lynch, from Ireland, won the prize the year before, in 2023, for Prophet Song. Option C is wrong because Shehan Karunatilaka of Sri Lanka won in 2022 for The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida. Option D is wrong because Douglas Stuart won in 2020 for Shuggie Bain. As with the Nobel question, the options are the winners of the nearby years, so revise the Booker list as a chain of year, book and author rather than as separate facts, and keep it apart from the International Booker list. The Booker Prize is open to fiction written in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland.

The correct answer is B, Michelle Obama. The Light We Carry is her second book, written after the memoir Becoming, and it sets out the habits and ideas she uses to face uncertainty. Option A is wrong because Hillary Clinton's books include Living History, Hard Choices and What Happened. Option C is wrong because Kamala Harris wrote The Truths We Hold: An American Journey. Option D is wrong because Oprah Winfrey's titles include What I Know For Sure and books written with others on wellbeing. Barack Obama's own books, Dreams from My Father, The Audacity of Hope and A Promised Land, are asked in the same way, so learn which title belongs to which of the two. The pattern in these questions is a set of four well known public figures who have all written books.