Five of the biggest book launches to look forward to this summer

Social distancing and prolonged lockdown have made people resort to different hobbies and modes of recreation. This includes book reading. With the postponement of major events and launches that were scheduled for 2020, here is a list of a few biggest book launches that are happening this summer nonetheless:

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

There's a new Hunger Games book coming out, the first since 2010. It is not only for teens but also for all sci-fi lovers. It's a prequel to the "Hunger Games" series by Suzanne Collins. It is published by Scholastic.

The book was first announced in June last year, and - as revealed in an extract published by Entertainment Weekly - will focus on Coriolanus Snow.

In the original trilogy, Snow is the president of Panem and oversees the annual Hunger Games (and manipulates the Tributes and their loved ones).

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is set 64 years earlier, during Panem’s Dark Days. There are just a couple of days to go until Suzanne Collins’ The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes hits (digital) shelves.

Hunted by the Sky by Tanaz Bhatena

This book by Tanaz explores identity, class inequality, alongside a high-stakes romance story. Hunted by the Sky is set in the Kingdom of Ambar—a world inspired by medieval India, and a world of deadly, dark secrets and adventures.

A Thousand Cranes for India: Reclaiming Plurality Amid Hatred edited by Pallavi Aiyar

A Thousand Cranes for India: Reclaiming Plurality Amid Hatred is an anthology that comprises 23 pieces of reportage, stories, poems, memoir, and polemic, among others. This book uses the mythology, history, and symbolism of Japanese Origami paper cranes as a pathway for some of India’s best-known writers, poets, and artists to pave a “shared, civic space for a conversation about the fault lines in India at a time of darkness.”

Shameless by Taslima Nasreen

Shameless, the sequel to the controversial and best-selling Lajja, had never been published in Bengali, or any other language, until very recently when a Hindi translation was printed.

This “timely, topical and outspoken novel about communal tensions in India” is, according to its author, “not a political novel–and instead about what the politics of religion does to human beings and their relationships: a ruthless, uncompromising, heartbreaking tale of ordinary people’s lives in our times.”

A Burning by Megha Majumdar

“For readers of Tommy Orange, Yaa Gyasi, and Jhumpa Lahiri” (!), Majumdar’s debut, a thriller-like epic, centers around three characters who find their lives crisscrossing in the aftermath of a catastrophe. Of A Burning, Amitav Ghosh has said: it’s “the best debut novel I have come across in a long time… In telling the story of a young Muslim girl whose life is undone by a single social media post, it creates a kaleidoscope of contemporary urban India, with its internet-driven hysteria, religious fanaticism, rampant corruption, poisoned air, random violence, enraged mobs, and pervasive misogyny.”