Program

What accounts for success or failure? Writer and philosopher Michael Sandel’s latest book The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good? looks deeper into the binaries that have brewed generations of anger, frustration, and polarization in America. Sandel’s timely book examines the need to recognize success in a manner that reaffirms the ethics of solidarity, humility and dignity. In a conversation with Anand Giridharadas, he challenges the atmosphere of meritocratic hubris and inequality, and stresses the need for the common good as a key to face the extreme challenges of our times.

In an era of kleptocratic governments and modernisation of communist era propaganda for the age of Facebook and Twitter, Luke Harding’s The Shadow State explores the alleged hidden war orchestrated by Russia to reshape the modern world. Detailing accounts of espionage, corruption, and KGB-style murders the book takes us through the murky waters of how deep the Russian roots run in this post Soviet world. In a conversation with Suhasini Haidar , Harding discusses this threat to America and the future of Western democracy.

In his latest book, Instamatic, celebrated Michelin star chef Suvir Saran appeals to two of our most basic senses: taste and of sight.  Starting with the premise that the culinary experience transcends cultural boundaries, in his series of 75 photographs taken with his iPhone, Saran focuses his lens on everyday sights and transforms them into images that carry a message of our common humanity and the global nature of everyday experience. Saran has published Masala Farm, American Masala: 125 Classics from my Home Kitchen, and Indian Home Cooking. In conversation with Yogi Suri, Founder of Milap Publications, he shares his vision of how food can be a medium to look deeper into issues that are the common concern of all peoples.

Journalist and author Owen Bennett-Jones’ new book The Bhutto Dynasty: The Struggle for Power in Pakistan is a vivid account of the deeply rooted influence and journey of one of Pakistan’s most powerful families. Drawing on research and unpublished documents spanning across more than two decades, he explores the turbulent years of political power and personal loss that have long overshadowed the Bhuttos. Jones is also the writer of Pakistan: Eye of the Storm and Target Britain. Husain Haqqani is Pakistan's former Ambassador to Sri Lanka and the United States, and was previously Benazir Bhutto's spokesperson. He is currently the senior fellow and director for South and Central Asia at Hudson Institute. In conversation with diplomat and author TCA Raghavan they discuss the political and social landscape that led to the rise of the Bhutto dynasty and the legacy they left behind.

Three poets cast an eye on the changing landscape of words. Pulitzer Prize winner Vijay Seshadri’s latest book of poems, That Was Now, This Is Then, is a mesmerizing paradox of time and space which upends traditional notions of lyric and elegies. Celebrated cultural theorist and poet Ranjit Hoskote’s latest book of poems The Atlas of Lost Beliefs is a three-part epic which engages with the histories of the sea: with the lives and afterlives of empire, colonialism, slavery, exploration, and the unpredictable transregional encounters among languages. In conversation with poet and translator Sampurna Chattarji, they read from their work and speak of the sources, inspirations, contexts, and philosophy of their poetic imaginations.