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Danish Husain: The only way to fight Modi's grammar of deception is that you continue to be relevant

Danish Husain is an actor, poet, storyteller as well as a theatre director. He runs his own theatre company called the Hoshruba Repertory. He is known for his revival of Urdu storytelling through the Dastangoi form and later inventing the multilingual storytelling project Qissebaazi. He has appeared in a number of films, including Peepli Live (2010), Ankhon Dekhi (2013), Newton (2017) and Manto (2018). Danish is also our author. He wrote a brilliant fable on Indian PM Narendra Modi in our [...]

Books that we liked in 2018

2019 is almost here. As 2018 comes to an end, we look back at the year gone by. At LeftWord Books, we published 10 new titles. You can read about our books in 2018 here. This is also the time when people come up with their lists of 'best or worst' things in a year. We followed the trend and asked people in our staff to name their three favorite books from the ones that they read in 2018. Although, the ground rules in other lists emphasize that books in the list must be published in the year they[...]

An excerpt from ‘The End of the Beginning: Lessons of the Soviet Collapse’

Although a distance of more than a quarter-century separates us from that fateful day in December 1991 when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) ceased to exist, understanding of the Soviet collapse remains unsatisfactory and incomplete. The global working class is still reeling from the blows of that two-year period from 1989 to 1991 – when socialism was dismantled from Berlin to Khabarovsk. Yet, we still haven’t fully understood the nature of those blows. Such a situation must b[...]

Remember, Remember, the 6th of December

Remember, Remember, the 6th of December, the axes, the hammers, that would dismember a mosque and a nation that has since then - only walked on embers. - Akhil Katyal Indian democracy has seen multiple black dots in its 70 years of history. From emergency declared by Indira Gandhi to 2002 Gujarat riots, one event that stands out in this period is the demolition of Babri Masjid. On 6th December 1992, thousands of Kar Sevaks mobilized by Hindu outfits like Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), Rashtriya S[...]

Two New LeftWord Titles: by Samir Amin and Lula da Silva

We have published 9 titles in 2018 and there are more titles in our schedule for this year. For a brief review of our books this year, the reviews that our books received, their excerpts from various publications, interviews of our authors and events around our books, you can read our blog on our books in 2018. Recently, we published two new titles. Here's a quick information about these titles:  1. Truth Will Prevail: Why I Have Been Condemned  An ultra-right fanatic is today the Pres[...]