Libraries Of Leaders: What Author Anita Nair Reads

Author Anita Nair’s latest book Muezza and Baby Jaan, released last month, is a children's tale steering completely away from her previous work of fiction, Chain of Custody. Unable to answer questions about why children knew the names of lord Ram’s brothers and Jesus’s mother but not the Prophet’s mother, in the aftermath of the 2013 Nairobi mass shooting, she seeks to retell stories from the Quran in this delightful picture book.

The author of The Better Man, Ladies Coupe and Lessons in Forgetting has received critical acclaim and been nominated for several national and international awards, including the Hindu Literary Prize and the PEN Beyond Margins award. She won the Kerala Sahitya Academy Award in 2012 for her contribution to culture and literature. Nair’s works range from short stories to humorous and atmospheric novels with poetry, children's books and non-fiction thrown in between.

But what does this prolific author read herself when she’s looking for inspiration or simply for pleasure? She shared some of her favourite titles with BloombergQuint.

1. The Persian Boy by Mary Renault

The book has elements of historical fiction and romance as it tells the story of the Alexander the Great in his twilight years through the eyes of his lover who was sold into sexual slavery while still a boy to the Persian court, and liberated after the Macedonian conquest. The historical context, does not dull the book in any way, as it seamlessly moves back and forth between fact and conjecture, Anita said.

2. Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally

This is the touching true story of a wealthy German Nazi Party member who came up with an ingenious way to save the lives of thousands of Jews condemned to concentration camps during the Holocaust. It was adapted into the Academy Award winning Hollywood movie Schindler’s List.

3. Chemmeen by Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai

In Nair’s own words, this slim volume “catches the heart-aching sweetness of a love story that is as real as it can be, striated by complexities of societal and human behaviour”.

The novel written in Malyalam tells the story of a woman's unrequited love owing to the barriers of religion, her marriage to another man who trusts in her fidelity despite knowing about her past and the chain of events that follow.