Three books you should read this August

This land is our Land: An Immigrant's Manifesto By Suketu Mehta (Penguin Random House/Jonathan Cape London, R599)

This book is not about the fast-vanishing Bombay or the new and enticing Mumbai that Mehta captured in his bestselling non-fiction, Maximum City. This collection of essays, which is split into four parts - The Migrants Our Coming, Why They're Coming, Why They're Feared and Why They Should Be Welcomed - hopes to discuss the complexities of global migration, which Mehta says is "personal for me". "Whether you believe in open borders, closed borders or something in between, I hope that this book will generate empathy and understanding for those who have to cross them. The heart should have no borders," he writes in his Preface. For the times that we are living in, this one will strike a chord.

A Gallery of Rascals by Ruskin Bond (Aleph, R399)

This new collection of 30 stories brings together some of the most popular rogues that have featured in Ruskin Bond's previous fiction. There are also some brand new short stories, including A Man Called Brain, Sher Singh and Hot-water Bottle. "My rascals are only rarely murderous types," writes Bond. "Unlike animals, humans are drawn by a variety of motives - love, hate, jealousy, envy, lust, greed, ambition, a hunger for power or wealth." Read this storyteller, to find out what his rascals are up to.

Mengoubi: The Fair One by Shanta Gokhale (Dhauli Books, R300)

In the December of last year, theatre director Mahesh Dattani staged writer and veteran theatre critic Shanta Gokhale's play, Mengoubi: The Fair One at G5A Foundation. You can now savour and enjoy every word of that play, in a new book of the same title. The slim 80-page book revisits the life of civil rights activist Irom Sharmila, popularly known as Mengoubi or Iron Lady, highlighting the conflict between her political vision and desire to enjoy a private life. With Gokhale putting pen to paper, you can only imagine what this two-act play is going to read like.

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