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Nilanjana Roy

Life & Arts Columnist

Nilanjana Roy joined the Weekend FT as a columnist in July with a brief to write about life, literature, ideas and much more. She is the author of a fantasy duology, The Hundred Names of Darkness, and a collection of essays on reading, The Girl Who Ate Books. She has edited two anthologies, on Indian food writing and on Indian patriots, poets and prisoners, and has been a columnist for the Business Standard

@nilanjanaroy (link opens in a new browser window)
@nilanjanaroy (link opens in a new browser window)

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  • Friday, 9 August, 2019
    Books
    Of mousse and men: the lighter side of John Steinbeck

    Rediscovered Paris stories reveal the writer’s gentle comic touch

  • Friday, 2 August, 2019
    ReviewFiction
    Home Remedies — stories of urgency and understanding

    Xuan Juliana Wang homes in on the yearnings of China’s immigrants and millennials

  • Friday, 26 July, 2019
    Books
    Shelley was right: Let poets protest

    Miya poets challenge prejudice against Bengali-origin Muslim migrants in the Indian state of Assam

  • Friday, 19 July, 2019
    ReviewFiction
    Orange World by Karen Russell — surreal tales that hold some comfort

    Karen Russell’s freakishly imaginative worlds feel as real, as mundanely domestic, as our own everyday lives

  • Friday, 12 July, 2019
    Books
    Empire in the eyes of a cad — the lessons of Flashman

    The flaws of Rule Britannia thrown into sharp relief by rakish and cowardly British soldier

  • Friday, 5 July, 2019
    ReviewFiction
    City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert — the pleasure seekers

    A delightful story of a life well misspent in 1940s New York

  • Friday, 28 June, 2019
    Books
    Why adults abandon more books than children

    Like younger readers, we should stick to our own tastes when choosing what to read

  • Friday, 7 June, 2019
    Life & Arts
    When novels sound the alarm bells

    Today more than ever, we should salute the prescience of two works from the 1930s

  • Friday, 31 May, 2019
    ReviewFiction
    Zuleikha by Guzel Yakhina — freedom in exile

    A debut historical novel traces the transformation of a woman banished to Siberia

  • Promoted Content
  • Tuesday, 21 May, 2019
    Book awards
    Alharthi’s Man Booker prize a first for Gulf author

    Omani novelist’s award for Celestial Bodies split with translator

  • Friday, 10 May, 2019
    Books
    Harper Lee’s lost tale?

    ‘Furious Hours’ interweaves Lee’s struggle to write another book with the mysterious story of a serial killer

  • Friday, 3 May, 2019
    ReviewFiction
    The Other Americans by Laila Lalami — fault lines of immigration

    A sensitive novel set in small-town America lays bare simmering tensions over migration

  • Friday, 26 April, 2019
    Books
    Scars from the British empire

    The painful aftermath of a centuries-old pattern of violence, mistrust and imperialism in India

  • Friday, 12 April, 2019
    Books
    When TV series inject new life into books

    Unlike film adaptations, multiple episodes and seasons allow a story room to breathe

  • Friday, 29 March, 2019
    Books
    Take me back to Narnia

    Books you love from childhood have a special place in your heart — no matter how many novels the original series had, you often want one more

  • Friday, 22 March, 2019
    Life & Arts
    Delhi Diary — elections and the rites of spring

    Nilanjana Roy on why sloganeering isn’t what it used to be

  • Friday, 8 March, 2019
    India-Pakistan relations
    India-Pakistan: open a book and you open minds

    In times of conflict, we must resist boycotting writers from ‘the other side’

  • Friday, 1 March, 2019
    ReviewNon-Fiction
    A Mouth Full of Blood by Toni Morrison — how words can reshape the world

    The author’s moral clarity and piercing perspective gets a timely airing in this collection

  • Friday, 22 February, 2019
    Books
    Why style guide Dreyer’s English is hitting the bestseller lists

    Benjamin Dreyer’s book won’t be the last writing guide you’ll ever need — and it’s all the better for it

  • Friday, 15 February, 2019
    ReviewFiction
    Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James — a bloody and brilliant leap into fantasy

    The first part of the Booker winner’s ‘Dark Star’ trilogy is a modern fantasy classic

  • Wednesday, 6 February, 2019
    Books
    Mario Puzo: an author you can’t refuse

    I read ‘The Godfather’ in my teens, again in my 30s and at one time as a kind of guide to the world of men

  • Friday, 25 January, 2019
    Books
    Mary Oliver: a life in the woods

    The poet’s work was a call to learn again, to really look at the world, to return to the wild part of human nature

  • Friday, 18 January, 2019
    ReviewFiction
    Once Upon A River by Diane Setterfield — powered by an otherworldly force

    A Gothic mystery set on the banks of the Thames shimmers with ancient magic

  • Friday, 11 January, 2019
    Life & Arts
    How a viral tattoo put the semicolon in the spotlight

    People have had it inked on ankles, forearms, backs, bellies, under their ears and on their wrists

  • Friday, 4 January, 2019
    ReviewFiction
    My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite — blood bonds

    A glittering and funny crime fiction debut from the Nigerian novelist unpicks a dark sibling rivalry

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