Column | Top books to read this month: April 2026

This month’s books circle different forms of looking back, though not always with nostalgia. In this stack, there is an estranged husband, a woman reckoning with the performance of perfect domesticity, a philosopher trying to impose order on chaos, a daughter drawn towards an inheritance she only partly understands, and a crime that unspools into something morally knottier than expected. What unites them is the pleasure of the familiar made slightly strange.

(Penguin; ₹899)