Reading recommendations from a pandemic year Poets and politicians, sportsmen and theatre personalities look back at 2020 through the books they read Updated: December 20, 2020 12:12:44 pm Here are the books authors read this year. (Source: Getty Images) Aruni Kashyap writer I think everyone in India should read Samit Basu’s Chosen Spirits (2020, Simon and Schuster) — it is an urgent and topical book set in an India of the future, a work of speculative fiction. I don’t read a lot in this genre, but I think speculative fiction has the ability to caution us. I have long admired Moroccan-American writer Laila Lalami’s fiction but Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America (2020, Pantheon) is my first introduction to her nonfiction writing. Through a set of essays, Lalami talks about what it means to be a Muslim-American citizen, a naturalised American citizen; and how acceptance by the establishment comes with some conditions. Reading this book will let you know that the divides that the US seems to be reeling under since 2016 have always been there, but it was experienced only by people of colour.