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Corn Nuts. Fotomat. A Truckasaurus rally.

The 80s are alive and kicking in the San Fernando Valley courtesy of Cobra Kais Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka), a hard-drinking, heavy metal holdover from an era when Twisted Sister ruled the charts and No Fat Chicks bumper stickers were commonplace.

The karate dramedys lead carries Season 3, which premieres New Years Day on its new platform, Netflix. The streamer picked up the YouTube Premium series last year, delighting loyal Kai fans by adding the first two seasons to its catalog and announcing there would soon be a third.

Season 3 of the self-aware, kitschy soap takes place 36 years after the original Karate Kid movie, on which the series is based. Though Johnny and Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) are now in their 50s, their long-simmering rivalry has spilled over to the students of their competing dojos. Now the Valley is home to an all-out struggle between karate gangs. These food-court warriors include LaRussos earnest daughter, Samantha (Mary Mouser); Johnnys delinquent son, Robby (Tanner Buchanan); and Johnnys neighbor, high schooler Miguel Diaz (Xolo Mariduena). And Johnnys former teacher, Kreese (Martin Kove), who stole his dojo, is more than happy to fan the flames.

Campy, fun and nostalgic, this series from Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg continues to build pop culture lore around the aging film franchise, looking toward the future by drawing from the past. The main characters fortunes have reversed since they battled it out at the All-Valley Karate Tournament way back when. Rich kid Johnny is a broke, divorced handyman who lives alone in a crappy Reseda apartment. Poor kid Daniel is a successful businessman who lives in the upscale West Valley with his seemingly perfect family.

But while a lot has changed since 1984, Johnny is not part of the evolution. Watching the Coors Banquet-drinking, Tango & Cash-loving waster navigate todays Valley, with its vegan menus, overpriced rental market and confusing array of craft cocktails, is a blast.

The unapologetic throwback still calls women babes, wears a long-sleeved thermal under his flannel shirt and rocks out to the Cres Kickstart My Heart. Pretty much everything he says is politically incorrect, and not in a Rush Limbaugh sort of way. Snowflakes are still just frozen water to Johnny.

Ralph Macchio, left, and William Zabka in Cobra Kai.

(Curtis Bonds Baker / Netflix)

Those of us who grew up in the Valley in the 80s will recognize Johnny as a former classmate or perhaps a version of our clueless, high school selves Dude! Bro! Hell either make you shudder or laugh. I did both.

But theres a charm and innocence in the way he views modern times through vintage Ray-Bans. Facebook is mostly still a mystery to him, but when he does manage to type a message out, its in ALL CAPS. Why would that imply hes a serial killer?

Season 3 of Cobra Kai capitalizes on Johnnys woefully out-of-touch ways and the steep learning curve he faces while trying to impress an old flame, at once helping the viewer understand the characters time-capsule quality and poking fun at it. The teens he trains in karate even coach him on the basics of living in the 21st century: Bullying is bad, sexism is worse, and its not OK to nickname students things like penis breath. (Hand-to-hand combat never drops out of fashion in the world of Cobra Kai though.)

There are too many spoilers to get into plot specifics, but if you liked the last two seasons, youll love the new one. Original characters from the first film appear throughout, giving the sense that the series has a much wider arc than it really does, while new characters continue to push the story forward.

Cobra Kai has already been renewed for a fourth season, so expect more high-flying kicks in the tony homes west of Ventura Boulevard and in the dilapidated mini-malls of Reseda. Or is it Van Nuys? Johnny doesnt care where it is or how the place has changed . The Valley is still the Valley, where rock rules and karate is as bitchin as ever.

Cobra Kai

Where: Netflix

When: Any time, starting Friday

Rating: TV-14 (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 14)

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'Cobra Kai' Season 3 vividly captures a man stuck in the 80s - Los Angeles Times

Carson Field

Months ago, the club formerly known as the Washington Redskins made headlines when the organization announced it would be known as the Washington Football Team, scrapping the politically incorrect nickname.

Changing Washingtons team name had been discussed for years, with people on one side claiming the Redskins mascot as offensive and racist, and opposers claiming that many Native Americans approve of the nickname. There was truth to both sides, but the club ultimately decided Redskins would be a thing of the past.

One of Washingtons most notable players of the past two decades, tight end Chris Cooley, recently shared his insight on the issue with me. During his time playing and broadcasting for the organization, Cooley had the chance to visit more than 100 reservations, giving him a valuable perspective.

At the time, I didnt feel like there was as much sensitivity to the actual name, but that was seven years ago, Cooley said. I think a lots changed in our society and how we view some of what were cultural norms and our sensitivity to those things.

I think its positive for the team moving forward, he said of abandoning the Redskins moniker. I think its something that everybodys going to have to adjust to. You dont want your players and everyone working for your organization to have any negative connotation or stigma surrounding it.

I tend to agree with Cooley. It is better for the franchise to get rid of the name that is quite literally a slur and marginalizes indigenous people, even if a chunk of the Native population isnt offended.

The problem is the slippery slope this change inadvertently created. Recently, the Cleveland Indians of MLB announced they will have a different nickname, starting in 2022.

Though getting rid of the blatantly-racist Chief Wahoo logo in 2018 was a definite step in the right direction, Im not sure removing the iconic Indians nickname solves anything.

The moniker Indians isnt degrading in any way. Unlike Redskins, which objectifies Native people by using a slur to describe a skin color, Indians just refers to the overarching population of indigenous people in the United States.

If anything, the name pays tribute to Native Americans across the country. No one is looking at the Indians nickname and making fun of tribal people. No one.

And with Indians being removed, I fully expect the outrage mob to continue down this dangerous slope. Its next victims? The Atlanta Braves, Kansas City Chiefs and Chicago Blackhawks.

That would be one-upping the wokeness of stripping Cleveland of its nickname. Braves literally honors the Native American community with its name and using the word brave. The moniker Chiefs depicts a fierce, strong tribal warrior. And Blackhawks pays tribute to a tribal leader, Black Hawk, who was a Native American historical figure in Illinois.

Whats most befuddling about the recent need to remove these historical names is that the main demographic of people fueling these movements is white people.

Various polls and studies have shown that tribe members are overwhelmingly not offended by names like Indians, Braves, Chiefs or Blackhawks. Some studies have even shown a high percentage indifferent to the Redskins moniker, even if that change was widely seen as necessary.

My problem is that people unaffected by the stigma are the most triggered. Its one thing to take issue with racist logos like Chief Wahoo or derogatory nicknames like Redskins. But getting bent out of shape by generic names like Indians, Chiefs or Braves as someone not affected is perplexing.

Personally, Im not a member of any tribe, but much of the heritage on my fathers side of the family is Cherokee. I dont find names like Indians, Braves or Chiefs disrespectful to any tribal ancestors of mine, and neither do my relatives. I actually think its a neat way to honor them, as long as offensive imagery (such as Chief Wahoo and other past logos) isnt used.

If the mob finds a way to cancel these generic tribal-based names, almost any team name is in danger of being canceled for various reasons.

What about the Minnesota Vikings? Might people with Scandinavian descent find the brash portrayal of their ancestors offensive? Or what about the Oakland Athletics? Does being called the Athletics make non-athletic people feel bad? Arent all bodies beautiful?

While the latter of those examples is somewhat hyperbolic, its more than likely that other team names will find new ways to become taboo in our 21st century world. Its very possible that sporting events are between the red team and the blue team one day because of societys need to find any and everything offensive.

Though I find changing the Indians or Braves, Chiefs and Blackhawks moniker ridiculous, Im all for improving the portrayal of Native American communities with these teams.

Whether thats getting rid of offensive logos, like Chief Wahoo, or teams honoring Native American communities before every game, I think the franchises should do everything in their power to ensure that the portrayal is positive. Items that are sacred to Native Americans (i.e. headdresses) should be banned to patrons, as the Blackhawks did a couple years back.

And like I said, it was long overdue for Washington to remove the harmful Redskins nickname. That moniker was dehumanizing and needed to go.

But ridding professional sports of any generic tribal nickname is excessive and will only perpetuate a dangerous trend of oversensitivity.

Original post:
Where's the line between offensive and overly politically correct? - Powell Tribune

In response to the front page article in the 12/27 Sunday paper, all I can say is that I am enraged. Not only am I enraged at the blatant racism -- yes, racism, not a slight politically incorrect faux paus -- of one of the representatives of this town posing in front of a confederate flag, I am even more surprised and disappointed with the Tullahoma News giving Amacher the unrivalled platform to defend herself. The confederate flag is a racist symbol, and the only stance that anyone who considers themselves an upstanding citizen can take is one of disgust and abhorrence.

What I am asking for is fair and respectful journalism, something that article in which the majority of the content is copied from a Facebook page cannot boast. I have been a citizen of Tullahoma since I was born, and this article was a disappointment to the journalistic integrity that the people of Tullahoma deserve. I sincerely hope the Tullahoma News does better in the future for all its readers and citizens.

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Advocating for equitable journalism | Letters to the Editor - Tullahoma News and Guardian

Lets stick to the facts

Regarding The Denver Gazettes Dec. 24 report, Climate change, human activity, might risk ptarmigan population: What a misleading headline! I know you try to show both sides of an issue, but headlines should reflect what is in the article. The article says two things that the ptarmigan population has held steady since 1960, when first studied, and secondly that wildlife officials fear for the future because of human activity and global warming.

Wouldnt a better headline be, Ptarmigan population holds steady despite growing fears? Obviously, human activity has increased greatly since 1960, and despite decades of horrific predictions of climate catastrophe, our summer temps have held pretty steady. (Raw temperature data shows much higher temps in the 1930s and 1950s.) I know its politically correct to be alarmed by climate change, but lets stick to the facts and not some political agenda.

Stephen Tanberg

Denver

As the numbers continue to fall, and the post Thanksgiving surge did not happen, Governor Jared Polis extends the states emergency order over the Covid Pandemic. I struggle with the all of the contradictory information that is given to us about what we need to do and what is happening.

I listened to Dr. Anthony Fauci yesterday and he said frankly everything he and his peers propose as possibilities is guess work and how they need to be humble while presenting their predictions.

This being the case, if masks are so helpful then why do we have to socially distance ourselves? Because the masks we are being told to wear do not protect us. They only minimize exposure to others. How about we fund quality masks that do protect us and then just open everything up so people who need it the most can go back to work?

We have a vaccine, yet we continue to hear about doom and gloom and how yet another surge is coming. It is time to allow people to protect themselves, take personal responsibility as to how they want to expose themselves or not and move on with life.

John Pickard

Lakewood

When does electoral preference trump patients lives?

Is it mere coincidence, or evidence of election bias, that the AMA (American Medical Association) completely reversed its public opinion on usage of Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) (a drug which demonstrably can arrest the progress of COVID-19 in patients if used early in their distress) mere hours after Mondays US Electoral College vote?

How is it that anything, which is touted as highly dangerous on one day, becomes innocuous overnight?

How is it now, that the cheap and long-respected drug which the AMA relentlessly pilloried before the Presidential Election, is now deemed OK to be taken at a patients discretion?

Given this charade, should we, the people of America, ever-again believe anything which issues from the so-called AMA?

Russell W. Haas

Golden

I was floored to read the article by Jon Talton about the growth of the tech industry in Austin. (Austin is winning recruits among the technology elite, Dec. 28) He clearly has never been to Austin and knows nothing about his conclusions about what is happening there.

The more you read, the more this just looks like a sour grapes tale from a Seattle writer who cannot understand why anyone would want to leave Seattle or Silicon Valley. The largest point here is that everything said in the second half of the article is a flat out lie. He has so many incorrect statements in there, I could not tell if he was trying to convince others from going there, or if he really was that dumb. That article truly was fake news.

Brad Bernero

Parker

Many of us are finding this political climate hard to digest. We have been living through a slow degradation of truth telling because it has become emotional. Its amazing that many Americans still really care about the truth and can see that it has become hidden and labeled politically incorrect.

I am so glad that our parents are not here to see the division rising in America because of the loss of integrity in so many areas of our republic. Our Freedom of the Press has been completely turned into a tool for divisiveness.

Most major television networks and newspapers do not allow reporters to inform Americans on the issues without a bias attached. Most Reporters have changed to political advocates.

Some very significant news items are being completely obliterated by these entities, which is the same as covering up the truth. News outlets on paper and on television and radio are being manipulated and used as advocacy for a narrow narrative. The result can be citizens with a narrow knowledge of the facts.

If we Americans (yes, even the senior citizens) do not stand up for truth, our beloved USA will cease to exist. Even now, the current example is so easy to see. Just test a few different news outlets: The New York Post, Newsmax.com, The Epoch Times or some local small town newspapers. These have owners that are not afraid of the six billionaires that own (literally and figuratively) most news outlets.

These few newspapers are empowering their reporters to tell the whole story.

I love my country despite all of its faults and have traveled the world to see others. If you have ever visited countries where the people were duped into believing a false narrative, they lost their freedom. Rogue governments slowly took away the citizens right to the truth and they took away the peoples power over their own destinies.

I ask you to search for the truth and share it with others despite the fact that you will be dealing with brainwashed citizens many of whom will refuse to hear you.

I pray that we will see courageous heroes arise that will help all of us see why this terrible anarchy and disrespect for our democratic institutions is happening so that we can stand for the truth too.

M.C. Hunter

Cherry Hills Village

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LETTERS: Let's stick to the facts; time to move on with life - Colorado Springs Gazette

Voat, a controversial Reddit clone that hosted politically incorrect content and conspiracy theories like QAnon, has been shut down by its owner due to a lack of funds.

An investor defaulted on the contract in March 2020, site co-founder Justin Chastain wrote in a post announcing its closure, and as such the site lost all of its funding.

Mr Chastain personally decided to keep Voat up until after the US election of 2020, and had been paying the costs out of pocket but now [was] out of money.

Some say life is worth it all if you can help just one single person. In this way I know Voat was worth it because you guys have changed thousands and thousands of peoples hearts and minds. Youve made so many people aware of the lies taught as truth and the truth taught as conspiracy. Its beautiful. What a great thing, Mr Chastain continued.

Voat launched in 2014 as an alternative Reddit platform dedicated to free speech, and as such allowed hate speech, racism, and other content that would be banned on more mainstream platforms.

Voats web host, hosteurope.de, dropped support for the site in the same year after it received significant information that the content on [the] server includes political incorrect parts that are unacceptable for us.

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INDY/LIFE NewsletterBe inspired with the latest lifestyle trends every week

It also said that it had to take action due to the fact that we cannot keep bond of trust to you as our customer.

Since then, the website had reportedly been host to other antisemitic and racist content, and had apparently been approached by an unnamed US agency due to the large quantity of death threats made on the platform.

Parler describes itself as "unbiased social media focused on real user experiences and engagement" that allows "free expression without violence and no censorship. It is home to numerous far-right figures including Milo Yiannopoulos, Proud Boys creator Gavin McInnes, as well high-profile US republicans like Ted Cruz. Anti-Muslim far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer. Candace Owens and Katie Hopkins also use the platform.

Discussion of Voat on those platforms is currently scarce. There were no posts on Gab that were immediately visible when searching for Voat, while only 19 posts on Parler used the hashtag #voat at time of writing.

I just saw that #Voat is shutting down on Christmas. I tried Voat. It was by far the most frustrating userbase I've interacted with, one user wrote on Parler about the websites closure.

"I think it took a day for me to be called a 'n****** lover. I was so conditioned to SJWs [social justice warriors] calling me a racist I took it as a compliment."

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Voat shutdown: QAnon and anti-vaccination Reddit clone shut down on Christmas Day - The Independent

BRENDAN OCARROLL Says Mrs Browns Boys Will Never Be Cancelled, after complaints about political correctness

Brendan OCarroll the comic genius creator of the award-winning, hit BBC comedy show, Mrs Browns Boys, where he has dressed in drag as matriarch Agnes Brown, the shows leading character, since the 1990s, has told The Irish Sun that he believes his show will never get cancelled even after recent claims that the show was not politically correct, in the wake of other top comedy shows like Little Britain being pulled from the TV after being deemed politically incorrect for using blackface.

Brendan said, I dont think Mrs Brown will be affected, and I often question myself, is Mrs Brown, me, a man, dressing up as a woman to play Mrs Brown, the same as blackface? And I decided no its not, because Ive never played Mrs Brown as a man playing a woman like they do in films like Mrs Doubtfire. Agnes is a woman like Dame Edna. Overall, its very hard to draw the line in comedy. I suppose we all have a remote control, and the ability to buy or not buy a ticket.

He continued, I would never go out of my way to be racist or homophobic. Im not that worried myself because I only write what I think is funny, and you hope that enough of an audience agrees with you.

OCarroll had signed a new six-year deal with the BBC only days before Mrs Browns Boys returned with a new special on Christmas Day, but only 3.8 million viewers tuned in to watch, the lowest figure in 10 years.

___________________________________________________________

Thank you for taking the time to read this news article Brendan OCarroll Says Mrs Browns Boys Will Never Be Cancelled.

For more UK daily news, Spanish daily news and, Global news stories, visit the Euro Weekly News home page.

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Brendan OCarroll Says Mrs Browns Boys Will Never Be Cancelled - Euro Weekly News

My earliest memory of Flash was that it got me into trouble. I had heard about a website that hosted brutal games, including one particularly difficult shooter starring an audacious yellow alien. I soon discovered that this site, Newgrounds.com, brimmed with warped takes on American culture within minutes, I had battered Osama Bin Laden and chainsawed my way through a string of office colleagues. The next day, I visited the site at a friends house, and we massacred a school. In the evening, his mum rang mine to ask why her son had been undressing Britney Spears.

On December 31, Flash dies. Adobe will stop updates and recommend you uninstall it. This end has been a long time coming since June 2017, officially; unofficially, since April 2010, when Apples Steve Jobs announced that Flash would not run on the iPhone. Its legacy lives on in Adult Swim cartoons and zany mobile games. Toiling conservationists continue to convert and archive old Flash content before it is lost forever.

Flashs death is, in many ways, incidental there may even be an impulse to welcome it. For those of a certain age, the command please install Flash Player still provokes a tinge of irritation, as they remember how it came between them and that bopping badger video. But the softwares end is also a synecdoche of an aesthetic project years in the making. Its a reminder of how the web has been cleaned up; how it has been transformed from a messy and amateur space into a glossy and corporate one.

Flash animations could be crude and childish; they could be profane and pornographic. They were politically incorrect, an ideology that sometimes bled into real life the creator of Stick Assault is now a racist YouTuber. One member of Newgrounds posted two cartoons clown and target practice before shooting up his school.

But these are isolated examples among a generally harmless chaos. If there was a small share of depravity, its because Flash was so easy to use. What would have taken a studio of animators months to draw could be produced in just a few days, as Flash algorithmically generated the images between two keyframes. This led to its iconic lilting movement motion without cycles, in the technical jargon accompanied by the thick black outlines required to endure the poor resolutions of computer monitors.

The most memorable of these creations came from David Firth. Where Newgrounds was unquestionably American, Fat-Pie, Firths website, was intrinsically British. Salad Fingers, the creepy green humanoid with spinning digits, is his most famous character, but I watched every one of his night-terror creations, from eloquent locusts, to mass-murdering milkmen, to Burnt Face Man, the inept superhero who claimed that crime is a shit that needs cleaning up. His cartoons, often paired with music from Aphex Twin, obliquely reflected British society Chris Morriss satire without the politics. In the early 2000s, they looked how I felt.

The best animation, argues the film critic Richard Brody, captures the spontaneity, the free-flowing imagination, and the uninhibited sense of fun at the heart of the medium. Flash spread these instincts across the web. The worst Flash websites were a thing to behold remember restaurant sites with pumping muzak and flying food? There seemed no one framework back then.

In this sense, Flash was a bridge between generations. Its creator, Jonathan Gay, explained that the web could have settled on a filmic experience, based on movies and television, rather than the textual, Twittersphere we accept now. Flash facilitated the personalisation associated with Web 1.0 relics like Geocities, with users encouraged to manually code, design and manage their website, in the words of the architecture critic Kate Wagner, a state of affairs replaced by the corporate, professionally designed web that we cannot customise but must experience. This new professional web is glossy, uniform and minimalist, typified by app stores, smartphones and Facebook. Participatory portal culture, which websites like Newgrounds kicked off, is supercharged, but personalisation is destroyed.

Some of this change was positive, argued Anastasia Satler, who co-authored the best book on Flashs history. A new respect for accessibility has flourished. But a lot of it boils down to what Wagner calls Website Eugenics, where the democratic, anyone-can-edit ethos of the web is handcuffed by Big Tech. You can push the whole subversion of media narrative too far (Flash was still controlled by a corporate giant; users were still mainly crafting scatological gags influenced by South Park) but Flash provided a striking amount of freedom.

Flash certainly was never perfect, but for a proprietary platform, Flash at its height offered us unprecedented tools for the production and distribution of an open interactive web, writes Satler. Its interface invited in amateurs who could play around with drawing tools; its programming environment was largely self-contained, and its content-neutral approach invited experimentation and controversial work.

Apple claimed that Flash didnt work: that it was a sluggish battery drain, ripe for hacking. Whether this was true or not, the move still amounted to a power grab by a man who hated the webs amateurism. The mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards all areas where Flash falls short, wrote Jobs. Its true the Flash era web fell short in many areas where the modern web excels, not least in monetising addiction and surveillance. The webs messiness represented a kind of amateur autonomy. Flash never stood a chance.

Will Bedingfield is a staff writer for WIRED. He tweets from @WillBedingfield

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Flash is finally dead. This is why we should all mourn its passing - Wired.co.uk

Books by the Foots creations have also popped up in a variety of TV shows and movies, many of them politics-adjacent. Madam Secretary, Veep, The Blacklist, House of Cards, as well as the 2017 movie Chappaquiddick, for example, have all outfitted their sets with Books by the Foot curations. Some of the most high-profile projects the team works on, however, arent revealed to them until after the fact: Bowman has had the distinctly surreal experience of watching a movie for the first time and recognizing her work onscreen. (Thats how it works, she said, with pretty much anything Marvel.)

Although TV shows set in Washington underwent a change in tone when Trump was elected (as did much of Washington itself), D.C. residents appetites for well-stocked bookshelves, whether as functional libraries or as vanity props, seems to have survived. Or at least, thats what the demand for Books by the Foots services would indicate: The orders Roberts and his staff handled in the Trump years werent all that different from the orders they fielded in prior administrations.

To Roberts, though, the unchanging demand is a good thing. One of the positives for a business like his, he wrote in an email, is that familiar types of people, who work in similar fields and likely share similar aspirations, are constantly moving in and out of the area: Military, [employees of the] State Department and embassies, political folks are always either settling in or leaving. The imminent changeover to the Biden administration will likely bring precisely the type of new business Books by the Foot has depended on for years.

In 2020, of course, everything changed for Books by the Foot around the same time everything changed for everyone else. For most of the year, the coronavirus pandemic switched up the proportion of Books by the Foots commercial to residential projects: In July, Roberts said residential orders, which had previously accounted for 20 percent of business, now accounted for 40 percent. That was partly due to the closures of offices and hotels, Roberts notedbut a few other things were afoot, too.

For one, more people were ordering books with the apparent intent to read them. Were seeing an uptick in books by subject, which are usually for personal use, Roberts said over the summer. Because many people suddenly had extra time at home but hardly anyone was able to shop in brick-and-mortar stores, orders for, say, 10 feet of mysteries, or 3 feet of art books, rose in popularity.

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Washingtons Secret to the Perfect Zoom Bookshelf? Buy It Wholesale. - POLITICO

Here is our list of the 10 books of fiction that stood out in 2020, arranged in no particular order.

Novels that hit out at the establishment, stories that wore their sexual identity on their sleeve, tales that took on age-old hatreds headlong our list of the 10 books of fiction that stood out in 2020, arranged in no particular order

(Stay up to date on new book releases, reviews, and more with The Hindu On Books newsletter.Subscribe here.)

by Colum McCann (Bloomsbury)

When all political negotiations have failed, can the friendship of two men shine a light of hope on the Israel-Palestine conflict? Colum McCanns hybrid novel, straddling fiction and non-fiction, is a touching plea for peace based on the real-life friendship between Israeli graphic designer Rami Elhanan and Palestinian terrorist Bassam Aramin. They find common ground in grief both have lost their daughters to the violence and bond to the point where they become preoccupied with each others perspectives as they campaign for peace. Their stories are interwoven with a host of others over the course of 1,001 chapters of lyrical prose, spanning vast expanses of time and space, myth and reality, in a latter-day version of One Thousand and One Nights. Read review here.

by Douglas Stuart (Picador)

Douglas Stuart joins a potent chorus of contemporary Scottish working-class writers with his Booker Prize-winning debut. Shuggie Bain is a stark critique of Thatcherism, depicting the poverty and squalor of life in the tenements of 1980s Glasgow. The eponymous Shuggie is shaped by these circumstances; by a big, dysfunctional family that includes his philandering father and alcoholic mother; and by his queerness, which makes him an outsider. But its Shuggies love for his damaged mother that gives the book its heart and beauty. A novel with vintage flavour. Read review here.

by Megha Majumdar (Penguin Hamish Hamilton)

A Muslim girl, Jivan, is arrested for allegedly planting a bomb on a train. As she fights her present circumstances, we learn about her past, populated by characters like PT Sir and Lovely, the hijra. Jivan thought of them as her friends, but when misfortune strikes, they desert her in pursuit of their ambitions. Megha Majumdars debut is an emotionally resonant tale of prejudice, human weakness and betrayal. It has the raciness of the thriller and the moral depth of a philosophical novel. Read review here.

by Tanuj Solanki (Macmillan)

The danger of artificial overintelligence has long been a popular theme in fiction. But Tanuj Solanki does not fall into the killer robot routine; rather, he takes an Orwellian-Kafkaesque turn to make a villain out of a faceless institution. In The Machine is Learning, it is capitalism exemplified in a life insurance corporation that is deploying big data through AI to control lives. Our protagonist is an employee caught between ambition and accountability. His journey to consciousness is the heart of the story. Although he and the other characters are representatives of different world views, Solanki makes sure each is a living, breathing, individuated persona. Read review here.

by Samit Basu (Simon & Schuster India)

Its 10 years into the future and Delhi is still choking in smog, but todays anxieties have become concrete realities in Chosen Spirits. JNU has been demolished to make way for a giant mall; social media is an augmented-reality chimera called The Flow. Bijoyini Joey Roy works as an Associate Reality Controller for The Flow, managing the channels of a Flowstar. She and her childhood friend, Rudra, are drawn into a world of corporate intrigue. This is desi cyberpunk, with dark takes on very Indian cultural maladies. Samit Basu excels at world-building, creating a future at once familiar and bizarre. Read review here.

by S. Hareesh, translated by Jayasree Kalathil (Harper Perennial India)

Legends are created by a facial appendage in S. Hareeshs breakout novel, which won him the JCB Prize 2020. When a Dalit youth, Vavachan, dons a moustache for a policemans part in a play, it stays with him, transforming him into a larger-than-life figure. Power dynamics of caste are reversed as the man with the tash becomes a byword for terror. Its a grand novel of history, caste and Dalit assertion in early-mid 20th-century Kerala, combining realism with fantasy. Hareeshs stunning descriptions make Kuttanad, with its snaking waterways and colourful characters, come to life. Read review here.

by Hari Kunzru (Scribner UK)

A Brooklyn author with a writers block goes to a literary retreat in Berlin hoping to unblock his creative mind. He spirals downwards instead. The centres policy of ultra-transparency and the incitement of a fellow resident leave him disconcerted. In this shattered mental state, he turns to an alt-right media propagandist and comes to believe that the only way out of the confusion is the red pill the revelatory dose of reality which will get him out of the swamp of moral darkness.

Hari Kunzrus novel, with its forensic analysis of the post-truth netherworld, has been called the prototype for Trump-era novels to come and the Gen X Midlife-Crisis Novel in its purest form. His pointed prose is as chilling as it is thrilling. Read review here.

by Nisha Susan (Context)

A musician finding love in a chat room; three dancers arranging their sex life over email; troll wars unhinging a writer; a daughters cellphone chats making a cook uncomfortable such stories from Internet-era India make up Nisha Susans dazzling debut collection. The heroines of these stories are gloriously messy, damaged, politically incorrect, and you find yourselves in them. The girls stick to each other through thick and thin. Men, when they make that rare appearance, are pallid in comparison to the robustly drawn women. Susan, the co-founder of the feminist website The Ladies Finger and of the 2009 Pink Chaddi campaign, makes the personal the political. Read review here.

by Kevin Kwan (Penguin Random House)

To get over the lockdown blues, do you want to fly away to sun-kissed Capri, attend a lavish wedding, ogle at delectable men and do puppy yoga to blow off steam, all the while sitting in your couch? Start reading Sex and Vanity, which, in inimitable Kevin Kwan style, is brimful of bling and the snobs guide to high living. Described as a homage to E.M. Forsters A Room with a View, Sex and Vanity is about the poor little rich girl, Lucie Barclay Churchill, daughter of an American-born Chinese mother and a true-blue New Yorker father. She has always suppressed the Asian side of herself till she meets George Zao. Does Lucies hatred of Zao conceal helpless love? Will she be able to move beyond her WASP upbringing to follow Zao? More Barabara Cartland than Forster, Sex and Vanity is the perfect antidote to pandemic pains. Read review here.

by Karuna Ezara Parikh (Picador India)

The debut novel of poet, former television anchor, and model, Karuna Ezara Parikh, The Heart Asks Pleasure First is an exquisite love story of a young Indian ballet student and a young Muslim lawyer from Pakistan. They meet accidentally at a park in Wales on a sunny day and the inevitable happens. But the forces of history are out to get them: as 9/11 and the attack on Parliament take place, religious prejudices rear their head even in small-town Wales, and the two must fight for their beliefs. Is it possible to find a personal truth which is untouched by the great forces of history, politics and old hatreds? Like Anna and Vronsky, Helen and Paris before them, Parikhs lovers too discover that the world never forgives transgressions. A notable debut that bravely tackles some tough, niggling questions of love and faith. Read review here.

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Top 10 fiction books of 2020 - The Hindu