Writing is Wisden ‘s strongest suit; and the India Almanack is both delightful and distinguished in this respect.

Rahul Bhattacharya says an eloquent goodbye to the ‘281 era’, the players who offered us Indian cricket’s most successful decade (2001-2011): “We weren’t kings – when have we ever been – but we had class, we were contenders, we were somebody.”

Mike Selvey and Lawrence Booth (the latter happens to be the editor of the Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack) have written two excellent essays on Sachin Tendulkar.

The tributes to VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid make us realize again what we had, and will no more.

Shehan Karunatilaka writes a perceptive, nuanced piece, full of surprise and humour, at how he overcame his scepticism about Muthiah Muralitharan (or, rather, how Murali destroyed it).

Among cricketers, past and present, who contribute to this volume are Sourav Ganguuly, Mahela Jayawardene, Anil Kumble, Javagal Srinath and Sanjay Manjrekar. And there is much more.

And while you get your hands on the Wisden India, here are some tributes to our modern legends (from the archive of yours truly), and mostly from that unforgettable tour of Australia in 2003-04:

Batman forever

Why Laxman is very, very special – and more so when he’s playing Australia

Steeling the show

Forgotten flair of the invisible man

There is something about the short novel that particularly agrees with me. Forty to fifty thousand words, elliptical, allusive, precise, teasing out but not always offering all resolutions. Swimming Home is all this, and more. Some time ago, Ian McEwan wrote about this form being the most “perfect form of prose fiction”. Read what he had to say here.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/10/some-notes-on-the-novella.html

Levy’s novel starts in a villa in the mountains above Nice in France, where two English families have turned up for a holiday. From the swimming pool of the villa emerges a naked woman, a young self-styled, anorexic botanist, who takes over the families’ holiday in all sorts of unexpected ways.

Multi-layered, taut and moving, lyrical and disquieting in turns, Swimming Home manages in its 150 pages more than many novels do at thrice that length. If you aren’t going to read it, you are denying yourself.

And here, if you are keen, is a perceptive essay on Levy’s new book of stories, Black Vodka, and a jog through her previous work.

http://www.guardianbookshop.co.uk/BerteShopWeb/viewProduct.do?ISBN=9781908276162

The Blind Man’s Garden is set in the days following the September 11 attacks with the Americans having invaded Afghanistan. Aslam focuses on the havoc that invasion causes, including collateral damage across the Afghan border in Pakistan: in doing so, he shows up how, amid the brutality and bloodshed, the rapaciousness and bestiality, the overwhelmingly poignant thing is the pity of war, the numbing senselessness of it.

Two brothers leave their home in a fictitious town in Pakistan in an attempt to go to Afghanistan and help wounded civilians. But their good intentions flounder as they are kidnapped and thrust into the heart of the conflict. Only one of them is able to return home, and he, too, returns with a price on his head, and in a state unrecognizable from the one in which he had left.

Aslam’s huge success lies in creating characters who have positions of polarity (devout/atheist; liberal/fundamentalist; captor/captive; ) and reveal that in reality they are closer to each other than they would imagine. This sense of nuance, of blurring of accepted borders of thinking and being, is one of the great achievements of this novel. Added to that is Aslam’s eye for arresting images, and his loving, luminous delineation of the natural world.

Vivid, haunting and riveting, The Blind Man’s Garden is Aslam’s best work to date.

Here is a video of the author introducing his novel:

Nadeem Aslam talks about writing his novel The Blind Man’s Garden

On Warne is divided into five sections: the making of Warne; the art of Warne; the men of Warne; the trials of Warne; and the sport of Warne. Haigh is particularly delightful when he examines Warne’s technique and play, and how it was shaped. The closing pages, which describe how, even after giving up international cricket, Warne has seen no dwindling of his celebrity, are illuminating.

Haigh is incapable of writing a clunky sentence. Incisive, often funny, knowledgeable and compelling, On Warne is the sort of cricket book that we don’t have too many of. With its perceptive analysis and good writing, it is also a damning indictment of the definitive biography and the ghostwritten autobiography, those staples of the sport publishing which yield only the rare gem (such as Andre Agassi’s Open or John McEnroe’s Serious).

Here is Margaret Atwood on George Orwell, and his enduring classic, Animal Farm. “[It] is one of the most spectacular emperor-has-no-clothes books of the 20th century…” Atwood writes.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/jan/18/my-hero-george-orwell-atwood?CMP=twt_fd

Here is a classic from the archives of the New Yorker. Truman Capote meets, and writes about Marlon Brando. “I’m supposed to be on a diet,” Brando tells Capote . “But the only things I want to eat are apple pie and stuff like that.”

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1957/11/09/1957_11_09_053_TNY_CARDS_000252812?currentPage=all

And, to sign off, a perceptive, finely nuanced piece by Zadie Smith on the difference between pleasure and joy.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/jan/10/joy/

Happy reading.

Some writers, such as Ernest Hemingway, seem to having a better time than certain others. Have a look.

20 Excellent Photos of Famous Authors Partying