We hate the pressure of typing out a great first sentence. This is because we just read Amitava Kumar's latest title that releases today. And it's aptly called Writing Badly is Easy (Aleph Book Company) — with the second word struck through on the cover — so you can breathe a sigh of relief. The book delves into the maladies of Babu English, the culture of academic writing and the core of the English language itself. And Kumar, whose Immigrant, Montana was included in Barack Obama's list of his favourite books of 2018, maintains a non-morose tone throughout.

There are a number of examples in the book to draw from — Anton Chekhov, Eudora Welty, Honoré de Balzac, Suketu Mehta and George Saunders. But most importantly, we don't recall a time when we started laughing before flipping to the contents page of a book. We did with this one. You'll have to start reading
to know why.