Countdown

Really cool book, loved it and would recommend to others too. The Indian government detonated five nuclear weapons on May 11, 1998, about 40 km near Pokaran. Pakistan conducted its own nuclear weapon tests seventeen days later. Amitav Ghosh visited the Pokaran region three months after the tests, and then he travelled to Kashmir with the defence minister's entourage. In the Karakoram Mountains' Siachen Glacier, where Indian and Pakistani soldiers have been exchanging fire since 1983, he also went. Then Ghosh made his way across Pakistan and Nepal. These journeys and interactions with hundreds of people from the subcontinent contributed to the creation of Countdown.