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From March 01, 2007
to March 07, 2007
Ricochets From An Old Gun
Tushar Gandhi's claim of Bapu's assassination as conspiracy
is naive rather than new, and
emotional.
Remember '83?
Meticulously researched and produced, it gives the entire
history of
India's one-day matches. This will be
manna for all schoolboys.
Nehru Vs Nehru Review Article By A.G.
Noorani
This volume offers interesting vignettes of the man who
stood for
India's composite culture.
Foreign Policy Review By A.G. Noorani
A well-documented critique of
India's foreign policy and a southern
perspective on the crisis of the
American empire.
Slaves Of The Mines Review By S.
Viswanathan
A Progressive person of the Marxist persuasion, K.
Chinnappa Bharathi is arguably the
only one of his kind in Tamil Nadu,
combining in himself a relentless
fighter and a resolute writer fired by
an insatiable thirst to liberate
victims of exploitation.
Acts Of Resistance Review By Shelly
Walia
Howard Zinn's profoundly insightful book provides a
critique of the contemporary political
and ethical crisis.
At What Cost Consumption?
A comparative history of environmentalism in two large
democracies,
India and the U.S.
Usage In Telugu Language
To The author of this book, working with zeal to instill in
students clarity and flawlessness
while writing and speaking Telugu the
prescribed textbooks in schools came
as a shock.
Life And Works Of Sankara
This book draws its material from Vidyaranya's Sankara
Vijaya, Deivathin Kural, Swami
Chinmayananda's commentary on the
Bhaja Govindam and the Tamil
translation of Sankara (in English by
T.M.P.Mahadevan) by the late
Narayanaswami.
Integration Of The Sacred And The
Secular
One needs intelligence to understand a word but one must
perform tapasya to understand the
word.
Empowerment Of The Marginalised
A chorus of nine voices articulating at the intersections
of caste, gender, religion and
socio-spatial location.
Music Composer
Did Shakespeare author the Shakespearean plays? This
question will remain as long as we
discuss him.
Constitutional Reforms
The Constitution of India is one document that is being
examined and re-examined, interpreted
and re-interpreted almost every day
throughout the year in so many forums
to justify or challenge a policy or a
decision within and outside
Government.
India In The Future
An ambitious science fiction thriller set in a futuristic
India that is fabulously rewarding.
Distant Memories
This is an unusually poignant, vivid and well-crafted work.
In the Country of Men, Hashim Matar,
Viking/ Penguin, p.194, 2006.
Multi-Tasking And Mixed Media
IF you are looking to Sarnath Banerjee spinning a great
yarn in his "graphic novel", The Barn
Owl's Wondrous Capers, you will be
disappointed.
Lend An Ear
Whom to Tell My Tale: An Autobiography, K.S. Duggal,
National Book Trust, Rs. 65.
A Creative, Not An Academic Exercise
A look at the act of translation and what it involves.
A Master Storyteller
Kahnucharan Mohanty's stories evoked something personal in
each reader.
Dostoevsky's Useful Idiots
The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoevsky, translated by David
Magarshack, Penguin, 1955 edition.
First Impression
After the incredible success of The Da Vinci Code, it seems
almost every church in
Europe has dark mystical secrets that
need telling. If The Da Vinci Code was
the original in its genre, then books
like The Omega Scroll are faithful
reproductions, . . .
Games, Big And Small
A romance set against the backdrop of the British debacle
in
Afghanistan. Companions of Paradise,
Thalassa Ali, Headline Review, p.334,
£6.
Eyecatchers
"The Sunderbans, the world's largest mangrove expanse, are
nothing less than a hub for
naturalists and scientists — a
paradise for nature and wildlife
photographers and a wonderland for
tourists from all over the world.
Books All The Way
Despite the rain and a shift in venue, people poured in as
usual at the Kolkata Book Fair this
year.
Poet Of The Hopeless
Chekhov was a bridge between the structured realism of
Maupassant and the psychological
modernism of Joyce.
Looking Within
Sharana Sahitya has a perennial potency and mysticism which
reveal implicit and explicit teachings
of the Sharanas, reflecting the
quintessence of VeeraShaivism.
Economist To Chair 2007 Booker Jury
The director of the London School of Economics, Howard
Davies, will chair the judges of the
39th Man Booker prize.
In The Right Place At The Right Time
Christopher Kremmer has assimilated
India as few other foreigners have
owing largely to his baptism by fire
as soon as he arrived in this
country...
The Line Of Beauty
With her scenes of village life, Amrita Sher-Gil dedicated
herself to painting the ‘true’
India.
Attractive, outspoken and intelligent,
she died at 28. Salman Rushdie on the
inspiration for his flamboyant heroine
in ‘The Moor’s Last Sigh’.
Impossibly Good
The night I finished reading his book, I dreamt of Niven
Govinden. I ran up to him (he looked
like his protagonist, tall, great
hair), and grabbed his hands (I felt
he needed reassurance), and said, "I
know, I know, it's awful to say it . .
.
Year Of Biographies
THE year 2006 was indeed The Year of The Biography. Look at
the impressive men and women featured
in the biographies.
Explosive Eye Candy
A Bollywood spectacle in a book. Lights, Camera, Masala;
Naman Ramachandran, photographs by
Sheena Sippy, India Book House,
Rs.1995.
Seamless Narrative
REMARKING on the constitutional inability of Indians to be
autobiographical about their deepest
and most private moments, Dipesh
Chakrabarty has pointed out that the
novels, diaries, letters and
autobiographies written since the 19th
century by . . .
Complex Web Of Class, Caste, Gender
The story staggers under sociological debates and reformist
zeal. The Edge of Time; Veerappa Moily,
Translated by C.N. Ramachandran, Rupa
& Co., Rs. 295 (hardcover).
Life's Like That Only
With this translation, Parashuram reaches out to readers
beyond
Bengal's shores.
A Bird's-Eye View
A sensible wide-angle look at
India's bewildering bird life. India
Through Its Birds; Edited by Zafar
Futehally, Dronequill Publishers Pvt.
Ltd., Rs. 395.
Pulling Out All The Stops
It was interesting to hear Sunil Gavaskar, the man who took
a few years before he internalised the
nuances of the shortened version of
the game, advising players the other
day to be ready for more Twenty20
games in future.
No Applause For Ashok Mitra
Before the demands of a rapidly changing and increasingly
competitive media creatively destroyed
traditional markers for hierarchy and
job descriptions, being an assistant
editor automatically meant you wrote
edits and exercised a
middle-managerial . . .
Power Play
Politics, as the adage goes, is the last refuge of the
scoundrel. In The Eagle’s Throne,
Carlos Fuentes says it “is the art of
swallowing frogs without flinching”.
The book is a brilliant political
satire on Mexican Presidency and Latin
American . . .
Fresh Print
Beyond Performing Art and Culture is the result of renowned
dancer Dhanajayan’s firm conviction
that an artiste cannot remain isolated
from society and the larger world.
Inside The Jihadi Factory
If Zahid Hussain's book is to be believed, Pakistan-backed
terrorism in Jammu & Kashmir and
elsewhere in
India is not an aberration, writes G
Parthasarathy.
Hinduism Is Universal
It is not facetious to say that if there is one book that
all 'secularists' must read, it is
Fundamentalism Versus Hinduism.
Sincere And Impartial
SLOWLY but surely the world is getting to know the truth
about life in the Israeli-occupied
territories.
A Long Way To Go
Asma Jahangir explains what the Protection of Women Act
does and what is still left undone.
Like ‘An English Country Garden’
BRITAIN was
the first country to establish
municipal parks. These parks were
owned by local authorities and were
fully and freely accessible to the
public.
Lofty Heights
THE history of any nation turns meteorically cognisable
with the noble achievements of its men
and women of superior merit,
knowledge, wisdom and fine art.
Roy Returns To Fiction
ARUNDHATI Roy is to return to fiction writing, 10 years
after winning the Booker prize with
her first novel The God of Small
Things.
The Desert Queen
IN her day she was often dubbed the “Desert Queen” and the
Bedouins called her Khatun, an
honorific title.
Naseem Riaz – Paving The Way
AS I wait in her living room, I gaze at a beautiful sketch
hanging on Dr Naseem Riaz’s wall. I
find it to be quite similar to the
picture on the back cover of her book
Awaz, which I had brought along with
me.
Through Indian Eyes
IN William Dalrymple’s latest work, Bahadur Shah Zafar
seems to be the natural choice for
protagonist. For Dalrymple, the last
Mughal king embodied the ethos of the
city where he spends much of his time.
They’Re Reading
"The book I recently read and enjoyed is called Guzashta
Lukhnow. Apart from carrying a
detailed description of
Lucknow, it talks about how the city
was built and developed by the Nawabs
and their people.
The Snowball Affect
This book is a significant contribution to the genre of
research works on women’s issues in
the country. Shahnaz Khan, the author,
is a Canadian immigrant of Pakistani
origin, currently tenured as a
professor in the Women’s Studies and
Global . . .
Power Of The Pen
CHANGE in any society is beyond reach without a change in
the social attitudes of the common
people.
Children’s Book Review Of The Week
It’s cold and chilly in
Antarctica, the highest and the most isolated place on earth. There
are no permanent human inhabitants and
nobody owns even a single inch of land
in this place that is made up of 90
per cent of the world’s ice.
Good Teaching
Greg Mortenson came to
Pakistan as a climber. He had decided
to scale the K2 (28,267 feet), reputed
to be the toughest peak on the earth
to conquer.
Dancing With Rumi
There has been a commotion in many literary circles in
Pakistan. Fahmida Riaz and Maulana
Jalaluddin Rumi? Surely, this is an
uneasy alliance!
In Brief
IN the past couple of years there has been a lot of hue and
cry about promoting tourism in
Pakistan.
International tourism is now the
fourth largest industry in the world,
growing at an annual rate of eight per
cent; however,
Pakistan’s
share in . . .
The Book Club
HISTORIAN and film-maker Tariq Ali is the author of
bestsellers such as Trotsky for
Beginners, Clash of Fundamentalisms:
Crusades, Jihads and Modernity and
Bush in
Babylon.
Print Pick
Fabmall.com has acquired an US based e-commerce company,
Indiaplaza.com and now onwards the
combined business will be known as
indiaplaza.in throughout the world.
A Tale Of Buddies
Anita Nair, the author of three novels and a short story
collection, now has a children's book
in her kitty. `Living Next Door To
Alise,' is an engaging tale of a
lonely eight-year-old who befriends a
talking elephant.
Book Fair
Enter the world of books at Bank Employees' Union Hall (TKV
Smarakam), Pulimoodu, as Modern Book
Centre holds a book fair.
Crying To Be Heard
Reghunatha Pillai, a 50-year old KSRTC bus conductor, is in
the limelight yet again with his new
novel `Cicadas Takes Life.' The
novelist has established through his
new book that he is a born writer.
Queens In West End, And The Slippery
Aisle Of Glory
“The sun rose and the earth fell away. We were driving
round a spinning rock.” Rupert Everett
was on the outskirts of
Paris with John Jermyn, his wastrel
friend, looking at the
fast-approaching horizon and the sun
rising from behind.
What They Had Made Was Love
It is not often that a poet presents his own selection of
love poems. James Fenton — poet,
journalist and professor of poetry in
Oxford (1994-99)— has brought together
some of his favourites in this volume.
The Index Of Trust
After the parliamentary elections of 2004, New Delhi-based
Centre for the Study of Developing
Societies carried out a survey to find
out how much the people “trusted” the
major public institutions in
India.
In All Fairness
The prerogative comes from a sense of belonging; a grandson
writes a book on his grandfather, one
of the greatest figures in our epoch,
and dares to name it Mohandas.
In The Throes Of Change
The 19 stories contained in the slim volume presents a
unique combination of literary
creativity and a sensitive perception
of human travails.
Writing Awards
The winners of the Hutch Crossword Book Awards 2006 were
announced in Mumbai on February 21.
Bestsellers
Feast of love describes the basic techniques needed for
Continental cuisine, so that even
someone completely unfamiliar with
cooking will be able to serve p a
haute cuisine menu.
A Screenplay Between Covers
Over the years books have become the inspiration of many a
film. Now debutante writer Rajashree
has done the opposite. She has written
a novel in the form of a film
narrative - cut to cut with razor
sharp editing and no pretensions of
erudition in . . .
A Tale Of Unusual Buddies
Anita Nair, the author of three novels and a short story
collection, now has a children's book
in her kitty. Living Next Door To
Alise, is an engaging tale of a lonely
eight-year-old who befriends a talking
elephant.
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