Archives for “Books”

The White Tiger Redux

Meera beautifully weighs in with an open letter to Aravind Adiga. It proves one my pet-peeve theories that the biggest intellectual celebrity is also the ...


In the beginning of an essay on contemporary literary criticism, S.L. Bhyrappa dissects a Kannada short story, entitled Rotti (a dish made of rice flour) ...


Reexamining False Heroes

I know Nehru's legacy as a person, patriot, freedom fighter, and Prime Minister has been examined to death. By both his admirers and arch-critics. In ...


Spare the Comics, Dammit!

It takes tremendous amounts of grotesque perversity to detect ulterior, sinister motives behind producing children's comics. That's perhaps why it takes only a Tehelka to ...


Academic Terrorists

Goes by the name of Denise Spellberg. Starting in 2002, Spokane, Wash., journalist Sherry Jones toiled weekends on a racy ...


Who Wrote This?

The Mohammadan conquest with its propagandist work and later the Christian missionary movement attempted to shake the stability of Hindu society and in an ...


Ramanujan’s Ramayana

The old suspect, A.K. Ramanujan emerges out of the woodwork on Outlook's pages. The magazine's leader to this article says: ...in a pocket of the Delhi ...


Book Review: Exodus

When it was first published, Exodus deservedly became an instant bestseller. In a brief period after its publication, it was translated into 50 languages. It ...


My circle of friends is as large and varied as the interests, hobbies and passions of each person in that circle. There's no one, absolutely ...


Shashi Tharoor is a delightful novelist. I loved his Riot not just for its unique experiment in structure and form but for the author's skillful ...


Theatre of the Absurd

Our cops seem to be eager to perfectly fit the mould that Bollywood/Indian cinema has set for them. The Hyderabad police have registered a case against ...


Book Review: AAVARANA

Aavarana is a book Indian secular intellectuals love to hate but cannot ignore. The "average reader" (which increasingly means someone endowed with commonsense, a healthy ...


Pragathi June Edition is Out

The folks at Pragathi have slogged it out last month to release a stellar new edition this month. A must-read. Grab your copy now.


This was waiting to happen. Prof U R Ananthamurthy has declared he will not take part in literary functions in future. The decision came in the wake ...


Appeal to Sanity

So Arun Shourie has published yet another new book. Arun Shourie's books are really empirical appeals to sanity in a country choked by din. Ashok Malik's ...


Mad Bad and Dangerous to Know

My literary tastes have turned more classical nowadays. That hasn't however, dimmed my fascination for Byron. For some reason, he's like a powerful spell not ...


Self Censorship

Banning Salman Rushdie's book caused the crash of Rajiv Gandhi's government. Well, it was one of the reasons. What is noteworthy is the massive furore ...


The Story of DA

To me, the chief value of reading the Upanishads is simply the amazing stories that I find buried beneath layers of terse philosophical expositions. This ...


More on Entebbe

I was pleasantly surprised to receive several comments on my Entebbe book review. Most commenters have asked me where (if) it is available in India. ...


The Nation First

This Danish party gets it mostly right. A political party called Stop Islamisation of Denmark has claimed that 67th and 69th verses of Quran are violating ...


This interesting post on Desicritics seeks to examine the controveries surrounding the rewriting of, or the politicizing of history textbooks by governments around the world. ...


Run For Cover!

Here is good and bad news, both in the same package. Arundhati Roy is to return to fiction writing, 10 years after winning Booker prize with ...


Preface Oct 20, 1959, Ladakh: Havaldar Karam Singh and his 20-strong troop, doing their routine border patrolling rounds amid heavy snowfall. In an eyewink nine men in ...


Book Review: Next

Next is Michael Crichton's latest novel. It follows the same pattern and approach as Jurassic Park, Lost World, and Prey in terms of structure, research ...


Mumbai

No other city in India manufactures as many commercial products as Mumbai. In my view, manufacturing is not the same as creation. Creation breathes, has ...