Monthly Archives: October 2017

Perhaps no period or region in Indian history is as well documented as the Mughal period. The practice of Mughal rulers of maintaining personal records and autobiographies, the encouragement given to contemporary historians to write official biographies and histories,

The central theme of this study is memory. Other important ones include teleology, spectrality, Derridean deconstruction, certain aspects of Marxism, ideas of the messianic plus philosophies of alterity.

One of the few authentic terrors of walking unguardedly into a bookshop in these dark times is that one is almost immediately trapped by an enormous phalanx of thoroughly amiable Spiritual Books on the Inner Self which profess to alleviate all one’s worldly ills, in twelve steps or less, through a sort of spiritual enema:

‘Sir, sir,’ said an excited M. Phil student to me recently, ‘did you see that Naipaul has said he killed his first wife?!’ That was, of course, how the newspapers had headlined the report that an authorized biography of Naipaul had come out, while omitting to say, naturally,

This short monograph, tract really, is the tenth in the Signpost series published by LeftWord Books. They have been of a uniformly high standard, while adopting an unqualified Left-liberal perspective.

This book has caused much controversy in the US because it deals with a theme that is sensitive. It is considered ‘politically incorrect’ to talk about the Israel Lobby and its influence on US foreign policy. But in a living democracy it should be possible, and often, it is unavoidable, to talk about what is considered ‘politically incorrect’.

This fascinating book depicts the agonizing life of millions of innocent coastal fisher-folk in South Asia who have become indirect victims of nationalism and interstate rivalry in the region.

This book assesses the condition of inter- and intra-state affairs of India and its neighbours in the post-Cold War period. This analysis is vested in the post- 1990s period because during that decade South Asia was overcome by ‘liberal internationalism’ that left the region largely peaceful.

Sri Lanka, emerald isle and home to diversities has hurtled into an abyss of civil war again. The delicate ceasefire agreement brokered tenuously by the Norwegians is over. For some it was barely in place.

The abandoned former campuses of Yangon and Mandalay universities, at one time leading institutions of higher learning in Asia and which produced distinguished Myanmarese from all walks of life, typically symbolize the state of things in Myanmar today.

Rajat Sen, a bright, idealistic student, the only son of a well to do family, believes in an egalitarian society rather than an elitist one. This belief in the young engineering student drags him to become a part of the Naxalite movement in Bengal in the early seventies, which was a violent movement for creating an egalitarian society.

Hmm. So Page 3 people in Chennai are just like Page 3 people in Delhi, or Mumbai, or anywhere! That’s the message of Timeri Murari’s new book, The Small House.

The title, Happiness is a Butterfly, refers to the ephemeral nature of love. In this case quite literally, that between men and women. It is this attempt to canvas all aspects of ‘love’ ranging from the physical to the spiritual that perhaps bogs the book down.

Jhalkaribai, in Brindavanlal Varma’s novel and dalit historiographical discourse, is Laxmibai’s maid-servant, the woman responsible for the Rani of Jhansi’s halo in history. Jaishree Misra’s novel, Rani, is another such metaphorical interpretation of the Mutiny, not ‘description’, as the philosopher-historian Frank Ankersmit would emphasize, but ‘proposal’, what Misra calls ‘mere interpretation’.

For the last couple of decades of the twentieth century, as Indian diasporic writing carved a niche for itself in the publishing and academic world, the rubric was used as a fairly monolithic one, encompassing a range of what many seem as distinctive conventions and characteristics.

The City of Love is a fascinating novel ranged around the central metaphor of multiple journeys that traverse the globe and the inner reaches of the mind and also recreates in fine ethnographic detail the era of colonial expansion of the early years of the sixteenth century that brought East and West face to face with each other.

In this collection of nine short stories Nalini Jones conjures up two worlds that her predominantly Roman Catholic characters seek to explain to each other and to themselves.

Lived Heritage, Shared spaces is a book about courtyard houses in Goa. It is a very personal and detailed effort from an author who was born and lived in Portugal but is of Goan descent.

This book offers a poetic journey into the art of the Pallava dynasty, celebrating its artistic triumph in inaugurating lithic traditions in southern India. The Pallavas, as is well known, came into prominence in the late 6th century through a burst of activity recorded in inscriptions and art monuments.

The book on Krishen Khanna, designed in a large format, reflects the scale of promotional activities in support of Contemporary Indian artists, one is witnessing these days. Logistically it is jointly published by a leading Indian and a leading British publisher.