Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

Children’s books in India have always been relegated to the last place in anyone’s priorities whether it be the publisher’s or the parent’s! CBT’s pione­ering effort in providing some sort of reading material for children aside from the dull text-books that children are burdened with deserves to be highly com­mended.

In these days of transparency and disclosure, I should state upfront that T.C.A. Srinivasa-Raghavan is a friend I have known for many years. In Business Standard days, he was also a colleague. He has been a journalist and columnist across a variety of business papers and is widely read…

The noncooperation movement was the first mass-based political mobilization on a nationwide scale which involved people from various segments of Indian society. In a sense, it transformed the psyche of the people, trained them in political agitation and made them conscious of their rights…

The nature of the relationship between economic liberalization, of expansion of economic opportunities and liberal poli-tical culture is the subject of this study. Nikita Sud has chosen to study this large question through a political, economic and social bio-graphy of modern Gujarat…

The running threat behind two centuries of violent community conflicts in South Asia is not religion, nor poverty or lack of education. The running threat is the peculiar nature of the South Asian State and the forms of political representation it has engendered…

Now that I am Fifty by Bulbul Sharma is a collection of short stories about women who have entered the fifties and their experiences at reaching that milestone.

The book is a collaboration between two different genres and cultures—Sweta Srivastava Vikram (USA) and Claire Anna Watson (Australia) met as part of an Artists exchange programme and this is the result of their interaction—a combined expression of poetry—both written and visual.

Ibrahim, a youngster from a rich Saudi family in Riyadh goes out to the restaurant with his mother and sisters, and comes out shell-shocked. He has seen his father take a young woman to a ‘family cabin’. The immediate inference (and it turns out to be the right one) is that his father has married again…

The Journey of a Burning Boat is a work of fiction which sweeps its reader deep into the unrelentingly brutal, inhuman, world of the flesh trade. A subterranean world whose existence everyone is aware of and which manifests itself often in newspaper headlines, only to be forgotten or pushed to the peripheries…

Curious Lives is a collection of five ‘moralistic adventures’, previously and separately published, set in the world of virtuous ferrets. The cover of the book has a pair of bright yellow eyes gleaming from behind dense foliage. It is just the eyes that can be made out and it is just as well. The internet informs…

Toke means puffing a pipe or pot filled with marijuana. And true to its title, you get high with the novel’s surreal plot. The story is set in motion as you are introduced to Nikhil the protagonist who is fighting to come out of ganja-induced hallucinatory dreams. He is a regular guy with a regular job and suffers from regular bouts of insecurity…

A work of non fiction, the book highlights one man’s courageous and sometimes frus-trating but always enduring struggle against politicians. He is often confronted by apathy in his quest to help protect the rhino. But he also enjoys small victories and help and support from unexpected quarters…

Nirvan Shrivatsava steps into Shore Mount, a posh residential school, with the weight of his lineage on his young shoulders. Three generations of Shrivatsavas, including his parents and older brother, have been stars at the same school and Nirvan is uneasy with his legacy. Third Best is a coming of age novel that traces Nirvan’s life from Class VII to Class XII—from being a bullied junior to a respected senior…

The moment I read ‘Arun, Barun, Kironmala’, ‘Sukhu and Dukhu’ and ‘Saat Bhai Champa’ I had regressed to being a wide eyed seven year old listening breathlessly to my maternal grandmother, my Didima, weaving her magic around a Bengali rupkatha. She knew every story of Dakshinaranjan’s Thakurmar Jhuli…

The indefatigable Subhadra Sen Gupta! All children from eight to eighty (this phrase was made famous by Satyajit Ray) must be her fans. No one has done more to make history accessible and as much fun as her numerous books on the nationalist movement and leaders testify…

Published this year of the London Olympics INDIA at the Olympic Games is a timely and informative publication. It is also fun! It begins with a letter from Abhinav Bindra, India’s first individual Olympic gold medalist, where he says: ‘I believe every child should have the chance to play’.

We seldom realize, in thinking about human culture and history, how much we depend upon the written word for all we know about the past. Civilization is actually synonymous with writing and for all modern archaeological techniques, it is still writing alone that tells us how people in ancient times lives…

Harold Ross of New Yorker once asked James Thurber if he knew English. Thurber thought that Ross meant French or a foreign language. Ross repeated: ‘Do you know English?’ When Thurber said he did, Ross replied: ‘Goddamn it, nobody knows English.’…

Sachin: Born to Bat by veteran journalist Khalid A.H. Ansari and edited by Clayton Murzello is a unique poem to cricket’s popular batsman, Sachin Tendulkar born in Mumbai to Ramesh Tendulkar and Rajni Tendulkar. The book is a chronicle of the achievements of Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar…

An outcome of a three-way collaboration between British Council, Abhinav Bindra Foundation and Tulika Publishers, India’s Olympic Story is a slim book targeted at teenagers but can also be useful to anybody interested in a quick read about the Olympic Games and India’s achieve-ments at this greatest sporting extravaganza.