Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

All the three novels that are grouped together in this collection, one of them separated from the others by more than 30 years, explore situations of extra-marital rapport that have the potential to become full-blown affairs. In the earliest of them (Nashtaneer that was later filmed by Satyajit Ray…

For quite a few decades, the world outside Bengal knew Rabindranath Tagore primarily as a poet since it was mostly his poems that were first translated into other languages. Now Harper Collins seems determined to introduce him primarily as a writer of short fiction. Why else would they be marketing Sipra Bhattacharya’s English…

An Endless Winter’s Night presents 19 commendably translated contemporary short stories (and two poems)—all of equal literary merit—written in various Indian languages over the last two decades.

Kalpana Bardhan’s anthology is a comprehensive introduction to modern Bengali literature in translation. The chronological arrangement of these two volumes encompasses the breadth of modern Bengali literature and presents an overview of the major authors, works, genres, periods, movements and so on…

My only quarrel with Julius J. Lipner relates to the subtitle of this meticulous and valuable study. ‘Study’ may seem a strange word to use for what is primarily the translation of a gripping work of fiction. Lipner’s achievement lies in combining a delighted immersion in the narrative with a concurrent grasp…

The tales in this volume have been selected from the seven hundred and eight tales which had been originally collected by the folklorists from all over Tamilnadu including some tribal belts and published in 15 volumes. The translator has added annotations and a general introduction and fifteen sectional prefaces…

Journey to the Holy Land is much more than just a day-to-day account of Hajj that was undertaken in1929. Neither is it merely a historical document, valuable though it would be even if it were to be just that; it brings alive the economics, politics, beliefs and the colonial temper of the times, around and through the journey…

Sisir Kar’s 1988 monograph British Shashoney Bajeyapto Bangla Boi has long been one of the standard reference works on the history of censorship in colonial Bengal. A work of painstaking scholarship it was brought together a wide range of sources pertaining to almost every aspect of print cen-sorship under the British Raj…

The lack of sensitive models of inter-societal, inter-cultural and inter-personal exchanges emerges as the root cause of violence, misconstructions and exploitation in Sharankumar Limbale’s landmark Marathi novel, Hindu. The English translation of Hindu by Arun Prabha Mukherjee has opened the apparently transcasteist urban space to an awareness of the core issues haunting dalit politics and aesthetics in India today.

Sangam Poetry has long since fascinated and intrigued readers from different cultures. Fiercely treasured and guarded by Tamil pundits, chauvnistically valorized in Dravidian politics, Sangam corpus lays bare an entire worldview and civilizational ethos in cryptic, lyrical precision, leaving readers of every generation awe-struck and engrossed.

The verses of Bhartrihari are among the most quoted from secular Sanskrit literature. Their almost timeless topicality and often poignant brilliance won them a repute both widespread and long-standing…

Mahabharata, which literally means ‘the great story of Bharat dynasty’ is part of the Hindu itihas, i.e., ‘that which happened’. It is an extraordinary story of sibling rivalry, diplomatic manoeuvring and shifting of human values culminating in a direct confrontation on the battlefield of Kurukshetra between the five sons of King Pandu (Pandavas) and the hundred sons of King Dhritarashtra (Kauravas)…

An ELT specialist, a translator, and a creative writer, Rama Rao has naturally a lot to say about language use. He has put together sixteen of his articles in this book which is in two parts as the title indicates—one on literary translation and the other on language.

The edited volume to honour of Montek Singh Ahluwalia, with a foreword by Dr. Manmohan Singh, is a compilation of articles by economists who have either worked with him or have known him as an economist and policy maker. This volume would prove useful both for the admirers and critics of economic reforms in India…

Considering the inadequacy of literature on the subject of political economy, the book will be extremely useful for the scholars of political science, economics, history, sociology and even public policy. It has adopted an interdisciplinary approach to understand a wide range of political and economic phenomenon…

Media and Modernity is primarily about Kerala, its politics and its women and then about media and communication in Kerala. It is a book of previously published essays in which Robin Jeffrey explores his fascination with Kerala’s communism, its matriliny, its literacy, and its women. Intertwined with this is his research…

The core of any commercial cinema—be it Bollywood, Hollywood or the Tamil film industry—is its stars. The ones who make or break a film, set box office records and fashion trends and fire the dreams and imagination of billions of fans. They are the face of our popular culture. Then again the notion of stardom is not static…

The insecurity of people, faced with helpless conditions of violence, confron-tation, lack of access to basic services, has surged incrementally across India. In regions as ethnically complex and challenging as what is commonly called the ‘North-east’,

What are or should be the guiding principles of Indian foreign policy? At a function of the Ministry of External Affairs some time ago, an IFS officer was reviewing the year, gone by. ‘If I were to sum up the biggest success in our relations with other countries in one word, ‘ he said, with some pride, ‘It is continuity….

One of the stark reminders of the failure of the discipline of history was evident in the recent sessions of the Indian History Congress as it was clearly recognized that dalit history was virtually nonexistent, with very few exceptions. Mainstream historians’ apathy towards the dalit question indicates a failure of the historian’s…