Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

Works of fiction often bear the charge of blasphemy, creating thereby a tenuous relationship between the art of narrative fiction and the fatwas issued against it. What this establishes beyond reasonable doubt, besides the threat to the authors life, is the fearful ability of art to mould, shape and influence the real and tangible world out there.

Scholars now widely recognize that folk literature is a rich source of information on popular culture of a society. Systematic collection and publication of folktales and folklores in India began in the 19th century.

In reviewing this third volume of the three volume collection of short stories, one is immediately stuck by the importance of writing about the interiority of the economic. This more than anything, and rightly so, is an aspect of life that finds a stream of expression across the stories.

Mumbai Fables by Gyan Prakash is as layered as the city it explores. Walter Benjamin mentions a collectors passion bordering on the chaos of memories. The collector for him was as much a part of as he was apart from the various texts that make memories.

A collection of essays on a wide range of issues on women and media the book makes for an insightful reading and presents an interesting exposition of how media texts in both their fictional and non-fictional accounts are increasingly influenced by the often simultaneous but disconnected even opposed sets of forces including feminist influences and critiques globalization activism in cyberspace and issues pertaining to gender policy and gender justice.