Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

‘The residents of Bargad chawl are in danger of losing their homes—their nooks and crannies, shelters and perches. Ali, the monkey, has to find a way out. He swings, jumps and leaps into action, and comes up with a monkey trick that gives a new twist to the phrase, ‘playing god’ in this hilarious and heartwarming story!’ reads the jacket of this picture book recommended for children upwards of 5 years in age.

Vacation!! Kids eagerly wait and plan well before for the vacation. That is what Sunny also does in A Passage to Adventure. How does Sunny’s vacation turn out? To find out read the book.

The family is the vehicle, the accul­turating medium through which the norms, values, and sentiments of the wider society are articulated and express­ed. In Family and Caste in Urban India based on a study conducted in the Kolar Gold Fields (KGF) in Karnataka, the author traces with incisive analytical ability…

Writer Anushka Ravishankar strikes again, with a novel little book—and this time, it’s about a little girl who goes to the market, with a little money from her mother, but so captivating are the strange sights that she spends her time, lost in the wonderful world. Flowers, bangles, toys and fish … the list is endless as she skips along the narrow lanes, peers at the colourful stalls, gapes at sellers and buyers, and loses all track of time.

If ever there was a book that captured every nuance that might appeal to a child, then this is probably it. Not for nothing is Anushka Ravishankar dubbed India’s Dr Seuss; her words are bright, appealing, and flavoured with such spirit and energy that even a word like Papayaaaaaaaa! is transformed into a long-drawn out horrified scream—uttered by Falguni Fruitseller, who stumbles upon a crocodile in a ditch—and reduces you to excited giggles.

Professor Carstairs is best known in India for his study of personality formation in a traditional Hindu society—The Twice ­Born. That study dealt with the social determinants of a ‘normal’ personality and relied mostly on an imaginative use of the clinical method.

‘Are you Woodward or Bernstein?’‘Neither, they are both in America’, replied John, thus killing, once and for all, an altogether inappropriate compa­rison between the Watergate reporters and the authors of Delhi Under Emer­gency. It was perhaps inevitable that this superb piece of investigative journalism, a rare specimen in India, by two young and relatively unknown journalists, would be compared to the Watergate story…

As a little child my mother told me the story of the founding of Panja Saheb: Guru Nanak once came into wilderness with his disciple. It was hot. The disci­ple thirsted for water. But water was nowhere except on top of a hill where a dervish lived.

The political appropriation of Mahatma Gandhi’s legacy has been going on for decades. Now the trend has spread to unlikely quarters. Gandhi peersat us from posters, sharing space with his ideological opponents. Even artifacts associated with him, like his spectacles, have been used as logo in government propaganda. Commercialization has been a parallel process, initially for marketing products purportedly of cottage industries, and then for a whole range ofother things. The powers that be appreciate the brand value of the
name Gandhi.

According to Elizabeth Cook, ‘myths are about gods, legends are about heroes, and fairy tales are about woodcutters and princesses.’

Here is a collection of sixteen short stories including one by Ka Naa Subra­manyam himself. Not all are short stories—at least one is an epic in a terse form: Ramapada Choudhury’s Festal.

The Magadha King Dhana Nanda had become unpopular because of his vile tongue, bad temper and greedy ways.

This collection of essays by Indian academics on American literature ranges in quality from the solitary brilliance of V.Y. Kantak’s essay on Faulkner’s Tech­nique, through the competent and inter­esting (Neila Seshadri’s Leslie A. Fiedler: Critic as Mythographer, Isaac Sequeira’s Essay on Sylvia Plath), to the (alas!) majority that is mediocre, or, at best, stolid and painstaking.

From the raising of Mohenjodaro to the meeting of Chanakya and Thiruvalluvar, Pavithra Srinivasan’s Back to the BCs can be as engaging for a child as an adult.

Hiranyakashipu and his nemesis, Narasimha, an Avatar of Vishnu, are the central characters of eight short stories that are included in this book.

People often ask me whether there is something special about our times in terms of an apparent resurgence in the tellings of our ancient tales, myths and the epics.

Is this a fantasy novel? Or a dream come true from one’s childhood? You know, the one in which we wished school would have no exams and annoying things like report cards would simply disappear?

This book is a collection of essays published in a Sri Lankan newspaper The Island as a weekly column. Written by the erudite and politically conscious Rajiva Wijesinha, the book is a delightful survey of twentieth century English literature. While he threatens/promises to locate his readings in contemporary Sri Lankan politics, we find that either he has edited them out of the book or that such anchoring was provided only now and then in the original columns themselves.

From the author of the much acclaimed Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns comes another novel set in Afghanistan, moving with its actors to Europe and America.

The book under review is a commendable study of modern art in Pakistan and closely analyses the work of a few prominent artists as it deconstructs notions of modernism in their work. While the title of the work makes a reference to the art of ‘South Asia’, it would perhaps have been more appropriate to restrict its scope to ‘Pakistan’ as almost all the artists and the work discussed in the book have emerged out of Pakistan.