Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

Tawaifnama is born out of Saba Dewan’s trilogy of films on ‘stigmatized’ women performers. The book is a chronicle, a history of different generations of a well-known tawaif family that had its origins in Banaras and Bhabua. The author through the stories of the family.

In September 1499 Vasco da Gama returned to Lisbon, having successfully travelled to Malabar via the Cape of Good Hope route. A century later, a group of London merchants launched the trading venture, which was to grow into a giant modern corporation, the East India Company (EIC).

Who is TR Shankar Raman, the author of The Wild Heart of India? This is not a question I ask, it is a question that the author himself is confronted with as he chances upon an old essay written as a schoolboy while visiting his childhood home in Mylapore, Chennai.

Yashica Dutt’s compellingly gritty tale offers points of identification for probably scores of third or fourth generation Dalits today, who are ‘new’ arrivals in public/professional spaces, as well as those from other marginalized, minority communities.

Ulrich Beck in his much-acclaimed book Risk Society: Toward a New Modernity throws light on the consequences of a wide range of hazardous and deadly risks of a highly industrialized and urbanized society. He further elaborates that modern risks are not restricted to place or time.

Ship of Sorrows is the English translation of Qurratulain Hyder’s second novel, Safinae Ghame Dil (1952) written during the tumultuous years in Pakistan immediately following the Partition of the country. It is regarded as a sequel to her first novel, Mere Bhi Sanamkhane written.

Writers and poets have always taken note of history. Sometimes, when history is exceptionally brutal and bloody, the poet may fall silent but the prose writer is compelled to pick up his pen, and sometimes it is the reverse. Some events shake the conscience of thinking.

Mukundan’s latest offering in translation is a collection of three novellas—the eponymous long novella and two short ones. But these are not new stories; on the contrary they are pretty old ones written in the late 1960s and early 70s. They have been introduced to the English reading public some fifty years later in an interesting translation by Prema Jayakumar.

The story of being useless + three contexts of a writer is a translation of two Marathi novellas by a young writer, Avadhoot Dongare.

Nadeem Khan who has translated these two novellas into English needs to be congratulated on his choice of the texts as they introduce the readers of English translations of regional.

Few historical epochs of India have drawn as much attention as nineteenth century Bengal. Hailed as the time of birth and growth of Bengali nabajagaran or ‘renaissance’, the period (extending until early twentieth century) unceasingly reminds us, and the Bengalis.

The accepted wisdom about Vijay Tendulkar’s plays is that they are about power and violence. Well, are they? Think of his ‘violent’ protagonists—Sakharam (in Sakharam Binder), Ramakant (Gidhade), Ghashiram (Ghashiram Kotwal), Benare’s prosecutors (Shantata! Court Chalu Ahe).

As lecturers and critics, we routinely perform the delicate task of establishing and reinforcing the boundaries which mark our disciplinary engagements. What, for instance, is life writing as opposed to bildsungroman? At which stage do novellas become novels? What distinguishes.

From the very beginning, Vaikom Muhammad Basheer’s writing grips you. The very first story in the collection declares itself as a love story. Not only that, the narrator of this story does so by directly asking the readers a simple question: ‘Aap logon mein kisi ne Deewaarein.

An ardent Punjabi, having lived all my life outside of the Punjab, I am delighted to have been given such an evocative tour de force in Avtar Singh Billing’s novel Khali Kuon ki Katha. This book is my first experience of having effectively entered into rural Punjab.

When the characters the author weaves in Lajja take a shape of their own in the sequel, readers are taken into a journey beyond the political realm of Lajja to the social and emotional realms. Besharam takes the story of Lajja forward in a way where the author delves.

Gender-based violence has taken many forms. One of the worst depredations has been reserved for the transgender community. Awareness about varying gender identities have increased, but mistreatment has not necessarily reduced. Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars.

There are hardly any women fiction writers in Hindi other than Nasera Sharma who knows Farsi and draws from it a refined sensibility required by a writer to tell tales of human aspirations and suffering. Having written more than twelve novels, nine collections of short stories.

Sudha Om Dhingra is an Indian diasporic writer from Jalandhar, Punjab who currently resides in North Carolina, USA. The book under review is a stirring anthology of short stories titled Khidkiyon se Jhaankti Aankhein. In the eight vignettes included in the anthology.

Mumbai City is arrested by a sooty grey haze with toxic gases swirling around the skyscrapers in a sinister intention to stay. No one knows where it came from but it appears something like an eclipse casting a dark shadow over the city of dreams. The twitter trends.

The Daughter from a Wishing Tree is the fourth in a series of books by Sudha Murty on unusual tales from Hindu mythology, this volume is the only one that focuses on women in mythology. Sudha Murty writes in the Preface that she was ‘disappointed and disillusioned’ to find that.