Volume XL No. 4 – APRIL 2016

I have just read the 40 years of the Book Review. Wonderful, if you have not read it, well need I say you should! One of the editors is close to me, in many ways. I think she wanted to render homage to the words and books which, nurtured us, accompanied us. We grew up in a home, I say home not house for therein lies the difference, for words meant a lot to us, in a home I was saying, where the walls were lined with books which murmured wherever we moved, whatever we did. This constant presence never did quieten, throughout our lives the ‘emanating words, words from the walls words from the air’

To review a classic is always difficult. How much could one praise and fawn over a book which reads so delightfully that you tend to forget that it is a nonfiction piece of work? Malcom Mcdonald was the UK High Commissioner to India in the 1950s and lived in the heart of Delhi, the Lutyen’s zone. Being a bird watching enthusiast he spent a lot of time observing the feathered ones in his garden.

For many people living in rural and suburban areas, coming across wild animals is a part of life. Be it that friendly squirrel or the (ever-dwindling) flock of sparrows, or the sinister snake that lives at the end of the garden. However, as urban sprawls expand to swallow up green spaces, these relationships are becoming ever scarcer.

In her first book of poetry Indu Mallah has chosen as her epigraph an exquisite poem by Ralph Nazareth. The glassblower’s art becomes a metaphor for the art of writing: ‘I’ve seen / Glassblowers/ stretch little / Into much. / Such is my hope / For words—/ Blowing syllables up / To hold a world / Close to breaking.The first part of the poems in this collection deals with her family, husband, sons, daughter. The feelings of intense love, pain and loss pervade this section. In the first poem, ‘Meeting Points’, is to her husband, whom death snatched away.

As a curious reader scans the titles of the poems listed on the contents page of the poetry collection of Jayant Parmar’s Pencil aur Doosri Nazmein translated by Nishat Zaidi as Pencil and Other Poems, an unsurprising summation ensues: poems related to nature with images from the flora and fauna; ghazals and nazms, predictably expected from an Urdu poet; then poems that are dedications to persons; poems about persons and poems related to places and travel. The reader is reassured of the obvious terrain to traverse. Comforted, the process of reading the poems begins.

Sahil Loomba’s debut novel The Faceless Saldirgan is the perfect screen play for a masala potboiler. A thriller with the right blend of intrigue and suspense, it keeps the reader on edge as suspicion darts from one suspect to the other. For a seasoned discerning reader of crime fiction, none are above suspicion but Loomba factors in the right elements, ‘a multi-billionaire victim, gruesome body art, tantalizing allegations, media frenzy, destroyed reputations and what not!’ along with a gripping pace and provocative clues

Amitava Kumar’s Lunch with a Bigot is divided into four main sections— Reading, Writing, Places and People. They offer a road map to navigate through the different articles that were written and published in diverse places.In the first section, there is a journey through his childhood experience and him emerging as a person who was grasping varied experiences and incorporating them as his ‘resource bank’. I have recently read Sudhir Kakkar’s memoirs and the narration of his own childhood. In my mind, there is an intermingling of his narration with that of Amitava’s in terms of the evocative details offered of the experience.

The book is set against the backdrop of the rise of insurgency in Kashmir, when what began as a conflict between rival political groups escalated into youth crossing the border into Pakistan to return with kalashnikovs. The brutality with which the army responds turns the valley into a war zone. Kashmir is virtually under siege. The novel provides an insider’s view of how political apathy coalesces with mindless military brutality to wreak havoc on the lives of ordinary people by focusing on one woman’s desperate and futile search for her missing son.

Crimson City, the fourth Muzaffar Jang mystery by Madhulika Liddle, is a whodunit set in mid-seventeenth century Dilli with the Mughal court as its backdrop. Emperor Shah Jahan’s grandiose plans have begun to deplete the exchequer dangerously. A Mughal army is besieging the fort of Bidar, as a first step towards conquering the Bijapur kingdom with its enormous wealth.

Writings by Adivasis (ecriture) which have emerged in India during the last three decades mark an important milestone in the context of the cultural expression of Adivasis hitherto found only in the oral-performative tradition (orature). These writings are markers of identity assertion and cultural activism by educated Adivasis who want to write about themselves in their own words to combat their degraded or exoticized depiction by non-Adivasi writers. One needs to read Narayan’s interview (Kocharethi, OUP, 2011, 208–16) to realize why educated Adivasis are prompted to pick up their pen.

Rohith Vemula’s hanging body; Soni Sori’s swollen face; Kawasi Hidme’s ejecting uterus; Monisha, Priyanka and Suranya’s floating bodies—all have one thing in common—these are Dalit bodies. Living or dead, their faces, uterus, eyes, hands and feet are first Dalit, then parts of a human body. This raises a crucial question: how can a human body, an anatomical subject formed of cells that are always dissolving, regenerating and growing, embody something as non-biodegradable as caste?

There is hardly any doubt that Kannada has one of the richest traditions of literary writings and debates, reflecting a largely uninterrupted continuity from pre-colonial to modern times. For whatever awards are worth, it is perhaps not accidental that its writers have received the highest number of Jnanapith awards in post-Independence India. Assured of their bedrock of literary output and open always to literatures across the world, Kannada writers have written their own works and translated from the best writing available, always evolving as the social context changed, in terms of literary form and content.

Ashapurna Debi is one of the first Bengali women writers to bring to the fore the condition of Bengali women in the larger part of the 20th century. She was known as one of the first Bengali writers to write realistically about the life these women faced within the four walls of the house, in the midst of complex family relationships, petty jealousies and other experiences. The stories in this collection The Matchbox, translated from the Bengali by Prasenjit Gupta are part of this same mosaic, delineating the emotions of the ordinary middle class Bengali, whose outward lives seem devoid of sensationalism, to the extent that everyday is like the previous one, or even the next one, yet these same lives contain within them a psychological and emotional terrain that is far more complex than the external image.

The Last Candles of the Night is the fourth and last novel by Ian Bedford, who passed away, at the age of 76, shortly after the novel was published. He must have been a remarkable man. He did his Master’s in Lahore, studied Islam in Pakistan and India, did much field research work in India, Pakistan and elsewhere in Central Asia, translated Urdu poetry, explored Sufism and Indian classical music, and married an Indian woman. And yes, he worked in the Department of Anthropology at Macquarie University for decades before taking to writing fiction.

In 1931 sculptor Carl Milles cast Poseidon in 23 feet of imposing metal and the Southern Port City of Gothenburg, Sweden installed him atop a fountain as homage to the seas and their Viking past.About 60 years later a Swede left Gotaplatsen and the shadow of Poseidon behind him and travelled East until destiny brought him in front of another idol.30 odd feet of garishly painted metal sheeting tacked to a bamboo scaffolding!

In a recent interview, US President Barack Obama said, ‘when I think about how I understand my role as citizen, setting aside being president, and the most important set of understandings that I bring to that position of citizen, the most important stuff I’ve learned I think I’ve learned from novels.’ Shane Joseph’s latest book, In The Shadow of the Conquistador, is indeed one such novel from which we can learn much. While on its surface it might appear to be a lovetriangle romantic story, it has a lot to offer in our understanding of the human spirit that at times lusts for conquest and colonization, but can develop bonds of friendship which sometimes lead to betrayal, and yet through the power to love it can overcome evil.

Set against the backdrop of the Partition, this novel narrates the story of Jamshed Alam, a Bihari Muslim boy born in the infamous Camp Geneva in Dhaka and raised in Kolkata, a city his poor refugee parents migrate to hoping for a legally secure, economically rewarding and socially dignified life. But does the city deliver what the Alam family seeks? The unfolding lives of Jamshed, his polio-stricken elder sister Miriam (Miri), tailor-father Abu, and seamstress-mother Ruksana in 14, Zakaria Street in northern-central Kolkata and beyond show how the city,

A World Elsewhere, a self-published novel by Shanta Acharya, is about a new world, a search for a state of being, a quest for meaning and for home—wherever that may be. Set in Orissa, India in the turmoil of the post-Independence years, in the clash of old and new world views, Anglophilia and Anglophobia, we are introduced to a hardworking, academic Hindu family who believes in the power of education, who struggles to maintain stability both within the family as well as in society, who understands that progress is needed for growth yet is bound by the demands of a closed society, especially when it comes to women.

It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end. (Ernest Hemingway)The opening sentence of Prabhu Ghate’s By Thumb, Hoof and Wheel: Travels in the Global South sets the tone for what the traveller-reader should expect from the book: ‘Apart from trying to communicate the sheer joy of travel, and its huge educational possibilities, and weaving a bit of contemporary history into the story, I hope to persuade readers in this book that one does not have to be particularly rich to travel, or young for that matter (just young at heart, reasonably fit, empathetic, and curious.)’ The book catches the fervour of our times, when interest in travel and travel writings is growing among people, especially catching on with Indians.

This nosegay of memories, personal and collective, has many a bright offering which takes the reader by the hand through the lesser-known and familiar byways of the Doon valley. Every generation treasures memories of days gone by: a slower paced world, a world warmed by the sandpapering of time. Nothing can ever remain the same again. Memories of Another Day brings to life the old and the familiar to those of us who lived in this once green valley. Vanished landmarks like Kwality restaurant, Landour Clock Tower and others are symbols of the loss.

The painting of tall, grim-looking Afghans on the cover of In A Land Far From Home makes for possibly one of the most deceptive book covers. You’d believe that here is a heavy, boring, fact-addled tome on Afghan history. Nothing could be further from the truth. Syed Mujtaba Ali’s book, a travelogue that should be treated as a slice of history, is possibly one of the most delightful books ever written, and equally delightfully translated by Nazes Afroz from the Bengali original, Deshe Bideshe.

Travelogues from the past are more than mere journeys over a land mass or stretch of sea. They speak to us of life-styles, of economic strengths and weaknesses, of politics and race and of nationhood and family relations—all interlinked and woven together in the writer’s imagination. The translator and editor of both the volumes which have appeared in quick succession, Somdatta Mandal, herself a tireless traveller and an equally indefatigable translator, is determined to bring the invisible past before us. A few years ago she had brought to the public another Bengali woman’s travelogue Attiya’s Journey and in the years in between she has edited two volumes of critical essays on travelogues from Indian languages.

Gora in Bengali is considered to be the best novel by Rabindranath Tagore for its epic range. Though written between 1907 and 1909 (when the author was in his forties), the action of the text is clearly set at least thirty years earlier, in the early 1880s and takes into account events that happened even earlier. If one takes into consideration the moment of Gora’s birth, then the action of the narrative should be said to begin from the year 1857. The novel is considered central to the nation question because it captures the Indian nationalist upsurge of the late nineteenth-early twentieth century in all its tragic complexity. Gora is produced in an awareness of Lord Curzon’s proposed partition of Bengal and the consequent crystallization of the Bengal-Indian identity.

As our journey into the future continues—the present moment drifting away, our own biographies lengthening, our pasts receding inexorably, quietly becoming “history” in the distance— so certain aspects of those retreating eras seem to come more sharply into focus and claim our attention. The longer view allows us to see these features of the recent past as truly defining characteristics of those decades that we lived through.’—William Boyd.

Astory about the secret life of a novelist and short-story writer, and a famous one at that, never fails to interest, and this novel does not disappoint. Mainly covering the twelve-year period between 1912 and 1924 when the conception and writing of the classic novel, A Passage to India, took place, Damon Galgut takes us through the repressed life of E.M. Forster, a creature of Empire who was also the victim of its restrictive class, racial and morality norms. Forster’s homosexuality was known among his inner circle but never to his wider audience of readers until his posthumous novel Maurice was released.

Nancy M. Tischler’s first definitive biography of Tennessee Williams appeared in 1960 when the dramatist had all but exhausted his trajectory of great writing. Tischler’s book entitled Tennessee Williams: The Rebellious Puritan was, in many ways, the first critical appreciation of the great American dramatist’s work. It wove his life—family and background—into his work and tried to offer a psycho-biographical interpretation. Another significant biography appeared in 1985—two years after the dramatist’s death.

One’s first encounter with fiction has been generally through the reading of or listening to fairy tales, mystery tales, superhero stories, popular stories, classic love stories and fantasy novels. And while reading and enjoying them we hardly give a thought to how this enchanting form, both long and short fiction came into existence. Defining the novel is a tricky task since it mediates through various forms of art and adapts itself to the demands of the changing cultural milieus