Volume XXXVII No. 2-3 – FEBRUARY/MARCH 2013

A good cookbook is more than just a collection of recipes. It tells stories about the writer and the ingredients. It transports you to kitchens and markets both familiar and unknown.

Love Stories # 1-14 is not arranged in the numerical order one expects to find on turning the first page—this is the book’s first surprise. And it is this note of whimsy that connects the threads of Annie Zaidi’s fourteen love stories in the collection under review.

It is a pleasure to hold a book of short stories, flip its pages and discover that each story is actually short, about 4-5 pages.

Thinner than Skin, my first engagement with Uzma Aslam Khan’s work has been a beautiful experience. Truly, there is no other word to describe her writing, which is well-researched as well as derived from her personal experiences.

Kaliprasanna Sinha, born into wealth, spent his brief life in the Calcutta of the mid-nineteenth century busying himself with social and literary work that must have baffled his peers, to whom anything not effete was pointless.

The protracted Naga problem has been a much debated topic in the political sphere, yet very little has found its way into the literary realm.

China looms large over South Asia. It borders four of the eight countries comprising the region—Afghanistan, India, Nepal and Bhutan, of which it has unresolved border disputes with India and Bhutan.

The book under review is the result of an endeavour by the journal Think India Quarterly committee. The committee came out with a special issue to mark the sixtieth anniversary of diplomatic ties between India and China.

China’s military spending, its weapons acquisitions and technological investments have been the subjects of commentaries for many years now. Even though debates on the true value of China’s military budget and the quality of its indigenous defence industry continue, it is generally acknowledged that these issues merit deeper study because the growth in China’s military prowess has consequences for the global international order.

History connects the past to the present. It is left to us as to what we make of our understanding of history. Too often, societies and leaders get frozen in their understanding of history and fail to comprehend the role they could play in dealing with problems and issues left over from history.

At the centre of Kathleen Barry’s book Unmaking War: Remaking Men is the question: ‘Why do wars persist in the face of our human urge to save and protect human life?’

This compilation on neighbourhood armies in South Asia is a timely academic effort by a team of area experts at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) and brings together a bird’s eye perspective of the security environment, geo-political and strategic background under which armies in different countries in India’s neighbourhood have evolved.