The Book Review Literary Trust wishes all its readers a happy 2025.
When the trio, Chitra Narayanan, Chandra Chari and Uma Iyengar founded The Book Review in January 1976, it was not expected to last beyond the first year. Today fifty years down the line we look back with nostalgia, pride and wonder as to how we have survived so long. Money of our own we did not have – but support from stalwart intellectuals we had in plenty. Former President of India, Shri KR Narayanan, Professor KN Raj, Professor VP Dutt, Professor S Gopal, Dr Raja Ramanna and Professor Meenakshi Mukherjee were the founding members of our Editorial Advisory Board. To them the journal owes its determined commitment to keep up a standard of excellence.
That we are now celebrating the half century mark has been made possible entirely due to the support and solidarity of our large panel of reviewers. If the journal is published with unfailing regularity every month, it is because we can confidently rely on our reviewers who never renege on deadlines, and deliver reviews in delectable prose and critical analysis. We are also thankful to the publishers for extending financial support by sponsoring issues, taking advertisements, underwriting the costs for seminars and organizing lectures, and the never-ending stream of books. Our donors have shown extraordinary generosity and enabled us to build a sizeable corpus for the Trust as well as to upload the entire archive of the journal on its website. Thus, it would not be an exaggeration to say that we have been on this long journey because it is a great team effort in which we count an ever-growing circle of friends of TBR. If we can be confident of the continued existence of The Book Review in the next half century, it is because it will be in the hands of Professor Adnan Farooqui who walked into our office one day nearly 15 years ago saying that he had grown up with The Book Review and has been part of the TBR team ever since. His father was one of our first subscribers. Young Palak Hajela is another invaluable asset.
With this New Year special issue, The Book Review enters its 49th year of publication. Officially, 2025 marks the fiftieth year of its existence. 1985 was a gap year. Volume 50 will start in January 2026. The Book Review Literary Trust proposes to kick start events in celebration of TBR@50 in 2025. We have planned on holding a series of seminars and lectures, on translation, the role of reviews in publishing, Indian Publishing in the first quarter of the millennium, and other issues which the journal has been focusing on over the decades.
The fourth Nikhil Chakravartty Memorial Lecture will be delivered early next year. The first three lectures were delivered by Professor Amartya Sen, Professor Eric Hobsbawm and Professor Romila Thapar. The Book Review Literary Trust takes this opportunity to put on record its deep sense of gratitude towards this great doyen of Indian journalism for saving The Book Review from an untimely end in 1978 when all the three founding editors had to relocate. Nikhil Chakravartty kept the journal going till 1989 when The Book Review Literary Trust was established and took over its publishing.
We end this on a sad note. Dr Manmohan Singh passed away on December 26 this year. He was a staunch supporter of the journal. Professor Eric Hobsbawm’s visit to India to deliver the lecture for the Trust was made memorable by Dr Singh’s whole-hearted engagement with the event. This gentle human being will be missed by all of us.
Uma Iyengar Chandra Chari