Tlism-i-Hoshruba, an epic fantasy, a part in the long series of Hamza dastans, was in many ways a watershed in the popular Urdu literature of its time and continues to generate academic and popular interest till date. In that it compares with Greek myths or Homer’s epics. In India, Tilism-e-Hoshruba is available in two versions…
Editing a substantial collection of short stories is a daunting task; it becomes especially so when the editor also doubles up as the trans-lator—that too of not one or two stories in the collection but all 22 of them. That Amina Azfar is a prolific translator is apparent from a quick look at the fly leaf of her new book…
This book grew out of a seminar organized in March 2008 by the India Theatre Forum, which had the idea of bringing together alarge group of theatre persons, academics, activists, thinkers and critics, and permitting them over three days to talk about issues relevant to India’s theatre today. The book is not a record of what was said…
Lakshmi Subramanyam’s book, Modern Indian Drama:Issues and In-terventions is a welcome endeavour given the lack of substantial theoretical work on postcolonial Indian drama. So does Subramanyam’s book break new ground in undertanding drama, theater and performance studies in India? Perhaps a closer look at the book could provide answers…
Is an editor of an anthology of essays anything more than a compiler? Is she (or he) merely expected to read widely on the subject, string to-gether whatever essays are available (and ideally unpublished), slap on an Introduction in which the contents of the essays are summarized, and dispatch it to the publisher?…
The book is a story or should we say history written with a differ-ence. The focus is on challenging the legends that have surroundedthe Mughal emperors and therefore their reappraisal. In his pursuit to do so, Fergus Nicoll is urged to make some observations which may not entirely be historically sound, probably because of his large dependence on the travellers’ accounts…