By T.C. Ghai

‘The Fiend’, mute spectators who are cursed with self-awareness and introspection as they watch, with a sense of alienation and existential angst, the world changing so fast as to become unrecognizable and, in the process, unhousing them from all that gave them a sense of belonging to it. These characters form a quartet with the sculptor in the final story, ‘The State’, as he hefts a hammer in a futile but courageous attempt to undo his crime of complicity in the creation of a dictator who set out disguised as a revolutionary before his true face was revealed.
‘The Blackout’ and ‘Smell’ are both richly complex allegories and the fabular structure serves as a window into a world that is disorienting in its unpredictability and


Reviewed by: Anjana Neira Dev
By Rekha Sethi. Translated from the original Hindi and edited by Hina Nandrajog

Gagan Gill writes with a sense of detachment pondering over philosophical and melancholic meanderings of life from a woman’s perspective. She does not declare herself as avowedly feminist; however, her works are in pursuit of peace and truth imbued with the preachings of Buddhism. An activist and a journalist, Katyayani enriches the existing prolific tradition of socio-cultural poetry in Hindi, although with very few women’s voices to boast about. Her commitment to a truly egalitarian society guided by Marxist thoughts examines the practices of structural inequalities along gender lines. The vision of women as autonomous beings with a consciousness of their own is the most important highlight of her oeuvre.


Reviewed by: Anchala Paliwal
By Jaydeep Sarangi

On 24 August 1690, Job Charnock set up the East India Company’s headquarters on land that was spread over three villages of Bengal—Sutanuti, Kalikata and Gobindapur. Named as Calcutta, this city became the capital and headquarters of the British Empire in India till the early twentieth century. The spirit of Job Charnock, who is looked upon as the founder of Kolkata, haunts these poems in more ways than one. While the Calcutta High Court convincingly established in 2003 that Charnock could not be considered the founder of Kolkata given the fact that settlement in the region predated him, Charnock remains a significant presence in the cultural history of Kolkata and in the psyche of these poems.


Reviewed by: Basudhara Roy
By Anil Golani

Love constitutes another dominant strand of the collection. Appearing in multiple forms—romantic, devotional, remembered and lost—it becomes a recurring emotional landscape through which many of the poems travel. In works such as ‘Love, Eternal Love, Love Unleashed’, ‘The Pangs of Love’, ‘Love and Lust’ and ‘Redamancy’, love is portrayed as a spectrum of experiences encompassing ecstasy, longing, fulfilment and heartbreak. Golani’s treatment of love avoids excessive sentimentality; instead, it acknowledges the inseparability of joy and pain within human attachment. Images of fire, thirst, wounds and union recur throughout these poems, creating thematic continuity and emotional resonance.


Reviewed by: Usha Mujoo Munshi
Collected and edited by Janet Browne

The Quotable Darwin cites actual quotations from his autobiography, his lively letters, and his extensive writings and reflections by his contemporaries, and leads us through the course of his early life, the voyage, his views on subjects like slavery, indigenous peoples, marriage and his personal life, and the course of development of his theory;


Reviewed by: S Ananthanarayanan
By Romila Thapar

The latter, obviously, reeks of violent prejudice. However, while insisting solely or even primarily on the former identity acknowledges her courage and perseverance, it often forecloses the possibility of engaging with the rich, complex, even conflicting uncertainties that Thapar continues to engage with, with clarity, confidence and care. As she asks, almost plaintively: ‘Who would understand that I dreaded being stereotyped (p. 97)?’
As I worked my way through the volume, I could not help wondering whether Thapar’s deep engagement with Sanskrit texts, ranging from the Vedas and Upanishads to the epics, charitas,


Reviewed by: Kumkum Roy