Milan Kundera

To say what the book is about is like trying to capture a conflagration in a glass jar; it escapes farther afield; it displays a new dimension; it teases and is lambently in a number of places at once. It is impossible of definition. The Unbearable Lightness of Being is, at one level, about Czechoslovakia in the sixties, the period during and after the Russian occupation, Czechoslovakia as mirrored the lives of a tiny handful of intellectuals, the suffocation in their abilities, and their final dwindling into non-existence through social disuse and frustration.


Reviewed by: Ruchira Mukerjee
Leslie Fleming

An American scholar, Leslie Fleming, has accomplished what no one among our litter-ateurs could in 40 years: a bio¬graphical assessment and a critical study of Manto’s writings against the backdrop of contemporary literary trends in the Urdu-speaking world. Instead of being inspir¬ed by this effort, Anis Nagi of Lahore has plagiarized the book and published its trans¬lated version in his own name. This is our way of paying tri¬bute to a foreign lady whose lifetime’s labour it was sup¬posed to be.


Reviewed by: Khaled Ahmed
Mulk Raj Anand

The re-issue of Dr. Anand’s classic in a fresh edition is to be welcomed for more than one reason. The format of the book is larger; the typography and lay-out are easy on the eye; and the illustrations in colour and black-and-white fortify the text. The first edition came out half a century ago in 1932, the second in 1957 and now the third. Since this is no glossy coffee-table book, kudos to both the publisher and the author.


Reviewed by: JAG MOHAN
Buddhadeva Bose

Buddhadeva Bose who died in 1974 at the age of sixty-six was a distinguished Bengali poet, novelist and critic and the work under review is the English translation of his Mahabharater Katha. Fascinating as his fresh look at the greatest epic not only of India but of the whole world is, it would seem that the wrong man has been selected for reviewing it.


Reviewed by: KRISHNA CHAITANYA
E.D. Hirsch Jr.

In ‘Cultural Literacy, Hirsch outlines a plan for making cultural literacy our education priority, to define core know¬ledge, put more information in school text books and develop tests of core learning that can help students, measure their progress. An index entitled ‘What literate Americans know’ was compiled by Hirsch and his two colleagues Joseph Kett and James Trefil.


Reviewed by: P.C. BANSAL
John Drew

This is a formidable book, strenuous to read, difficult to grasp, and nearly impos¬sible to review (though many have tried, including an editor of the firm which published the work). We learn from the acknowledgments that it was originally drafted at Cambridge during 1974-77 (presumably as a doctoral thesis), then its chapters got ‘somewhat distended’ no doubt as a result of discussion with the numerous scholars and editors the author has named, and only a ‘fellow Forsterian’ in India has ventured to publish it ten years later.


Reviewed by: SUJIT MUKHERJEE