The editor of this periodical has a wry sense of humour. She requested Girish Karnad to review the Oxford Companion to Indian Theatre, edited by me. Now she asks me to review Karnad’s Collected Plays, also published by Oxford University Press. Readers will appreciate the subtle trap in which she has placed me, not unlike those we typically encounter in Karnad’s drama.
Mr Iyer Goes To War is the first novel written by Ryan Lobo, who is essentially a photographer and film maker. His films have been shown on channels like Animal Planet, National Geographic amongst others. His writings have been carried by Boston Review, The Wall Street Journal, Caravan and others. In his novel Ryan Lobo writes about the escapades of an individual who has a vision of what he was in one of his previous incarnations and decides to take up the task of completing, in this life, what remained incomplete in his previous one.
Bhagawandass Morwal has carved a niche for himself in the domain of contemporary Hindi literature. His memoir is a captivating creation because of its novelty of theme, deft narrative stroke, element of storytelling, a transparent world-view, elegant point of view, a tendency to give importance to ‘mirror-narratives’ in opposition to ‘grand narrative’, a unique blending of different perspectives of a life lived. With the onslaught of postmodernism in literature there came to the forefront a tendency to distrust ‘meta-narratives’—what Lyotard calls ‘incredulity towards meta-narratives’.
In 2013 the Aleph publishing house brought out a wonderfully put together book, A Pleasant Kind of Heavy and Other Erotic Stories was a collection of tales about Indian women and sexual desire. The book was written by ‘Aranyani’—a nom de plume as at the time the author chose anonymity (for review see The Book Review January 2015).
Rakesh Satyal’s No One Can Pronounce My Name is a positivetale of transition and discovery which the negation in the title does not really disclose. When one starts reading, one expects another anxiety-ridden tale of culture conflict and identity issues of Indian immigrants. Satyal’s book is all these but significantly much more. The novel set in Cleveland, Ohio is a complex weave of stories of disparate individuals caught at a time when they are struggling to make meaning of their existence.
No city reveals itself easily; Delhi even less so. For, as Mir has said: it is not just any other city, it is Delhi (Pagdi apni sambhaliyega ‘Mir’/Aur basti nahin ye Dilli hai). Even those who ambled in its nooks and crannies and became its cobblestones—how much did Delhi show itself to them? So begins Intizar Husain’s Dilli Tha Jiska Naam (Once There Was A City Named Dilli), a cultural biography of Delhi.