M. Mukundan is one of those fiction-writers in India, who, writing in his mother-tongue Malayalam set out to liberate contemporary fiction from the tyranny of the social, the outward, the eventful and to connect it with the existential, the inward, the less audible rhythms of living.
Ameen Merchant’s debut novel gently tugs at the reader’s heartstrings, stirring one’s compassion for the two sisters torn apart by varying compulsions that engulf their life in a middle class agraharam (Brahmins’ colony) in a provincial town in Tamil Nadu.
This volume comprises essays that Meenakshi Mukherjee, one of the most respected literary critics of our time, wrote for special occasions, some of them lectures delivered at different places.
Prest Futures presents a thought-provoking ethnography of village life in Rawain (western Garhwal), a region that originated, and was affected and influenced by the Chipko movement.
It is unusual for a book which is itself a ‘Review’ to be reviewed by a person with an evident bias in the subject. It is better therefore that the bias is brought up front before readers draw their own conclusions. The reviewer was connected with the formulation of the first notification in 1994 under the Environment Protection Act.
The author of this book is a highly respected figure, who, as the blurb tells us, has enjoyed a long and distinguished career in academia and in the field of international development. Given the vast knowledge and wide-ranging experience that have gone into the making of the book,