Ramchandra Guha

Books that attempt to present a balanced and comprehensive history of a period necessarily run the risk of slipping into banality. There are always too many things that demand a mention and there is never enough space to deal with them in depth or detail. Inevitably, the narrative becomes superficial, the analysis perfunctory and rushed, and the treatment at best a competent textbook summary of existing knowledge with little originality of approach or insight.


Reviewed by: Partha Chatterjee
Robin David

On the first page of City of Fear the author enquires, ‘Exactly what did Octavio Paz mean when he said, “We are condemned to kill time, so we die little by little”’. He never finds the answer even when an earthquake strikes and blood-thirsty mobs surround him.


Reviewed by: Kamalini Sengupta
Amitava Kumar

Home Products, Amitava Kumar’s first novel, is a story of two stories, the story that the words on a page tell us and the other, often more interesting one, the story about the story; that is the way it reaches its readers, the traces of its scaffolding visible, made visible on purpose by the writer who almost in a late modernist gesture, takes us to that great workshop, the writer’s mind, his table and on it, an open exhibition of his wares.


Reviewed by: Sumana Roy
Brinda Charry

With an opening reminiscent of the famous scene in Wuthering Heights where a ghost puts its icy hand through the window to the accompaniment of the howl of a hard-blowing winter wind, Brinda Charry’s novel grips you from line one:


Reviewed by: A.J. Thomas
Kalpana Swaminathan

I don’t think I have read any Indian book in recent times as avidly as I did Kalpana Swaminathan’s Ambrosia for Afters. This is a brilliant book, and one of the rare breed that targets young adults as much as it does older readers.


Reviewed by: G.J.V. Prasad
Indira Goswami

Why do we read fiction? Because we want to learn more about our- selves; because we enjoy being with people the likes of whom have inhabited this world, past and present, and with whom we can, to a certain extent, identify.


Reviewed by: Aruna Chakravarti