There are not too many Indian English novels that address the concerns of the Christian community in India. It is hard to think of instances beyond Arundhati Roy, I. Allan Sealy and David Davidar in recent years.
Alka Saraogi has made a big name in the realm of Hindi fiction. Her first novel Kalikatha: Via Bypass made such a mark that her reputation runs the risk of always being stitched to her first novel. It is hoped the rest of her work is not bypassed.
The finest testament to good writing is surely the demand for an accurate response in its reader. Sunetra Gupta’s So Good in Black refuses the exigencies of large frames. Hers is not a global or postcolonial novel.
A Fragile World, the English translation of Bishnu Mohapatra’s Oriya poems, published in 1997 under the title Pakhira Swabhabik Mrityu (‘The Natural Death of a Bird’) is the poet’s first collection. Like all first collections it expects to do something different from the ones that came before and to introduce a new poet promising to set a new trend in the genre of his writing.
Sometimes idols always fail to impress on first sight leaving dedicated fans vaguely dissatisfied. My first glimpse of the legendary Lata Mangeskar was in pre-Emergency 1970s when Doordarshan featured excerpts from the ‘Lata Mangeshkar Nite’ held at Asoka Hotel, Delhi
In this impassioned study based on what the inside cover of the volume describes as ‘situated reflections, story telling and ethnographic accounts,’ Angana P. Chatterji, a social and cultural anthropologist at the California Institute of Integral Studies, in the United States, attempts to understand organized Hindu majoritarianism in the eastern province of Orissa.