Razia Grover

Razia Grover’s Mosques is a generalist’s introduction to the subject, but in the serious tradition of illustrated surveys of art and architecture. Written more for the lay reader than the specialist of Islamic architecture,


Reviewed by: Azhar Tyabji
Himanshu Prabha Ray and Daniel T. Potts

This book is beautifully produced with wonderful photographs not only of Alexander’s head and face, but also of the paraphernalia of art and jewellery and coins and maps and manuscripts that archaelogists love to work with. The debates themselves are very technical, but given the offices of the worldwide web in enhancing knowledge,


Reviewed by: Susan Visvanathan
David Davidar

You have to be a reviewer to read this book to the end, and a conscientious one at that! David Davidar has come up with one of the more tedious Indian English novels, one that does not reward the reader with new insights or the pleasure of enjoying accomplished use of language but perhaps affords only with a sense of virtue that one has actually read a book from beginning to end even though it has only very very occasional sparks—it is only sometimes that the language works, only sometimes that you think that the book may contain anything at all (only to be disappointed).


Reviewed by: G.J.V. Prasad
Krishna Sobti and Krishna Baldev Vaid

Sobti-Vaid Samvad ushers in a novel critical genre within the domain of Hindi literary-criticism. Here two literary stalwarts of Hindi literature, Krishna Sobti and Krishna Baldev Vaid, inspired by the intellectually stimulating surroundings of IIAS Shimla, enter into a significant dialogue on the intricacies of life and literature.


Reviewed by: Anup Beniwal
M.T. Vasudevan Nair. Translated from the Malayalam original by Gita Krishnankutty

It is half a century since M.T. Vasudevan Nair—fondly called ‘M.T.’ by Malayalees—began his career as a novelist with his debut work Naalukettu. As OUP India now brings out its translation, Naalukettu: The House Around the Courtyard, it becomes a magnificent marker of M.T.’s literary jaitrayaatra (triumphal march) down the last five decades


Reviewed by: A.J. Thomas