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Posts Tagged ‘book review’

Book Review: Sam’s Story by Elmo Jayawardene

Posted in Eelam liberation struggle, Srilankan Tamil, Tamil, Tamil Tigers, book, culture, fiction, human rights, novel, reading, violence, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 30, 2009 | 1 Comment »

(First published in The New Indian Express, 02 August 2009.)
Sam is poor, Sinhalese, and a servant in the Master’s River House. His only best friend is the owners’ dog Brutus. Sam is someone who can never figure out what a problem is, someone who doesn’t know why people cry. He has never learnt anything, not [...]

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Flowers of Violence: Review of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Thing Around Your Neck

Posted in book, culture, violence, women, writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 12, 2009 | 2 Comments »

With her latest book The Thing Around Your Neck, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who won the Orange Prize for Fiction for her novel Half of a Yellow Sun, proves that she is much more powerful on the rigorous terrain of the short-story. Hailed by Chinua Achebe as a “writer endowed with the gift of ancient storytellers,” [...]

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Review of THE WATCHMAKER by NANAK SINGH

Posted in academics, book, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 8, 2009 | 1 Comment »

(First published in The New Sunday Express, June 6 2009)
The Watchmaker
Nanak Singh (Translated from the Punjabi original by Navdeep Suri)
Publisher: Penguin
Pages: 192
Price: Rs. 250
First published in 1942, Nanak Singh’s Punjabi novel Pavitra Paapi (Saintly Sinner) subsequently won a Sahitya Akademi Award, and was also made into a Hindi film. Translated into English by the author’s [...]

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Book Review: Family Values by Abha Dawesar

Posted in blogging, book, children, city, culture, family, fiction, india, novel, parents, women, writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 12, 2009 | 2 Comments »

(Both this review, and the following interview with the author were first published in i.witness, The New Sunday Express last Sunday)
SOME HOME TRUTHS ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS
With a plucky, precocious little boy as its protagonist, Family Values delivers some home truths about the illnesses that pervade Indian society. Narrated from the point of view of a child [...]

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Book Review: Muslim Portraits

Posted in Mumbai, academics, activism, book, caste, culture, hindutva, human rights, india, politics, research, silence, subaltern studies, untouchability, violence, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 14, 2008 | 5 Comments »

Muslim Portraits: Everyday Lives in India
By Mukulika Banerjee (Editor)
Publisher: Yoda Press
Pages: 142 + xxii
Price: Rs.250
By following a policy of alienation and exclusion towards its Muslim population, India has earned a fair share of criticism. The Sachar Committee exposed how Indian Muslims have suffered from prejudice, poverty and political disenfranchisement. The committee’s report showed that Muslims [...]

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Book Review: A Love-Song to the Valley

Posted in activism, book, human rights, india, media, politics, reading, violence, writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 16, 2008 | 2 Comments »

Curfewed Night
By Basharat Peer
Publisher: Random House India
Price: Rs 395
Pages: 246
Stories from conflict zones sound suspiciously similar. In spite of the detachment that a written narrative provides, these stories share suicide-bomber sentiments—they wait for their chance to do collateral damage before returning to silence. It is easy to get lost in the machine-gun sounds of terminology [...]

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TIGER SHINES BRIGHT (Article in TNIE)

Posted in book, culture, fiction, india, migration, novel, politics, reading, writing, tagged , , , , , , , on October 16, 2008 | 9 Comments »

Chennai-born Aravind Adiga has won the Booker Prize for The White Tiger, a novel about the India that we are ashamed to admit. Here, people forget to name their children. Here, men with sadness-sculpted shoulders and knotted-rope spines become human beasts of burden. Here, what counts is the size of your belly and the voraciousness [...]

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the winner will be

Posted in book, culture, fiction, novel, reading, writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 12, 2008 | 6 Comments »

As the Man Booker Prize enters its fortieth year in 2008, it retains its position as the most respected literary prize for English language fiction published in the UK and the Commonwealth. Despite its glamorous halo of quality, the prize has attracted attention because of its controversial nature — a wife on the jury fought [...]

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Book Review: The Immigrant

Posted in academics, book, culture, men, migration, novel, women, writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 28, 2008 | 3 Comments »

The Immigrant
By Manju Kapur
Publisher: Random House India
Price: Rs 395
Pages: 336
SEX sells. Sexual dysfunction, as a plot device, tries hard and in the process makes use of an anaesthetic, a timer and couple-therapy. Apart from this single, sinful exception, Manju Kapur’s The Immigrant fails to offer any fresh insight through its tortured portrayal of an NRI [...]

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