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Macaulays, Muellers
exposed
Satish Misra
Lies with Long Legs
by Prodosh Aich. Samskriti. Pages 404. Rs 650.
IN his painstakingly long
academic journey through mountains of source material available in
Europe, Prof Prodosh Aich establishes that the entire understanding of
India developed by self-claimed scholars from West is erroneous, since
the initial attempt to comprehend ancient India through the Vedas was
itself faulty.
Romancing the king of
ghazal
M.L. Raina
Love Sonnets of Ghalib.
Translations &
Explications by Sarfarz K. Niazi. Rupa. Pages 1019. Rs 995
IN the concluding stanza
of his last ghazal translated here, Mirza Ghalib sets a tantalising task
for his readers: "adae khas se Ghalib hua hai nuktah sara/salae
am hai yaran-e nuktah dan ke liye". Having planted subtleties
galore in the sprawling harvest of his verse, he now dares his exegetes,
‘connoisseurs of subtleties’, as he calls them, to unravel his
meanings.
Role
of the intellectual
Rumina Sethi
The Politics of Literary Theory and Representation: Writings on
Activism and Aesthetics.
ed. Pankaj K. Singh. Manohar, New Delhi. Pages 222. Rs 450.
FOR
the most part, The Politics of Literary Theory is a commemorative
piece, rather like a festschrift, to Jaidev. Many of his friends and
admirers have contributed to this volume to produce not only the
trajectory of Jaidev’s intellectual vision, but also recent trends in
postcolonial literature, especially translation.
A
great soldier and strategist
Kanwalpreet
Maharaja Ranjit Singh, Ruler
and Warrior
Ed T.R. Sharma. Panjab University Press. Pages 156. Rs 250.
MAHARAJA
Ranjit Singh, a military genius who united the misls and went on to make
Punjab a strong, prosperous state, is the subject of this book brought
out by the Centre for Defence and National Security Studies, Panjab
University, Chandigarh. The centre organised a national seminar to mark
the bi-centenary celebrations of the coronation of Maharaja Ranjit
Singh.
Snapshot
Kantian
baggage offloaded
Roopinder Singh
Dharma: The Categorial
Imperative
ed. Ashok Vohra, Arvind Sharma, Mrinal Miri D. K. Printworld, New Delhi.
Pages 466. Rs 800.
DHARMA,
it is so easily understood and so difficult to define. The linguist
fails if he seeks to convey the meaning through the term religion, or
even ideology, or even a mixture of two. No wonder, 50 scholars from
various parts of the world attended a week-long conference to discuss Dharma:
The Categorial Imperative.
The
loyal Bengal writer
Shalini Rawat
A Strange Attachment and Other
Stories
by Bibhutibhushan Bandhopadhyay. translated by Phyllis Granoff. Rupa.
Pages 277. Rs 195.
ONCE
upon a time, when dust settled on pathways and fireflies stirred the
imagination, a grandparent would yield to hushed entreaties. Then would
begin a story-telling session. He would tell stories of beautiful women,
gallant men and naughty but courageous children in faraway drowsy lands.
A novel mind enricher
Komal Vijay Singh
The Sunday Philosophy Club
by Alexander McCall Smith Abacus Pages 297. £ 2.50
THE bestselling author of The
No 1 Ladies Detective Agency series is back with a brand-new series.
Alexander McCall Smith has created a charmingly sophisticated sleuth in The
Sunday Philosophy Club. Isabel Dalhousie promises to be as enduring
a character as the much-loved Precious Ramotswe of his earlier series.
This time, he has Edinburgh as a richly textured backdrop.
Silence
pervades
Shubhshil Desraj
Listen to the Mountains
by Pamela Chatterjee. Penguin Viking Pages 174. Rs. 295.
THE
book is a collection of vignettes of hill life in an Uttaranchal
village. After a long time spent in Mumbai, the author decides to make
her home in a village in the hills away from the noise and turmoil and
uncongenial atmosphere of the city. Her everyday experiences and
observations are recorded in small, word pictures.
Booked
for ‘legal sex’
Robert Verkaik
THE
sexual antics and misbehaviour of some of the city’s richest lawyers
are binge-drinking, bullying and licentious corporate bonding sessions
are all explicitly recounted by the author, a 27-year-old solicitor, who
claims his book is based on events that took place at one of London’s
biggest law firms.
Potter goes digital
HARRY Potter is now going
digital, as J.K. Rowling has made all six Potter novels available for
audio downloads. Author JK Rowling’s audio books, which have sold more
than 5m copies, have been put on sale in a bid to tackle online piracy,
including bootleg editions for which the original text was altered.
Site for swapping
Andy Rathbun
READ any good books
lately? If you have, you may want to join PaperBackSwap.com and trade
your favorite titles with the site’s users. The 10-month-old
book-swapping site works like an online library. After registering,
users put at least nine of their own books into the site’s database,
which carries 39,000 titles.
Back of the book
-
War Reporting for Cowards
by Chris Ayres. John
Murray Pages 289. £ 8.15
-
Eleven on top
by Janet Evanovich.
Review. Pages 280. £ 10.99
-
4th of July
by James Patterson and
Maxine Paetro. Headline. Pages 344. Rs 395
-
Cold in the Earth
by Aline Templeton. Hodder
& Stoughton. Pages 358. £ 6.90
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