Book Reviews

In 1950, Saadat Hasan Manto, the man who gave voice to the traumatic realities of Partition, wrote thus: “The partition of the country and the changes that followed left feelings of revolt in me... when I sat down to write,...

A constant theme of Dinesh Sharma’s book is the visionary role played by the political class, from the Nizams to the CMs, in guiding the development of science and technology in the region

We all love underdog stories, be it on screen or off screen. When Sergio Scapagnini puts his pen to paper to tell the tale of an 11-year-old Indian boy, you can only root for this protagonist with all your heart....

There is a world inside the parentheses. There is a small town where the universe lives. This place, a poetic somewhere, is our beloved Hindi writer Vinod Kumar Shukla’s address. When Shukla is writing a poem called ‘Writing A Poem’,...

Few can doubt that Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay was extraordinary to the core. She went from being a widow at a young age to a woman who married for love and also divorced her husband, upholding a woman’s right in a most...

Revenge of the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. Hachette. Pages 352. Rs 799 The author traces the rise of a new and troubling form of social engineering. He takes us to the streets of LA to meet the world’s most...

For two years, Saurabh Mukherjea and Nandita Rajhansa criss-crossed the country and interviewed over 50 leading minds in business, policymaking, media and academia. The result is this book, which portrays how 1.5 billion Indians are creating a range of unprecedented...

Stephen Alter is no newcomer to nature, wildlife and mountains of India as a writer, but this is a tour de force by any stretch. While much of wildlife writing is focused on the mega fauna, such as the tiger,...

Blending fiction, non-fiction and verse, ‘Our Stories, Our Struggle’ celebrates women’s resilience and their capacity to transcend victimhood. It amplifies voices of women across South Asia — from India to Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka — and challenges deep-rooted...

Manto’s writing has a conspicuous unfinishedness, as if he was reluctant to clean up after the act. The images have an unassimilated excess, a kind of subconscious overspill. Perhaps it is a sign of cultivated negligence, maybe a trace of...

The master storyteller that he is, Dalrymple is able to fit together pieces of a vast puzzle and create a wonderful narrative

IPS officer Vijay Raman was a legendary figure in Indian policing, celebrated for spearheading the elimination of dacoit Paan Singh Tomar and his gang in Chambal, and later leading operations that liquidated the dreaded terrorist Ghazi Baba. This first-hand account...

At Home in Two Worlds by Maria Aurora Couto. Speaking Tiger. Pages 214. Rs 499 Cultural historian and literary critic Maria Aurora Couto bore witness to histories that inform Goa’s cosmopolitan, multireligious and multi-ethnic fabric in her writings. This compilation...