Posted in Authors of Indian Origin, Book reviews, Farahad Zama, India, India authors, Indians writing in English, South Asian Writers, fiction, indian english, novel on August 19, 2009 | 3 Comments »
I read Vikram Seth’s Suitable Boy over two years ago. Yet many of the characters, even lesser ones – like Mahesh Kapoor, remain vivid in my memory. I can almost see the man when I close my eyes and try to imagine a scene from the story. One could argue that it’s unfair to compare [...]
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Posted in Book reviews, India authors, Non fiction, Spirituality, Writing, literary, literary fiction, literature, novel, video on June 22, 2009 | 10 Comments »
Several months back, I began reading Salman Rushdie’s “Enchantress of Florence”. Even brilliance of prose can be tedious, as I realized not too far into the book. Nonetheless, it did trigger in me some interest in history. Out came a dusty paperback from my bookshelf, an old edition of History of India Vol. 2 by [...]
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Posted in American Authors, Authors, Authors of Indian Origin, Bengali American Fiction, Book reviews, Jhumpa Lahiri, Novella, Titles, Unaccustomed Earth, Vikram Seth, fiction, literary fiction, literature, short story, tagged Novella, Writers of Indian Origin on December 3, 2008 | 6 Comments »
An alternative title to Unaccustomed Earth could very well be-”The distraught lives of Bengali Americans”. It is no secret that Lahiri writes about Bengali Americans, their travails and search for identity. It was the prevalent theme in the much vaunted “Interpreter of Maladies.” It was the same theme expanded into a novel in “The Namesake.” [...]
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Posted in Amitav Ghosh, Authors, Book reviews, Booker Award Shortlist, Historical Fiction, India, India authors, Indians writing in English, Sea of Poppies, South Asian Writers, South Asian literature, fiction, indian english, literary, novel, tagged Historical Fiction on November 16, 2008 | 4 Comments »
To read an Amitav Ghosh novel is not merely to get a glimpse of the best of contemporary Indian writing, but also a snapshot of an oft-ignored episode of history. The “Sea of Poppies” is no exception. After a somewhat lukewarm tryst with Sunderbans and the Gangetic Dolphin (Hungry Tide), the first novel of the [...]
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Posted in Authors, Book reviews, India, India authors, Indians writing in English, South Asian Writers, South Asian literature, Travel, Vikram Seth, fiction, indian english, literary, literature, travelogue on October 28, 2008 | 4 Comments »
When Vikram Seth traveled through China almost twenty five years ago, the country was much less fashionable in popular parlance than it is today. Sinkiang and Tibet are likely to be far more accessible to the tourist today, possibly even to the hitch hiker, which is what was Seth’s choice incarnate – an interesting albeit [...]
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Posted in Aravind Adiga, Book reviews, Booker Award Shortlist, India, India authors, Indians writing in English, South Asian Writers, South Asian literature, fiction, indian english, literature, novel on October 6, 2008 | 6 Comments »
What becomes apparent soon into The White Tiger is its anger. This is the voice of the post liberal India, the generation after Rushdie and Mistry. While the principals of Mistry’s Fine Balance are crushed in subhuman surroundings, the one here rises in protest using the very system which keeps countless others like him in [...]
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Posted in Amitav Ghosh, Book reviews, India authors, Indians writing in English, South Asian Writers, South Asian literature, fiction, indian english, literature, novel on September 29, 2008 | 4 Comments »
In his essay on the anti Sikh riots of Delhi (The Ghosts of Mrs. Gandhi), this is what Amitav Ghosh has to say about “The Shadow Lines”:
a book that led me backward in time to earlier memories of riots, ones witnessed in childhood. It became a book not about any one event but about [...]
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Posted in Amitav Ghosh, Book reviews, India, India authors, Indians writing in English, Non fiction, South Asian Writers, Travel, indian english, literature, travelogue, tagged Add new tag on September 21, 2008 | 5 Comments »
Incendiary Circumstances is a collection of seventeen essays, written over two decades, on the many social and political crises besotting our world. Here, our world is mostly confined to South Asia, parts of South East Asia (Burma/Myanmar and Cambodia), and Middle East(Egypt, Kuwait), “Half-made worlds”, in the words of V.S. Naipaul, which Ghosh refers to [...]
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Professor Malik Solanka, a man in his mid fifties, scholar and dollmaker extraordinaire, is having a rather belated mid life crisis. “Fury”, which he sees around him, in the rage of destruction, or the fire of creation, overwhelms him suddenly, when he leaves his wife and three year old son in London. He travels to [...]
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Posted in Book reviews, India authors, Indians writing in English, South Asian Writers, South Asian literature, Vikram Seth, fiction, indian english, literature, novel on September 6, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Michael, a brilliant but temperamental violinist, finds that the love of his life happens to be living in the same city he calls home: London. Julia, a pianist, his first and only love, is someone he cannot forget, though they had parted on unfavorable terms ten years ago. He clings on to her memories, from [...]
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