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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I would disagree with those that have classified Maximum City under “Description and Travel”. A typical book of travel is mostly an outsider’s perspective. Here, the outsider’s perspective notwithstanding, is a lot more – nostalgia, and a sincere attempt to contextualize and understand a culture one has left behind or never known in the past [...]
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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 India authors, Indians writing in English, Muse, Rohinton Mistry, Salman Rushdie, South Asian Writers, South Asian literature, Writing, fiction, indian english, literary, literature on November 1, 2008 | 2 Comments »
In Fury, a Salman Rushdie character (Prof. Solanka) flays Hemingway, calling him the “most effeminate” of novelists, or something to that effect. It suits Rushdie, his writing leaning towards the opposite spectrum of literary style.
A few years down the line, Rohinton Mistry writes in Family Matters -
“…Yezad felt that Punjabi migrants of a certain age [...]
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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, Authors, Booker Award winners, India, India authors, Indians writing in English, South Asian Writers, South Asian literature, fiction, indian english, literary, literature, novel on October 15, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
It is probably news no longer, but I am happy with the choice, though it might sound strange when I haven’t read the other books in contention. On reading The White Tiger, I did get the feeling that it might actually win, no matter the competition. Congratulations to Aravind Adiga!
Link to BBC Interview.
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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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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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