Mo Yan is not quite the toast of the writing community west of China. When the Nobel Prize for Literature went his way in 2012, it was deemed a ‘catastrophe’, a ‘betrayal’ and an ‘ominous signal’ by the fraternity, including his compatriots in exile. His language has been found ‘diseased’ and ‘banal’, his authority that […]
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The Box by Günter Grass
February 2, 2013 
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Günter Grass is a versatile artist, a colossal literary, cultural and political figure of Germany. He has been a recipient of several high prizes for his works, including the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999. More than that, he has been the soul-searcher, the conscience-keeper and the moral anchor to German ethos since the demise […]
Read moreBeloved by Toni Morrison -A Review
January 26, 2013 40 Comments
‘I want to feel what I feel. Even if it’s not happiness.’ -Toni Morrison Man is not God yet he has played God not only with his fellow animals but his fellow humans too. And what a God he has been: a callous, cruel, murderous paragon of barbarianism. He has left no stone unturned to […]
Read moreManto: Selected Short Stories –A Review
November 27, 2012 32 Comments
Manto: Selected Short Stories has been exquisitely prefaced by Aatish Taseer, the grandson of Manto, who puts Manto’s work, his life and translations under a critical lens. He remonstrates that Manto’s poems and stories had been relegated to Urdu curriculums solely on grounds of script. “But the question of script had become heavy with religious […]
Read moreThe Unaccustomed Earth – A Review
November 11, 2012 34 Comments
With the publication of Unaccustomed Earth, Jhumpa Lahiri, the subtle chronicler of immigrant Bengali Diaspora, has arrived at a coveted literary milestone. Dissolution of identity on account of migration is more a backdrop than a force holding the centre stage of her new anthology. Commoner yet grimmer human predicaments like death, deceit and desertion play […]
Read moreNarcopolis by Jeet Thayil – A Review
November 5, 2012 39 Comments
“I don’t miss you. I don’t miss you when I open a window and light fills the room like water pouring into a paper cup, or when I hear a woman’s white dress shine like new coins and I know I could follow my feet to the river and let my life go away from […]
Read moreAerogrammes – A Review
October 28, 2012 28 Comments
Tania James is a quiet writer of the human disquiet. Her stories are peopled by scarred humans, her wings spanning the tedium and tribulations of the stranded, the alienated, the damaged and the bereaved. They are often émigrés, many of them Indian, in the wringing merry-go-round of identity and assimilation. Bruised and forlorn, they are […]
Read moreBoats on Land: A Bewitching Voyage
October 21, 2012 39 Comments
Boats on Land is a bewitching voyage to the Khasi heartland spanning over a century and a half, offered through a string of stories by Janice Pariat. The journey affords a panoramic focus on the lives of the ethnic people and the deep bond they share with their scenic habitat, unveiling a culture molded by […]
Read moreThe Red House – A Review
October 8, 2012 43 Comments
‘Prayer, faith, redemption, consolation, how did you hold the world together without these things?’ -The Red House The Red House by Mark Haddon is not just another ‘stream-of-consciousness’ novel out to spill the emotions of the characters on the freeway of time. It is a startling, multi-tiered story with an accelerated zigzag across lives, juxtaposing […]
Read moreThe Casual Vacancy: An Odyssey of Miseries
October 2, 2012 58 Comments
Far, far away from the enchanted lands of Hogwarts and the sweep of magic wands, the author of Harry Potter tales has created a sordid world on the terra firma of lowlife in her new book, The Casual Vacancy. So fiercely has she broken away from the inherent charm and promise of her earlier fables that […]
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