Manto: Selected Short Stories has been exquisitely prefaced by Aatish Taseer, the grandson of noted Urdu poet M. D. Taseer, who puts Manto’s work, his life and translations under a critical lens, before moving on to present a version of…
Category: Book Reviews
The Unaccustomed Earth – A Review
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…
Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil – A Review
“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…
Aerogrammes – A Review
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…
Boats on Land: A Bewitching Voyage
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…
The Red House – A Review
‘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 its characters on the freeway…
The Casual Vacancy: A Boatload of Miseries
Far, far away from the enchanted lands of Hogwarts and the sweep of magic wands, the author of Harry Potter tales has summoned a sordid world into existence on the terra firma of lowlife in The Casual Vacancy. So fiercely…
The Sense of an Ending – A Review
Unlike rolls of cinema, life that fades away into the past is not available for playback. Recollections are more a collage of overlapping images, colours fading into sepia, hues into grayscales, realities crisscrossing and blurring with wistful fiction. Like vignettes…
In Other Rooms, Other Wonders – A Review
‘In Other Rooms, Other Wonders’ is a collection of short stories by Daniyal Mueenuddin, some of which have been previously published in The New Yorker and other journals. The eight faintly interlinked stories depict a feudal world in its dying…
The Immigrant – A Review
Sun sets early on eligible girls in the matrimonial bourses of India. Those blessed with boundless beauty or in affluent lineage may nudge the timeline further by a few odd years, but rarely for long. Nina’s lush hair and pinkish…
Just Married, Please Excuse – A Review
There go the wedding bells for a cute IIM alumnus, oven-fresh from classes, peddling soaps and detergents for an MNC! Déjà vu? Let’s find out. We enter the story through a scene where the thirty years old beau of a…
Murder in Amaravati -A Review
Nestled in the lap of the ceaselessly gurgling Krishna, idyllic tranquillity of the ancient village of Amaravati is shattered one morning by a murder most foul and unnatural. Or the murder of a trader most foul and unnatural, as the…
One Grain Amongst the Storm 