Three new books on the shelf

Well. However, those who remember watching the film late one night in 1988 will probably share another thought: “It was for another time, a fabulously un-slick era. I ache for the innocence of it.” It’s hard to recall now, those times when urban India’s young students ached for some reflection of themselves in fiction and cinema. Roy refers to the phenomenon of “behalfism” at the time: “middle-class urban people making films on behalf of rural folk while they (the film-makers themselves) were absent from the scenario.” All that’s changed in the years since, but Annie highlights the faltering struggle towards more representative, slick cinema.

THE CLINTON WARS: AN INSIDER’S ACCOUNT OF THE WHITE HOUSE YEARS
By Sidney Blumenthal
Viking
Price: £20

On Bill Clinton’s White House years, we still await a more objective, less obfuscatory insider’s account. Given that they appeared in quick succession, it is difficult not to compare Hillary Clinton’s and Blumenthal’s memoirs. If hers was an exercise in whitewashing, in pretending that there were no meaty controversies, only sinister attempts by the right to taint the Clinton administration, his is rather different. Blumenthal, a journalist who became assistant to the president in 1997, seeks to load his 800-page account with facts and quotes. But there is still a niggling feeling through the book that this is a partisan view. Still it’s interesting, this tour through the Kosovo intervention, the spats with Matt Drudge and The New York Times, and much besides.

UTTARANCHAL: KUMAON AND GARHWAL
The HarperCollins Travel Guides
Price: Rs 195

The mapping of Tourist India continues apace. Fat, all-inclusive tomes are being replaced by detailed guides to regions, even sub-regions. This introduction to Garhwal and Kumaon, however, is a mixed bag. Its great strength lies in meticulously detailed trekking routes. Distances and estimates of walking days are certainly welcome. As are little asides, for instance, on Mussoorie’s ghosts and on various theories on how Dehradun acquired its name. But for the traveller looking for hotel, guesthouse and restaurant options, it is a big disappointment.