The writer is in the Indian Administrative Service, and based in Bengaluru
January 16,2005 00:00:00 AM
Born in Peshawar in 1905, Mulk Raj Anand studied at Amritsar, Cambridge and London, and took his PhD in philosophy in 1929. He began writing...
Sun, Jan 16, 2005December 12,2004 00:00:00 AM
Assamese novelist Arupa Kalita Patangia’s epical narrative is the story of young Binapani, a bright girl-child growing up in her grandp...
Sun, Dec 12, 2004November 21,2004 00:00:00 AM
It is only natural that any work of fantasy published in the measurably recent past — from Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials trilogy...
Sun, Nov 21, 2004October 31,2004 00:00:00 AM
Anne Tyler has always been a chronicler of the American marriage, the American suburb, and the American way of life. With a light, cheery an...
Sun, Oct 31, 2004September 19,2004 00:00:00 AM
Maps for Lost Lovers’ is the evocation of twelve haunting months in the life of a small Pakistani-English town, Dasht-e-Tanhaii (“...
Sun, Sep 19, 2004August 22,2004 00:00:00 AM
Robert Frost made his visit in November 1960, just a week after the general election. It tells you something about our school that the prosp...
Sun, Aug 22, 2004July 04,2004 00:00:00 AM
While what is commonly referred to as “literary fiction” is often so intensely preoccupied with just being intense, it is what we ...
Sun, Jul 04, 2004June 13,2004 00:00:00 AM
When we first meet Inspector Salvo Montalbano, it is not his finest moment. The Sicilian, who is something of a cult figure thanks to Camill...
Sun, Jun 13, 2004May 30,2004 00:00:00 AM
"Books are at best a beacon in the darkness, but at second-best a holiday that lasts and lasts," said John Updike once while accepting a Nat...
Sun, May 30, 2004May 16,2004 00:00:00 AM
Every now and then, from the busy little factory that is Indian writing in English, comes a book that seems to be about another country alto...
Sun, May 16, 2004April 25,2004 00:00:00 AM
JOSEPH James died on 5 January, 1960, in his thirty ninth year, the day after Albert Camus was killed in a car accident.’’ With th...
Sun, Apr 25, 2004February 15,2004 00:00:00 AM
This is the story, in her own words, of Yashodabai Joshi, married as a girl of six to a boy aged thirteen, and how the couple grew up to par...
Sun, Feb 15, 2004February 01,2004 00:00:00 AM
New York-based British columnist and writer Zoe Heller’s second novel was published in the US as What was She Thinking? It appears that...
Sun, Feb 01, 2004January 04,2004 00:00:00 AM
Calliope Helen Stephanides is born in January 1960, in Detroit, to a prosperous Greek-American family. Milton and Tessie are so eager to hav...
Sun, Jan 04, 2004December 14,2003 00:00:00 AM
What happens when a character in a book suddenly, perversely, comes to life? Like all beings — and like Frankenstein, in the epigraph t...
Sun, Dec 14, 2003November 23,2003 00:00:00 AM
Country of Goodbyes, the English translation of Mridula Garg’s Hindi novel Kathgulab, is the story of four women and a man, whose lives...
Sun, Nov 23, 2003November 02,2003 00:00:00 AM
Which of us might feel remotely interested in a book called The Burned Children of America? On the other hand, if it is called Zadie Smith I...
Sun, Nov 02, 2003October 12,2003 00:00:00 AM
Family History is Janaki Agnes Penelope Majumdar’s fresh and engaging memoir of two Indian Bengali families as they grew and flourished...
Sun, Oct 12, 2003August 31,2003 00:00:00 AM
It is always interesting when a poet chooses to write prose. Donald Hall is a poet, although he has written stories every now and then. He t...
Sun, Aug 31, 2003August 17,2003 00:00:00 AM
Some novels begin with hype and hoopla, making us almost wary of turning their pages, wondering whether we are going to be disappointed afte...
Sun, Aug 17, 2003July 13,2003 00:00:00 AM
Marie Seton’s 1971 portrait of Satyajit Ray is a rare treasure. Literally so, for it has been out of print for years. Now, along comes ...
Sun, Jul 13, 2003June 22,2003 00:00:00 AM
Battling for Survival: India’s Wilderness Over Two Centuries Edited by Valmik Thapar Oxford University Press Price: Rs 675This morning,...
Sun, Jun 22, 2003