Comfortably Numb - Sheila Kumar's Storehouse

Book review: Tripping by C K Meena

TRIPPING by CK Meena, e-book. Readers of CK Meena`s regular City Lights column of yore in The Hindu will need no introduction to her wry and witty observations on life. In Tripping, she has put all that humour to great use, resulting in many LOL moments for the reader. Tripping is a travelogue detailing a…

Book review: Hymns in Blood by Nanak Singh

Trauma besides the Soan Nanak Singh, widely regarded as the father of the Punjabi novel, needs no introduction to those familiar with Punjabi literature. The Sahitya Akademi winner had little formal education but went on to create a prodigious oeuvre of 59 works spanning novels, short stories, plays, poems, essays and translations; one of his…

Book review: Villainy by Upamanyu Chatterjee

VILLAINY by Upamanyu Chatterjee. Speaking Tiger Books, 2022. What a cracker of a murder mystery, what a cracker of a book! Chatterjee is back with all his old snark, the snark we loved in `English, August` but have only caught fleeting glimpses of in the books that followed that sparkling debut novel of Chatterjee`s. This…

Book review: The Immortal King Rao by Vauhini Vara

A dismayingly familiar dystopia Writers who create new worlds lead you to them through the proverbial Narnian cupboards. Suddenly, you are in a different world; the contours may seem vaguely familiar but the rest of the world is thrillingly new. Vauhini Vara’s `The Immortal King Rao` does just that. It is speculative fiction but the…

Guest column: Don`t Tar All Media with the Same Brush

Don`t tar all media with the same (grimy) brush You know how people constantly, relentlessly, moan about how terrible the media is, how it exists only to spread fake news, how it polarizes people? Well, you know what? India is still a free country, last time I checked. We don’t need to consume the kind…

Photo Feature: The Plitvice Lakes in Croatia

All photos by Sheila Kumar and subject to copyright. A short note on the green and white wonderland that is the Plitvice Lakes National Park in Croatia. Stupid fights for land, was our driver/guide`s take on the bitter fighting at the Plitvice Lakes in Croatia, and his words ring true when I read the backstory…

The Living Mountain by Amitav Ghosh

THE LIVING MOUNTAIN, A Fable for Our Times, by Amitav Ghosh. Fourth Estate Books. This is Ghosh, back at what he does so effectively: holding up a mirror to our acts of ecological destruction, telling us there`s still time to get our act together, to stop our marauding ways, to clean up after ourselves….

Book review: Languages of Truth by Salman Rushdie

Languages of Truth Essays 2003-2020. Of late, Salman Rushdie has been offering us long-winded, over-garrulous works of fiction, disappointing those of us who have long been fans of his writing. With LANGUAGES OF TRUTH, a collection of essays comprising various lectures, published articles, introductions to books and exhibition catalogues between 2003 and 2020, he redeems…

Book review: The Odd Book of Baby Names by Anees Salim

A bleak kind of hope Anees Salim`s new book is laced with equal amounts of melancholia and quirk, with the former gaining a slight edge over the latter, which will not surprise the writer`s fans one bit. The plot hinges on a slender story, that of an erstwhile ruler lying in a comatose state in…

Book review: The Temple Tiger and Other Man-eaters of Kumaon by Jim Corbett

THE TEMPLE TIGER AND MORE MAN-EATERS OF KUMAON by JIM CORBETT. Rupa Publications. When I return to much-loved books, it`s usually PG Wodehouse or Georgette Heyer. However, this time it was to Jim Corbett`s The Temple Tiger and More Man-eaters of Kumaon (Rupa Publications). The book is a treat for all Corbett fans, and we…