Sheila Kumar - Comfortably Numb

Comfortably Numb

Sheila Kumar's Storehouse

Book review: Valli by Sheela Tomy

The luckless land Sometimes, things come together in the most beautiful manner. A writer writes a powerful story in a regional language, part allegory, part homily, wholly eco-fiction. Then along comes a translator who reads the book in the original language and reaches out to the author, offering to translate it into English. And thus,…

Book review: Breaking Free by Vaasanthi

The secrets of their lives In our choices lie our fate. And so it is with Kasturi and Lakshmi, the two women protagonists in this book. Both women are born into a devadasi clan. Kasturi concentrates on her talent as a dancer and makes peace with being a devadasi. Lakshmi rebels against it, strives to…

Book review: Chrysalis by Neetha Raman

CHRYSALIS by Neetha Raman (Ukiyoto Press) is the sweet coming- of- age story of an LA-based trust fund heiress, a TamBrahm girl who is compelled by circumstances to return to Chennai for a year, take over her grandfather`s media empire, come to terms with the sense of loss she still feels about her parents` death,…

Guest column: Doggone it, I say!

Stray thoughts on stray dogs In a country where casual cruelty towards animals is woefully common, increasing awareness about the need to look after our stray denizens is something to cheer about. However, for the purposes of what I wish to convey, I am training focus only on stray dogs here. Though not a currently…

Book review: The Promise by Damon Galgut

THE PROMISE by Damon Galgut. Penguin UK Books. Halfway through the book, the protagonist makes a statement: But a promise is a promise. And this 2021 Booker Prize-winning book by South African writer Damon Galgut has that promise as its pivot. A promise made to a dying wife by her distraught husband, that their longtime…

Book review: Chronicles of the Lost Daughters by Debarati Mukhopadyay

Women who wield the narach Simply put, translations of regional literature is a gift that keeps on giving. Arunava Sinha’s translation of Narach, the best-selling Bengali novel, is one such addition to the pantheon. The English title of Debarati Mukhopadhyay’s book is Chronicle of the Lost Daughters, and is a story about women and everything…

Book review: Girl A by Abigail Dean

Many years after the trauma…. Every so often a book is declared a publishing sensation. Sometimes it is a debut novel, sometimes it is a thriller and very often, it has `girl` in its title. Like Gone girl and The Girl on the Train. The book then sells for huge sums after multi-way auctions, film…

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…