Comfortably Numb - Sheila Kumar's Storehouse

Book review: The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka

And what did I make of the 2022 Booker-prizewinner The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (Penguin Books) by Shehan Karunatilaka, you ask. Well, I came to it with heightened anticipation because I had really liked his debut novel of a decade ago, Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew, which went on to win the 2012…

Book review: The Burma Chronicles by Guy Delisle

BURMA CHRONICLES by Guy Delisle. Jonathan Cape Books. Sometimes – most times – I think I live for moments when I stumble across books that are absolute treasures. This graphic novel which I spied on my daughter`s bookshelf, and because it was about Myanmar nee Burma, I took home to read just blew me away….

Book review: More Spooky Stories by Tanushree and Ajoy Podder

The ghosts are back in this follow up to Tanushree Podder`s YA fiction, ‘Spooky Stories.’ In this sequel of sorts, which is also a crossover work into adult readership, the mise-en-scene is a classic one. Uday Sengupta travels from the US to India to visit his uncle, Keshav Roy, after many years. The taxi driver…

Book review: Breaking Barriers by Nafees Fazal with Sandhya Mendonca

Breaking Barriers by Nafees Fazal with Sandhya Mendonca, Konark Books. Breaking Barriers is the memoir of Nafees Fazal, the first Muslim woman minister in south India, and one feisty, irrepressible politician. Kudos to co-author Sandhya Mendonca for letting that frank and no- holds- barred voice comes through loud and clear, all through the book. For…

Guest column: Why are we so loud?

Why are we so loud? I recently watched a video, purportedly a spoof, where an Indian aunty adopts a hectoring tone and shows us how ginger tea is brewed back home in India. I say `back home` because the woman is standing in an American kitchen, heaping much unbridled derision on Americans. Personally, I found…

Book review: Hotel Adventures with the Stars by L. Aruna Dhir

Just finished reading my friend L. Aruna Dhir`s sparkling memoir-of-sorts, HOTEL ADVENTURES WITH THE STARS, Vishwakarma Publications. Dhir has had a long and memorable career, first as a Media Relations officer in the Australian High Commission, then as a hotel PR strategist at some of Delhi`s top-rated hotels, a career which put her straight in…

Guest column: Selective offerings in the time of cancel culture

The art vs the artiste: that old divide The other day, I revisited that classic, Gerald Durrell`s My Family and Other Animals, an old-gold favourite. After the read I fell into a rabbit hole of info on the Durrell family, and was dumbfounded to find that much of what I had devoured as the —…

Book review: Between You, Me and the Four Walls by Moni Mohsin

When gossip carries a sting The queen of malapropisms is back in our midst, with the third iteration of the chatty outpourings of the Social Butterfly, whose carefully curated gossip is, if you look hard, nothing but a sharp send-up of people, policies and lifestyles. In this book, Butterfly throws shade on a lot of…

Book review: Man`s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

Sometimes you wonder why it took so long for you to come to a book. That`s just how I feel right now, after having read MAN`S SEARCH FOR MEANING, The Classic Tribute to Hope from the Holocaust by Viktor E. Frankl. Dr Frankl was Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at the University of Vienna Medical…

Book review: The Body by the Shore by Tabish Khair

Terror on an oil rig Tabish Khair`s new book is a scientific thriller where the action mostly takes place on an oil rig turned dubious resort in the North Sea just off Denmark. Set around 2030, with frequent references to the coronavirus pandemic that hit the world a decade ago, the reader sees that the…