fiction - Comfortably Numb

Book review: The Far Field by Madhuri Vijay

An unexpectedly nuanced look at Kashmir from down south Madhuri Vijay’s first novel is a beautifully nuanced tale in these times of no nuance. The author dunks us deep into the family scrum of the protagonist, 30-year-old Shalini, and we are hooked. Scrum it is, because beneath the 30-year-old woman’s laconic account of her…

Book review: Ayesha At Last by Uzma Jalaluddin

The Bennett bibis of Toronto All the familiar drama with some desi spice. Here comes the latest P & P tweak, in the wake of a multitude of literary and cinematic adaptations of that Jane Austen classic. In Uzma Jalaluddin’s ‘Ayesha at Last,’ the Bennet family`s trials and tribulations are given a culture tweak, and…

Book review: A Secret History of Compassion by Paul Zacharia

Sending up everything and everyone A scathing look at life. The reader`s first reaction on reading A Secret History of Compassion is to muse over the probability that Paul Zacharia wrote up the story, then dipped it into a vat of caustic soda. Everything is grist for his mill, or rather pen, here: writers,…

Book review: Requiem in Raga Janki by Neelum Saran Gaur

A mellifluous tale, this rich re-telling of a diva`s saga. The unidentified narrator of the tale is an elderly singer pushing 90 from what we can discern, who sings for her supper these days in a new way…she tells the tales of the famous courtesan Jankibai Illahabadi. However, she firmly states, `at my age things crowd…

Book review: Fortune`s Soldier by Alex Rutherford

History as entertainment The story is as much about the two men as it is about the insidious way that the East India Company worked to eventually establish British rule in India. The friendship of two men, the fictional Nicholas Ballantyne and the actual historical figure of Robert Clive, forms the basis of the story…

Book review: Trick by Domenico Starnone

A battle of wits A battle of wits between a grandfather and his four- year- old grandson is at the heart of the deceptively simple premise of Domenico Starnone’s latest book ‘Trick.’ Witty, observant and melancholy by turns, it is a deftly layered book, a wonderful read. One of Italy’s most accomplished writers and the…

Book review: Paradise Towers by Shweta Bachchan-Nanda

Not so towering A close look at people living out their less- than- celebrated lives in a Mumbai apartment block. We`ve had a rash of celebs turning authors, with Twinkle Khanna in the vanguard and others like Rishi Kapoor, Karan Johar, Soha Ali Khan, and now Shweta Bachchan Nanda, following in her wake. Let…

Book review: The Town That Laughed by Manu Bhattathiri

THE TOWN THAT LAUGHED, ALEPH BOOK COMPANY. Manu Bhattathiri`s debut novel is so steeped in a kind of malayalitvam, that if you are from God`s Own…., you start to substitute Malayalam words for English ones, as you read! People remembered the times when unemployment was quite a pleasure. The times when young men woke up…

Book review: Eating Wasps by Anita Nair

Heartbreak Hotel All the goings-on in Anita Nair`s new book Eating Wasps is situated in a riverside resort in Kerala, and the reader will find the state arches over the story with its topography in all shades of green, its pazham poris/idiyappams/ela adas, its people with and without pathras, the last loosely translated as…

Book review: Left From the Nameless Shop by Adithi Rao

Heart-warming tales of small-town life These are stories suffused with nostalgia for a quieter way of life. Lives intersect in manifold ways in Adithi Rao’s debut book of short stories, lives lived in the fictional small town of Rudrapura in Karnataka. And a leitmotif runs all through the narrative: a sense of nostalgia for a…