fiction - Comfortably Numb

Book review: Foreign by Sonora Jha

In that limbo An NRI is forced to face issues concerning herself and her country, issues she had turned her back on. Foreign works on two levels. It is about Katya (Katyayini) Misra acknowledging how she feels now she’s back in India after years away. She looks wincingly at the dismal situation in a small…

Book review: Gray Wolves by John Balian

Against all odds A roman á clef about triumphing in troubled times. Dr. John D Balian’s running-close-to-the-bone story is definitely a fable for our modern times, that perseverance, a refusal to give in to the most adverse circumstances will eventually lead one to one’s destination. Hanna/Jonah Ibelin, born to a poor Armenian farmer in Anatolia,…

Feature: The Jerry Pinto Interview

‘One per cent writing and 99 per cent rewriting’ Jerry Pinto speaks to SHEILA KUMAR about craft and the catharsis involved in telling the story of a mentally ill mother. Jerry Pinto is a writer who explores all the avenues of writing that open before him. His resume includes teaching mathematics and journalism, writing television scripts,…

Book review: Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

Joy, despair, and a moral A modern retelling of an old fairy tale is also a compelling account of frontier life. The original version of this charming tale, by Eowyn Ivey, is titled Snegurochka and is in Russian. It is about an old couple who are visited by a fey creature of snow, a little girl…

Book review: Lessons in Forgetting by Anita Nair

Emotions at centrestage This is Nair’s fourth book and there is no doubt about one thing: she gets better with each one. Lessons… is a reflective, coming-to-terms sort of novel, in which the main protagonists — a former society wife who can wield a mean skillet and a professor of cyclone studies — keep doing…

Book review: The Gold Of Their Regrets by Ravi Shankar Etteth

A crackling good yarn Subhas Chandra Bose in a guest role, Nazi gold, a sprinkling of murders make for a great thriller. First, the good news. This is a crackling good yarn, a murder mystery that moves at a rapid pace, is peopled with ingenious characters and at its centre, holds a story that in…