Comfortably Numb

Sheila Kumar's Storehouse

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…

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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…

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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,…

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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…

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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….

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Book review: Onam in a Nightie by Anjana Menon

A Malayali in lockdown  Anjana Menon`s lockdown anecdotes make for a diverting read for Keralites and non-Keralites alike. The author,  a media professional, just happens to be in the right place at the right time: Thrissur during a Covid lockdown. To begin with, she isn’t exactly thrilled about lockdown rules, the isolation, the attendant boredom….

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Book review: Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh by Shrayana Bhattacharya

Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh by Shrayana Bhattacharya. HarperCollins Books. Whoever would have thought SRK would make an excellent — and effective — research vehicle to track the freedoms of women in middle class India? Shrayana Bhattacharya has pulled that experiment off wonderfully in this book. Putting the lives of six women with their stifling emotional…

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Book review: The Blue Book by Amitava Kumar

Looking within, looking without Amitava Kumar`s writings are usually ruminative, thought-provoking. This one, The Blue Book,  is both, as also something of  an indulgence. It is a non-linear collection of his thoughts, interspersed with some striking colour sketches drawn by the author. The result is an introspective look at the writer`s convictions, motivations, inspirations. Journaling…

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Book review: The Braided River by Samrat Choudhury

THE BRAIDED RIVER by Samrat Choudhury. HarperCollins Books, 2021. The Brahmaputra, says Samrat Choudhury, is not a canal. It does not flow between two neat banks. Its untidy braids, channels of history and commerce, witness to the ebb and flow of empires, are verily the architects of the surrounding landscape of nature and of humans….

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Book review: This Life at Play by Girish Karnad

This Life At Play, the English translation of Karnad`s Aadaadtha Aayushya, translated from Kannada by Girish Karnad and Srinath Perur (HarperCollins Books),  gives readers a clear glimpse of a man of formidable intellect, a man who wrote plays that were sheer genius (some of them at least), a good actor, a very good writer, and…

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