Westland Books - Comfortably Numb

Book review: Chronicle of an Hour and a Half by Saharu Nusaiba Kannanari

Prelude to a riot In his debut work, Saharu Nusaiba Kannanari sets the mise-en-scene at a measured pace, introducing the reader to the various characters of Vaiga village in the foothills of the Western Ghats, with the rain in the vanguard of the cast. Even for Kerala, this is torrential rain, pouring down relentlessly, bringing…

Book review: Black River by Nilanjana Roy

Crime and punishment Is this book a police procedural? Classic urban/rural noir fiction? A reflective look at all the elliptical loops around a crime? Actually, Nilanjana Roy`s Black River is all that. With this work, Roy brings to a crime fiction debut all the skill she employed in her delightful cat books The Wildings and…

Book review: Panjab by Amandeep Sandhu

I open my New Year account of book reviews with a book I read slowly, attentively, absorbing everything it had to give. Amandeep Sandhu`s PANJAB is many things to many readers. There are those like me, who was once familiar with the pinds and the jind of what Sandhu calls the outlier state (and you…

Book Review: Raavan by Amish

Insidious villain And now, the origin story for Raavan. Unlike in the lacklustre telling of Ram`s story in Ramachandra, Scion of Ishkvaku, and Sita`s tale which, apart from the big reveal, was a pretty straight affair, Amish gives his Raavan enough of an edgy personality so as to make him an interesting protagonist. Picking up…

Book review: Killing Time in Delhi by Ravi Shankar Etteth

A capital send-up Tongue firmly lodged in side of cheek, the author spins a tale about the denizens of Delhi. In this, Ravi Shankar Etteth`s seventh book, he has turned the spotlight mercilessly on the haut monde, the seriously wealthy and even more seriously powerful, the wheelers and dealers, the circles that trade in…