Ted Grant had certainly made a significant impact on British politics as the founder and theoretical inspirer of the Militant Tendency. The success of Militant had turned us into a ...
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Book Review archives
2014, 02 Apr
Ted Grant had certainly made a significant impact on British politics as the founder and theoretical inspirer of the Militant Tendency. The success of Militant had turned us into a ...
2014, 22 Mar
So, here we go again! Singing paeans to the one and only Sachin Tendulkar has been a national pastime long enough for the unconverted not to be unduly perturbed. After ...
2014, 15 Mar
Foreign correspondents in India are increasingly turning authors and spelling out their takes on the country. BBC's Sam Miller authored A Strange Kind of Paradise, and ex-Financial Times journalist John ...
2014, 07 Mar
While convention and prevailing superstition demands that one must not compare one’s age with somebody who has given up his ghost, I couldn’t help but ponder what had I achieved ...
2014, 28 Feb
There is scarcely a world leader whose life and times have been under such a global scanner than the assassinated US President, John F Kennedy. With the exception of, most ...
2014, 22 Feb
When Lesley Hazleton, an agnostic Jewish female and a journalist, decided to write down the biography of Prophet Muhammad, it did raise certain eyebrows.... ...
2014, 14 Feb
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Selecting only 40 Hindi films that are lost in the mist of time could not have been a cakewalk. But reading 40 Retakes – Bollywood Classics You May Have Missed ...
2014, 07 Feb
PG Wodehouse's Jeeves and Bertie Wooster are probably the most celebrated characters of 20th century English literature. In the six decades that they jointly entertained generations of readers, they did ...
2014, 31 Jan
Amongst the many things, Flora is, it is most pronouncedly an account of how your childhood changes shape when you are in it, and when you look back at it ...
2014, 24 Jan
Accra-born novelist and screenwriter William Boyd knew James Bond inside out. But when commissioned by the Ian Fleming estate to write a new thriller ...
2014, 17 Jan
At the very beginning of this review, I need to give a disclosure. I am a member of Liverpool FC Fan Club for close to a decade now. A paid ...
In the year 2005, while Rajmohan Gandhi was in Pakistan interviewing people for his encyclopedic effort to chronicle Punjab and it’s long history, he received a message from a woman ...
2014, 10 Jan
Since currency became medium of exchange for delivery of goods and services, banks have played a crucial role in shaping the life of individuals, communities, institutions, nations and their economies ...
2013, 27 Dec
The economic reforms that kicked off in 1991 not only ended the licence permit raj but also gave boost to private enterprise and entrepreneurs to bloom. ...
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) made water an important part of its Delhi poll manifesto and kept asserting that if it came to power it would 700 litres free water ...
2013, 20 Dec
History bears witness to the fact that, over the years, prison terms have often acted as a launching pad against unjust rule ...
Of the civil wars that have shaped the modern course of world history, Africa has sadly had the lion’s share of them in its kitty ...
2013, 13 Dec
Somewhere in Jonathan Aitken's close-to-800 pages leviathan on Margaret Thatcher, there is an interesting anecdote ...
If you admire Alexander Sokurov the most among contemporary Russian filmmakers, you’d find a hole in this book ...
2013, 06 Dec
Pandora's Daughters by veteran journalist Kalyani Shankar aims to illuminate and interpret the strengths and weaknesses of eight prominent ...
2013, 29 Nov
Electronic media today wields undeniable power over our collective conscience. It shapes our perceptions, gives voice to our grievances and often functions as a tool for real or imagined social ...
Naresh Chandra Committee was set up to review the national security mechanism and to recommend its own proposals as to how improve the things. This was almost a decade after ...
2013, 22 Nov
This certainly cannot be the last word, but it is definitely a word that counts for a great deal. Young Tagore: The Makings of a Genius, authored by Sudhir Kakar, ...
Communal hatred, communal tension and communal riots are end result of the Divide – Rule Policy adopted by Britishers in the Indian Sub-Continent. Thanks to pains of partition, both India ...
2013, 15 Nov
In recent times security has become the most discussed issue in the country. It covers a wide gamut ...
Last month many millions were disappointed when the Noble Committee chose the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for peace prize instead ...
In recent times security has become the most discussed issue in the country. It covers a wide gamut ...
2013, 09 Nov
Anyone familiar with England of the 80s would be aware of the 'Hampstead novel'. The pejorative term refers to a series of self-consciously intellectual ...
It is perfectly befitting that writer Anil Zankar dedicates this monograph about one of the most memorable films ever made ...
2013, 01 Nov
Popular narratives of Islamist terrorism, talibanization and communal hatred in the mainstream media and 24X7 electronic media often limit perspectives that no life exist beyond medieval barbarism in the Indian ...
Empires rise and crumble as sand houses. There is probably no phenomenon that has proved itself so many times, and convincingly. But having said that, it is always difficult for ...
2013, 25 Oct
Economists come from different schools of thought and specialisations. Of course most economists are well read and widely read. It is a different matter none of their policy prescriptions, neither ...
2013, 20 Oct
Somewhere in the middle of Salinger’s classic The Catcher in the Rye, the protagonist and the narrator, Holden Caulfield, amidst his continuous whining, ...
2013, 18 Oct
Indians would have never discussed anything as much as its war with China in 1962 yet it has not lost its interest. It will not be wrong to say that ...
Arabs are enigmatic people. Even after years of living and working among them, it is not easy to predict their actions. That makes them a boon for journalists. ...
2013, 11 Oct
It is in the nature of the world we live in to look at everything as a statistic, especially the stories of women and men displaced by wars. Since we ...
2013, 27 Sep
Subroto Bagchi needs no introduction. Bagchi is chairman Mindtree Ltd which he cofounded in 1999. Besides being a successful IT entrepreneur, Bagchi is the author of best sellers ...
Not too long ago, self-help books began as a distinct genre, and today they are, no doubt, a roaring business for publishers. No wonder, bookstore tittles from business management and ...
2013, 21 Sep
First, a confession: I do not watch cricket games any more, especially those that involve India. I find them insufferably tiresome. The raspy hype and hoopla that surround them are ...
An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions sounds much like two argumentative Indian discussing state of nation. Of course unlike most others both are leading academics. ...
2013, 12 Sep
Neil Gaiman is an exceptional writer. The Ocean at the End of the Lane is an illustration of this. ...
The journey towards more meaningful, intellectually fulfilling, number games such as list of great songs, books etc was slow. ...
2013, 06 Sep
Whenever we talk about a novel that imbibes the city that it talks about, The Tale of Two Cities takes centre stage. ...
Every passing day, the two Asian giants, China and India, are compared on several parameters in the public discourse in this country. ...
2013, 30 Aug
Indian cricket has seen many significant points of departure over the decades, stretching all the way from the exploits of C.K. Nayudu to the 1983 surprise World Cup triumph. ...
It was in 1953, the year of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, that the fading glory of the British Empire got its final sheen. ...
2013, 22 Aug
For some India is a superpower. A few others bask in the glory of India supposedly once being a golden sparrow and a land of plenty. ...
2013, 16 Aug
Sachin Dev Burman scripted one of the most glorious chapters in the annals of Hindi film music and doing full justice to the depth and breadth of the maestro’s contribution ...
In some ways, Scahill’s Dirty Wars: The World Is A Battlefield, does not come out as a revelation. ...
2013, 12 Aug
The story of the rise, rise and rise and then fall of Rajat Gupta will interest and intrigue every Indian who has dreamed of making it to America, which is ...
When Adam Johnson came out with The Orphan Master’s Son, people in general expected it to be a thought-provoking and entertaining piece of work. ...
2013, 02 Aug
An apocalyptic world and human relationships in it have always fascinated many a writer. ...
2013, 25 Jul
In recent times there has been a trend to sensationalise everything pertaining to China. ...
The four big cats - the tiger, lion, leopard and jaguar that belong to the genus Panthera – have fascinated human civilization since time immemorial. ...
2013, 18 Jul
The distance between art and activism isn't insignificant. On the face of it, they do inhabit two completely different spheres, but both can exercise great influence on human lives and ...
Like their previous four instalments that dealt primarily as bildungsromans for a particular Mughal, The Serpent’s Tooth deals with the life and times of Shah Jahan. ...
2013, 12 Jul
Gujarat of late has been hitting the headlines for many right and wrong reasons. However Gujarat is not limited to mission, omission and commission of its Chief Minister Narendra Modi ...
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2013, 01 Jul
For 11 years we have visited and revisited the horrific riots that engulfed Gujarat in 2002 after a coach of a train was set ablaze at Godhra station, killing 48 ...
By today’s standards, his exploits with the bat would at best be regarded as average ...
2013, 21 Jun
For most of us colourful butterflies mean how we chased them when we were young and tucked them inside a textbook as a prized trophy for months and years. ...
Indians’ don’t talk. They argue. And the more they argue, the more they pepper their arguments with anecdotes, folklore, proverbs and myths to force their views on each other. ...
2013, 13 Jun
The book 'Drone Warfare: Killing by remote' by Medea Benjamin is an excellent work which has very lucidly covered every facet involved with the use of drones or UAVs. ...
Somewhere in Mark Mazzetti's 400-page scholarship on CIA and its changing role in the post-9/11 world, there is a scene where an ex-counterterrorism expert appears before the 9/11 Commission. ...
2013, 07 Jun
There is little doubt that Khaled Hosseini is the most widely read Asian writer of our time amongst both literary geniuses and pulp fiction writers. ...
A thriller erected on the foundation of shocking incidents yanked out of the newspapers, The Sea of Innocence is Kishwar Desai’s third book in the Simran Singh series. ...
2013, 30 May
Somewhere in the middle of Chimamanda Adichie’s novel ‘Americanah’, the protagonist, Ifemelu, finds herself in a salon getting her hair done. ...
It is not always easy to review a book written by someone you partly idolize. The pressure is immense, and it is singularly difficult to figure out when your biases ...
2013, 23 May
From the Stone to Digital age, human civilization has processed information and data. This is starting to change, observes Viktor Mayer-Schonberger, Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at the Oxford ...
Let us assume you don’t know anything about Hinduism, and all you have is the present radicalized climate of India to go by. ...
2012, 07 Dec
In one of his rare moments of ideological clarity, Chairman Mao Zedong had famously quipped, "Communism is not love. Communism is a hammer which we use to crush the enemy.†...
Cricket's links with gambling are probably as old as the game itself. But when did match-fixing seep in? To answer that question, in this first-of-its-kind exposé of the rot at ...
2012, 30 Nov
Let me start with a warning first. If you are one of those who conform to the Western stereotypes of China and the Chinese way of life, do yourself a ...
2012, 24 Nov
Accidental India: A History of the Nation’s Passage through Crisis and Change, authored by veteran journalist Shankkar Aiyar, is an effort to deconstruct the architecture and ancestry of the changes ...
2012, 16 Nov
Minty Tejpal's The Last Love Letter is designed to immediately grab your attention and it does. The back cover has a rather cryptic summing up of the story that reads ...
As corporate philanthropy becomes a buzzword among conscious, self-righteous and upwarly mobile business empires, there are few published documents which could vouch for its sincerity. ...
2012, 10 Nov
No Indian filmmaker has been written about as extensively as Satyajit Ray, but the maestro himself never authored an autobiography. ...
2012, 03 Nov
Many a times, we have seen our more enlightened sibling, cousin or friend going through the grind of GMAT or GRE, TOFEL; standing in long queues outside the American Embassy ...
2012, 27 Oct
Phoolan Devi was born with a double handicap. Firstly, she was born a woman. ...
2012, 26 Oct
The post-Ataturk Turkey has had a flirtatious relationship with coups d'état and post-modern coups. ...
2012, 20 Oct
Bird watching is often limited to a few scientists, avid bird watchers and a few others who undertake special tours even as their guides throw bulky and colourful books at ...
2012, 12 Oct
The author, who goes by nom de plume Mark Owen, and was later identified as Matt Bissonnette, gives a blow by blow account of the planning, preparation and execution of ...
2012, 01 Oct
For a state that was witness to the communal carnage in 2002, few would have thought that Gujarat could have, in its history, an event so traumatic that it could ...
2012, 29 Sep
One must bear in mind that this is an unfinished autobiography. It leaves many questions unanswered, especially those relating to Bangladesh’s liberation and the political developments immediately following that momentous ...
2012, 28 Sep
In the year 2010, the Norwegian Nobel Committee decided to award the Nobel Prize to the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. ...
2012, 21 Sep
There is something about Ruskin Bond's writing that reminds one of Mussoorie. True, many of his stories are set there, but it is not that. ...
2012, 15 Sep
The origins of human kind has always intrigued us from times immemorial. The ancient and the medieval world sought explanations in religion, myths and spiritualism. ...
2012, 06 Sep
For the West, Mohammad Ali Jinnah has remained an enigmatic figure. ...
2012, 05 Sep
He is an entertainment entrepreneur, politician, media personality, painter, public figure, activist, bon vivant and much else. ...
2012, 01 Sep
Human beings might be the only animals which, even faced with their own destruction, cannot look beyond petty distinctions of race, religion or, in the case of Tibet, sex. ...
2012, 31 Aug
Nilanjana Roy's dazzlingly original The Wildings zeroes in on the mysterious and danger-filled lives of cats in a Delhi neighbourhood. ...
2012, 27 Aug
After exploring the beautiful and politically unstable nations of South America in his debut travelogue ‘Viva South America’, Oliver Balch heads to India - a nation that is predicted to ...
When you flip through the pages of 'Rabbit Rap' your initial reaction is - Ah, yet another wonderful book for children. It's only when you start reading it you realise ...
2012, 24 Aug
Former army chief Joginder Jaswant Singh has been one of the more colourful ones the country has seen. ...
2012, 17 Aug
The risk with a publishing quickie is that haste can push it off the rails. ...
2012, 13 Aug
There is a fine line between erotica and pornography. In fact, there has been considerable debate among literature enthusiasts on where this line actually lies. Many have suggested that pornography ...
2012, 10 Aug
No wonder the book witnessed a high-profile launch attended by the who's who of Delhi, and interviews and reviews followed. ...
2012, 03 Aug
William "Bill" Shankly, arguably Liverpool FC's greatest son ever, once famously quipped, "Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I am very disappointed with that attitude. ...
2012, 27 Jul
When Saddam lost the disastrous Iraq-Iran War, he learnt quite a few lessons the hard way. And one of it was: it is never prudent to invade a revolution. ...
2012, 23 Jul
This readable and exhaustive analysis of the portrayal of women in Hindi cinema from the 1950s to the present times ends with a paragraph each on Ruth of That Girl ...
2012, 20 Jul
There has hardly been any war that has inspired as many books as World War II. From personal anecdotes to tactical moves, strategic blunders to diplomatic mind-games; there is little ...
2012, 17 Jul
Are human beings meant to be together? Can two individuals be thrown together and actually live the rest of their lives happily, with no one but each other? ...
2012, 14 Jul
Like A Virgin has been authored by Richard Branson. He needs no introduction. He is none other than Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson, British business magnate, best known for his ...
2012, 13 Jul
Somewhere in the middle of Toni Morrison's new outing, the author introduces a Black female character, a woman who specialises in tending to people. ...
2012, 06 Jul
When mental illness creeps up on a member of a small family, how are the lives intertwined with the fate of the stricken individual impacted? ...
2012, 04 Jul
It would be an understatement to suggest that Alex Rutherford's 'Empire of the Moghul' series has tried to delve into the maze of Mughal Empire like no one has done ...
2012, 22 Jun
During last few years, conventional wisdom was that the economic centre of gravity of the world is shifting away from the advanced Western world to emerging markets – BRIC nations ...
2012, 11 Jun
Against popular notions that all people below Vindhyas are 'Madrasis', Tamarind City’ by Kanpur born Bengali Bishwanath Ghosh explores Chennai-where Modern India began and changes sweeping through it. Of course, ...
2012, 09 Jun
Pico Iyer never met Graham Greene, a writer who, he says, "was always too popular and readable to win much critical acclaim†...
2012, 05 Jun
"Let me get one thing straight. My name is Jaycee Lee Dugard. I was kidnapped by a stranger at eleven years of age. For eighteen years I was kept in ...
2012, 01 Jun
All of us living in the cities are caught in the mad whirlwind of a fast life, throat cut competition, complex relationships, peer pressure and the constant fight between the ...
2012, 18 May
It is never easy to attempt the biography of a recluse. In the 20th century alone, authors like Thomas Pynchon, Harper Lee, Cormac McCarthy and J M Coetzee have shown ...
2012, 15 May
The soft spoken Pullela Gopi Chand has been quite approachable throughout his life. However, on the badminton court, this meek individual suddenly turns into a ruthless, deadly force that his ...
2012, 14 May
The prospects are tantalizing, the final result even more so. A mystery novel like nothing ever attempted before, authored by 26 bestselling crime writers, pooling together the talent and imagination ...
2012, 12 May
The disfigured architecture and worn, paved stones of the inner city still intoned its past splendour in broken whispers. There were a few enclaves where the last of its remnants ...
2012, 07 May
Rupa Bajwa's Tell me a story is an uninspiring and depressing tale of where the characters are crushed under the heels of a particularly malignant fate. ...
2012, 05 May
There was a time when Asia was the promised land for the wholeworld, and India and China were the jewels in the crown. Things seem to be coming a full ...
They say home is where the heart is. But the turn of events in the previous century put that belief to test repeatedly and in a myriad ways. One may ...
2012, 27 Apr
Often sweeping judgments on China, positive or negative, make for snappy headlines and striking book titles, but they rarely fit in with the reality. For this reason China has become ...
2012, 16 Apr
TSI reviews The Scrolls of Strife – the endless history of the Nagas, a book by famous Assamese writer Homen Borgohain and his son Pradipta. ...
2012, 12 Apr
When an ingenious diplomat ventures into the territory of fiction, he suddenly becomes cautious. Caution is a virtue in a decently manicured life, but an abominable sin in fiction. ...
2012, 02 Apr
The darkness of night, the disorientation caused by delirium, the fear of hostile lurking shadows, the clammy chill of winter, the piercing intensity of physical pain… these and other metaphoric ...
2012, 28 Mar
Urban Shots, a collection of short stories loosely tied together by a theme, offers snapshots of life in urban India. ...
2012, 27 Mar
There are very few names in Indian writing in English who can claim to have the command on historical fiction that Kunal Basu has. ...
2012, 26 Mar
You are impelled to explore and think about your own relationships once you read Overwinter. That is how I would like to assess Ratika Kapur's maiden venture into writing a ...
2012, 12 Mar
India's intellectual contribution to the world knowledge-pool may be limited but its consequences have been far-reaching. The decimal system, Yoga, Ayurveda, Panchatantra, Kamasutra and Arthashastra are the timeless jewels that ...
2012, 29 Feb
Ayodhya is quite a conundrum. Is it an ancient place of Islamic worship or the fountain head of Hindu faith as the birth place of Lord Ram that the Muslims ...
2012, 27 Feb
The Preface kicks off with the obvious question: "Isn't it too early to write a biography of Rahul Gandhi?" The answer is just as obvious: Yes, it is. Rahul Gandhi ...
2012, 21 Feb
India's intellectual contribution to the world knowledge-pool may be limited but its consequences have been far-reaching and widespread. ...
Wonder what Kunti of Mahabharata fame would have said were she to have read Namita Gokhale's story on her. It's typically mythology penned in modern-day prose, but it's the author's ...
2012, 14 Feb
Do you know any prose writer who is tellingly good at his art, whose characters and plots are unsurpassed in their appeal and are universal, but who is little known ...
2012, 09 Feb
The War of the Roses is arguably the most interesting and the most ridiculous events in the history of English royalty. Several authors have touched upon this era, mesmerised in ...
2012, 03 Feb
Veteran journalist Mrinal Pande's book is a mix of hard reportage and interpretative writing peppered with anecdotes. ...
2012, 24 Jan
The stories conveyed in his poems aren't new, but Manoj Kewalramani's alternative narrative and his revoltingly different impression about the supposed wrong-doers is what makes ‘Fairy Tales: Love, Hate and ...
2012, 21 Jan
Failed state, rogue nation, the most dangerous place on earth, a country that lurches from one crisis to another, an international pariah dogged by dangerously archaic mindsets – Pakistan, as ...
2012, 18 Jan
Ever since Steve Jobs died aged 56 last October, the media across the globe eulogised him as a visionary who changed the daily habits of millions of computer users worldwide, ...
2012, 11 Jan
"Lost years of the RSS" by Sanjeev Kelkar laments the mess the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is in due to a perceived ideological digression ...
2012, 10 Jan
It's not about nimble feet. It's not about the right expression. It's not about fine feathers... It's about being the dance. It's about being at the cusp when "tradition†meets ...
2011, 16 Dec
Who does not know Coca-Cola? The soft drink that is the most recognisable and successful brand across the globe, marketed as a purveyor of happiness at an affordable cost – ...
2011, 07 Dec
The title of the book - Is It All About Hips - got me curious. The line below the title – Around the World with Bollywood Dance – gave me ...
2011, 05 Dec
The Arty Farty Party takes us back to the mad world of advertising in Calcutta during 1980s. The heads of the advertising agencies are called Gods and have 'angels' as ...
2011, 28 Nov
One can call Harry Belafonte several things, but not unreasonable. However, a few years ago, when this famous singer-social activist in one of his interviews put Condoleezza Rice and Colin ...
2011, 21 Nov
'That Used to Be Us'-is a candid portrayal of Superpower-America that is in trouble by three times Pulitzer recipient Thomas L Friedman, one of the world's most influential columnist and ...
It has always been tempting for historians and biographers alike to compare the two greatest freedom fighters of the 20th century - Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. The similarity between ...
The protagonist of David Davidar’s third novel, like the author himself, has had a singularly successful career in international publishing. But, in the opening pages, we find Zachariah Thomas running ...