Top Stories
Literature as performance
If Bob Dylan has been elevated to the exalted status of a Shakespeare or a Homer, so be it, for he has been the raconteur of our times.
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Ambai talks about her new new book, a collection of detective stories
Talking to Tamil writer Ambai as she embarks on a surprising new journey: detective fiction.
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Reading room
Indians have an emotional connect with Subhash Chandra Bose. In January 1941, after he left to wage a war to liberate Indians from the British rule, he disappeared, causing an unending mystery. Wh...
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News from the world of books
ILF Samanvay, India’s only exclusive languages festival, will be on from November 5 to 7 from 10.30 am to 8.30 pm at the Amphitheatre, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi.
The theme of ILF 2016 is ‘Lan...
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November 5, 2016
Zero as the hero: A review of Amir D. Aczel’s Finding Zero
The average adult’s attitude towards mathematics is easy to guess: simple arithmetic is acceptable, percentages and ratios cause some people to break into a cold sweat, and anything more complicated i...
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November 5, 2016
Review of Sumit Ganguly's Deadly Impasse
Successive Indian governments and generations of Indian analysts have sought a way to end the country’s impasse with Pakistan. And so far, they have failed. All we have managed to achieve are interval...
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October 22, 2016
Of a line that sings
Madeleine Thien’s fourth book, Do Not Say We Have Nothing, is the novel she has imagined writing ever since she was a teenager watching the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations unfold on a television...
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October 22, 2016
Jester of our times
The laughter is simply a means of making the audience confront the problem. - Dario FoShe was the muse behind his creative work. Actress and playwright Franca Rame died in 2013, three years before th...
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October 22, 2016
The man behind the aura
Most people hear of Dr. M.K. Mani before they meet him, if they get to meet him at all. They have heard of him in the corridors of healing, couched in whispers of awe, reverence, even veneration. Pat...
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October 15, 2016
Elusive peace in Bastar
James Cameron’s Avatar made waves some years ago not just for its use of cutting-edge motion capture techniques but also for its storyline. A hunter-gatherer tribe called Na’avi was shown taking on t...
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October 15, 2016
Saying it with science
Mohammad Aslam Parvaiz likes to describe a process that is a combination of four of his passions — botany, education, philosophy and religion. “The roots imbibe water and nutrients from the soil. The ...
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October 15, 2016
The aesthetic trajectory
Sheldon Pollock has done pioneering work in the field of Sanskrit studies, and the book under review alongside his magnum opus The Language of Gods in the World of Men is part of a series on Histori...
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October 15, 2016
Reading Room
The Spy; Paulo Coelho, trs Zoë Perry, Penguin Random House India, Rs. 299.When Mata Hari arrived in Paris she was penniless. Within months she was the most celebrated woman in the city, successful as ...
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October 8, 2016
News from the literary world
The Marrakesh Treaty, which addresses the scarcity of books available to visually impaired readers came into force on September 30. It adds a set of mandatory exceptions to existing copyright law to b...
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No orchids for Ms. Sita
Endpaper: Who is a book artist?
Lost in love
Intervening in haste
Reading Room
Metaphor in a whale
Out there on the edge
Has its highs. And lows
November 5, 2016
Business as usual: A review of Sushila Ravindranath's Surge: Tamil Nadu's Growth Story
Every journalist is asked one question after she writes on an important or controversial topic: “What else do you know? Come on, tell me what else has happened that you know about that the world does ...
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October 22, 2016
Where have all the writers gone?
Fifty years of secrecy veil every Nobel prize. Though leaks and whispers abound, the statutes of the Nobel Foundation restrict disclosure of information about the nominations, nominees, nominators as...
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October 22, 2016
Fine Print
Ahmedabad-based Navajivan Trust, an organisation founded by Mahatma Gandhi, has announced that it will publish a quarterly magazine prepared entirely by inmates of Sabarmati Central Jail in Ahmedabad,...
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October 22, 2016
A script for Bollywood
Chetan Bhagat’s One Indian Girl is a polarising book. Reviewers belong to one of two camps: they either want to burn it or they gesticulate wildly at the sales figures, mumbling about “publishing rev...
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October 22, 2016
Reading Room
Savage Blue; Vikram Balagopal, HarperCollins, Rs. 399.Akila Raina was only 10 when she disappeared. Her friend Shyam is haunted by a dream of it every night. Until Akila mysteriously reappears 20 year...
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October 15, 2016
Sweet music of bat hitting ball
If I was a Supreme Court judge, I would let the Health Ministry deal with dengue, and BCCI run cricket. But alas, I am only a rhymester. And there is no ‘Contempt of Poetry Act’, thank god. In fact,...
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October 15, 2016
The Fine Print
HarperCollins Publishers India has announced the launch of its official YouTube channel, Harper Broadcast. Hosted by TV anchor and author, Amrita Tripathi, Harper Broadcast will showcase celebrated au...
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October 15, 2016
Unlearnt history lessons
The Untitled is a book that harks back to the novels of the 20th century, an era when literary enterprises comfortably contained orphans, fortune-seeking travellers, spies, political intrigue, love an...
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October 8, 2016
‘The short story is a snapshot’
Arunava Sinha’s The Greatest Bengali Stories Ever Told comes with a caveat. In his introduction, he writes that the short stories in this collection have been chosen not according to literary canons ...
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October 8, 2016
In its nth retelling
Sitting in the long narrow balcony of Arshia Sattar’s apartment is peaceful. Our conversation is punctuated by the chirping of birds and the occasional soft purr of a passing car. Her collection of po...
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A walk in the woods
‘Flattered, yet suffocated’
Snacks and ladders
Fine Print
From self to the other
A rare voice of sanity
This Word For That: Rebuilding Babel
All about body language
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This is the first of three short stories by Seetha Ravi on the musical trinity — Syama Sastri, Tyagaraja and Muthuswami Dikshitar. The stories have been translated by Prabha Sridevan, former judge, M... »
