Navtej Sarna
I wanted to read some Russian literature this year. So I read some plays by Anton Chekhov, Ivan Turgenev’s novel Fathers and Sons, and I am slowly going through Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov . I have also started Orhan Pamuk’s A Strangeness in My Mind . I also chanced upon and thoroughly enjoyed a slim book in Punjabi, Mera Pakistani Safarnama (My Pakistan Travelogue) by the famous actor Balraj Sahni.
(Navtej Sarna, India’s next High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, is the author, most recently, of Indians at Herod’s Gate: A Jerusalem Tale .)
Kancha Ilaiah
I am wandering in the Book Fair in Hyderabad wondering what to read in the coming year. The book I loved reading was The Norton Anthology of World Religions, put together by Wendy Doniger. I feel this is one of the best anthologies on Hinduism I have read. From the Indus Valley to the present, she charts the journey of Hinduism, selecting some of the finest articles written on the subject. The section on twentieth century, with writers from Tagore onwards, have some outstanding excerpts. I also liked chapters on tribal Hinduism and Dalit Hinduism.
(Kancha Ilaiah is a professor at the Maulana Azad National Urdu University.)
