Category: Art, Books, Writing | Tags: Art, Bangalore, Book review, Books, Cosmopolitans
The Cosmopolitans ♦ Anjum Hasan Penguin India, 309 pages, Rs 499. “Being a modern Indian is hard work,” a former king tells Qayanaat, the protagonist of Anjum Hasan’s The Cosmopolitans. If this is true for the King, the dispossessed monarch of fictional, small-town Simhal, it’s certainly so for Qayanaat, a 53-year-old single woman who lives in […]
Read More...Published: 28. 12. 2015 | Comments: 0
Category: Books, Cities, Writing | Tags: Book review, Books, Karachi, Pakistan, Sorayya Khan, Zia-ul-Haq
City of Spies ♦ By Sorayya Khan Aleph Book Company, New Delhi, 2015, 239 pp., Rs 295 (PB) ISBN 978-93-83064-78-6 Pakistan was scorchingly hot during the summer of 1977, the narrator of City of Spies recalls: “the newspapers were filled with worry that rain might never come”. And the persistent Cold War chill in relations between the United States of America and the Soviet Union only […]
Read More...Published: 09. 11. 2015 | Comments: 0
Category: Books, Cities, Delhi, Writing | Tags: Book review, Cannibalism, Delhi, Old Delhi, RV Smith
Delhi: Unknown Tales of a City By RV Smith (Roli, ₹295) Among the contemporary crop of Delhi’s flâneurs and society chroniclers, Ronald Vivian Smith is a tall figure. The septuagenarian arrived from Agra in the late 1950s, and his regular columns in The Statesman and The Hindu span the decades of wandering he has done in […]
Read More...Published: 03. 08. 2015 | Comments: 0
Category: Books, Cities, Writing | Tags: Amitabha Bagchi, Baltimore, Biblio, Book review, Books, Diaspora, Immigration, Novel
This Place ♦ By Amitabha Bagchi Fourth Estate / HarperCollins, New Delhi, 2013, 253 pp., Rs 499 (HB) ISBN 978-93-5116-018-2 After being suspended from his government job, Naresh Kumar, the title character in Amitabha Bagchi’s previous book, The Householder (Fourth Estate, 2012), finds himself a stranger in his own house. He waits desperately for the evening, […]
Read More...Published: 16. 04. 2014 | Comments: 0
Category: Books, Time Out Delhi, Writing | Tags: Aminatta Forna, Book review, Croatia, Fiction
Aminatta Forna travels to Croatia for her fourth novel ♦ In her fourth book, Aminatta Forna ventures out of Sierra Leone and Africa, the setting for her previous titles (including the Commonwealth Writer’s Prizewinning The Memory of Love). Set in a small town at the foot of the mountains in Croatia, The Hired Man, like Forna’s […]
Read More...Published: 04. 08. 2013 | Comments: 0
Category: Books, Time Out Delhi, Writing | Tags: Book review, Daisy Rockwell, Fiction, Hindi, Languages, Short stories, Translation, Upendranath Ashk, Urdu
Daisy Rockwell’s translation of the late Upendranath Ashk ♦ Daisy Rockwell’s translation of Hindi-Urdu writer Upendranath Ashk’s short stories is more of a teaser than a complete introduction to the Jalandhar-born author. Rockwell, who also edited the collection, had the fortune to meet Ashk a year before he died in Allahabad in 1996. She admiringly characterises […]
Read More...Published: 16. 04. 2013 | Comments: 0
Category: Books, Cities, Delhi, Time Out Delhi, Writing | Tags: Ajay Navaria, Book review, Caste, Fiction, Hindi, Laura Brueck, Navayana, Short stories, Translation
Ajay Navaria’s stories deal with the new customs of caste ♦ A tea cup, a clogged toilet, a pair of old gym shoes; these innocuous objects are transformed into loaded signifiers of caste in a new collection of short stories by Jamia Millia professor and writer Ajay Navaria. These concrete details and objects anchor the […]
Read More...Published: 04. 03. 2013 | Comments: 0
Category: Books, Cities, Delhi, Time Out Delhi, Writing | Tags: Book review, Delhi, Fiction, Hindi, Jason Grunebaum, Short stories, Translation, Uday Prakash
Uday Prakash’s stories bring downtrodden characters to life ♦ “I bet you’re thinking that I’m taking advantage of the one hundred and twenty fifth anniversary of the birth of Premchand, the King of Hindi Fiction, to spin you some hundredand- twenty-five-year-old story, dressed up as a tale of today,” writes Uday Prakash, in one of […]
Read More...Published: 01. 02. 2013 | Comments: 0
Category: Books, Time Out Delhi, Writing | Tags: Anjali Joseph, Book review, Fiction, Migration
Anjali Joseph processes bewilderment ♦ If Anjali Joseph’s second novel is best devoured in one sitting, it’s not because it wouldn’t hold up to slow, literary scrutiny. Rather, it’s because Another Country is the refreshing opposite of that “urgent book” that demands moral engagement. It builds character-driven emotional momentum through protagonist Leela’s peregrinations through Paris, […]
Read More...Published: 04. 08. 2012 | Comments: 0
