By Mohan Ramanan
Tharoor’s Hinduism is both a result of a particular practice and an understanding of its tenets mainly from English translations. Many of us English educated people (I count myself among them) like Tharoor also got to know our Hinduism from a reading of translations of the Vedas, Upanishads and The Gita, and the writings of Sri Aurobindo, Swami Vivekananada, and Radhakrishnan.
By Mosarrap H Khan
Ashok’s poems work best when the depiction of violence is etched in minimal language, disembodied, like a hand across the shoulder, as if with the deft touch of a painter’s single brush-stroke.
By Namrata Pathak
Strangers No More: New Narratives from India’s Northeast is a sequel to Sanjoy Hazarika’s polemical and densely packed, Strangers of the Mist, a book that is remarkably different on the ground that it projects the insider’s brush with the North-East of India, a patch of land that is enveloped in a mist, a hazy blanket of half-truths, impenetrable and insular.
By Fahad Hashmi
Besides using Wikipedia contents, the book borrows from Orientalist scholars like Bernard Lewis, Daniel Pipe, and Gilles Kepel. The author has also quoted some Indian journalists including Praveen Swami. The ideological orientation of these scholars and journalists is an open secret. In the end, the book turns out to be contradicting its own arguments.
By Partha Sarathi Mukherjee
Scream and other Urbane Legends is a genre-bending collection of short stories – a powerful, unique, memorable, and original collection. Ampat Koshy can be called one of India’s genuinely experimental writers, carving out an uncharted road in these times.
By Jagari Mukherjee
As I reached the end of the trilogy, I seemed to have woken up from a beautiful dream-like trance. Yet, the memory of the dream clung to me like the fragrance of a rose. I re-read my favorite bits from the book time and again.
By Bina Biswas
In Nineteen Seventy One and Other Stories, Askari’s fictional aesthetic focuses on the exploration of characters, their motive, and psychology. His privileging of psychology over plot, characters’ interiority over external action frees his stories from the generic conventions of popular fiction. In the true modernist vein, the stories bring together psychological realism and physicality.
By Lalima Chakraverty
Countdown is a critique of the Indian nuclear programme. The author’s aim is to understand and evaluate the image of a modern man dealing with an anti-human weapons system and anti-civilization nuclear armaments. The book assesses the current economic development of the country carried forward by war machines.
By Paromita Sengupta
Volga presents Sita through five short narratives, in four of which she is shown encountering “marginal/minor” women characters of the Ramayana, and each encounter is enriching for both Sita and the respective characters who are Surpanakha, Ahalya, Renuka, and Urmila. The fifth and final narrative features Rama.
By VM Girija
Saeed Mirza’s autobiographical novel infuses life to the beautiful image of an intelligent and deeply emotional woman, who represents changing India. As she lived in the Nehruvian India, she had internalised all those democratic and secular values.
By Fahad Hashmi
Neyaz Farooquee’s memoir, An Ordinary Man’s Guide to Radicalism: Growing up Muslim in India, unravels the tattered, bruised, and anguished conscience of a young Muslim boy who lives in the vicinity of Batla House in Okhla, which shoots into infamy following a police ‘encounter’ that takes place in the area as the cops try to flush out suspected terrorists holed up in a flat.
By Fahad Hashmi
There is no denying that there are other stories that can also be called ‘the greatest Urdu stories ever told’. However, the tales that have been incorporated in this anthology are certainly greatest. Since one has read most of these tales in Urdu, one can vouch for the fact that the original stories are not lost in translation.
Cafe Dissensus Everyday 