I’m halfway through reading ‘The Girl Who Married A Lion’, a collection of African folk tales - collected and narrated by Alexander McCall Smith, that delightful creator of detective Mma Ramotswe. I’m quite enjoying these stories too; they remind me a bit of the Jataka tales.
Reading Itchy’s post about the Mma Ramotswe series, I […]
Posted on November 12th, 2008 by apu
Filed under: Book Reviews | No Comments »
Many years ago, when Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ ‘News of a Kidnapping’, was first published in English, I remember enjoying it immensely and wondering why not too many books of this kind were written in India. That was 10 years ago, when Indian writing in English was still all about Rushdie and Seth, and non-fiction was largely […]
Posted on October 31st, 2008 by apu
Filed under: Book Reviews, The Literary life | No Comments »
I haven’t yet read any of the Booker-shortlisted novels, not one. Partly because all of them seem to be out of stock at my library (and I’m trying to be very cautious while buying books these days, I am scared that my home-office-library is soon going to run of space!) and partly because, well there’s […]
Posted on October 23rd, 2008 by apu
Filed under: Book Reviews, The Literary life | 3 Comments »
Reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘Never Let Me Go’ for the tenth time, I am struck by the quietness of the book. This is not a book with verbal fireworks. The language is extremely simple and easy to follow, like most Ishiguro novels. The narrator is seemingly just narrating a story, her story. Yet, it all comes together […]
Posted on September 11th, 2008 by apu
Filed under: Book Reviews, The Literary life | No Comments »
I’ve just finished reading noted anthropologist Richard Leakey’s lucid book on human evolution, ‘The Origin of Humankind’. In school, dreary teaching often made me feel as though science was fundamentally un-understandable. Biology was better than chemistry, which in turn was better than physics, the biggest bogey of all; still, this fear of science was almost […]
Posted on August 13th, 2008 by apu
Filed under: Book Reviews, The Literary life | 5 Comments »
Amruta Patil’s literary debut, Kari, is an ambitious graphic novel, a coming of age story with an alternative trajectory. As in many coming of age stories, the heroine Kari is young, in love, confused and trying to come to terms with an apparently meaningless existence. Her journey is however, more complicated. The object of love […]
Posted on July 7th, 2008 by apu
Filed under: Book Reviews, The Literary life | No Comments »
