Category: Books

  • Spoke in the Wheel

    Amita Kanekar

    ‘A novel about the Buddha’ is the way the book is described. Let’s start from that. It’s probably to dispel any ambiguity about the book’s historical authenticity – it is a work of historical fiction. But such is the force of the narrative that it really becomes easy to believe that this version is probably the correct one! It is also the most novel way of presenting the Buddha that I have read.

    The book has two parallel narratives. One traverses the path of the Buddha’s life, and the other is set almost three hundred after his death, with a monk named Upali serving as the protagonist. (more…)

  • The October Horse

    Colleen McCullough

    I had read the final book in the series – “Antony and Cleopatra” – earlier, so this turned out to be the last book I’d have to read in the ‘Masters of Rome’. That turned out be a good thing because while I liked the entire series, this would be among my top two. An excellent choice of title – borrowed from the ritual of sacrificing the best horse that Rome has. A character compares Caesar to an October Horse during the assassination conspiracy.

    The book spends about one third of its pages mopping up the Republican campaign, (rather its remains after the death of Pompey) another third in Caesar’s efforts to ‘put Rome back on her feet’ and the final third in the aftermath of Caesar’s death. (more…)

  • Mofussil Junction

    Ian Jack

    What a lovely read!

    Now that we have settled that, let me elaborate. Mofussil Junction is a collection of the author’s articles about India, written for various publications, over a time frame of more than 30 years. There are essays, profiles, and some wonderfully wistful travel writings. The book is divided into five parts – places, people, (the Nehru-Gandhi) dynasty, ‘Life and Death’, and ‘Fellow Travellers’.

    He had me hooked from the first chapter, when I learned that Bihar was the birthplace of George Orwell! There are vivid portraits of Bombay and Calcutta in the late 80s, but it is the tales of Serampur and McCluskiegunge (not to forget this chapter’s superb title) that truly amaze! (more…)

  • March of the Aryans

    Bhagwan S Gidwani

    I feel a little conflicted about this book – on one side, it is wonderful to read a perspective on the dawn of civilisation and the kind of denizens our land had, but on the other, this is clearly a work of fiction, and the author himself states that his sources are not any written ones, but oral traditional memory from different parts of the world. It is clearly aimed at debunking the Aryan invasion theory, and tries to show that the Aryans had merely returned to their place of origin after traveling to many parts of the world.

    In addition to demolishing the invasion theory, the author also tries to show that the Dravidian culture was not really independent in origin, but that civilisations on the Ganga, Sindhu-Saraswati, and other regions all had a common point from which they all emanated. (more…)

  • The Kite Runner

    Khaled Hosseini

    My perspectives are a bit skewed because I have read the author’s works in reverse chronology. I think that probably explains why I found this a little underwhelming compared to “And the Mountains Echoed“. But if I move that out of the equation, then this is a good book, not just from the point of a universal human story, but for the fact that it is a window into life in Afghanistan.

    The book covers the time frame from a few years before the Soviet occupation to the post-Taliban era and covers three generations.
    The characters are really fleshed out and this is what works for the book. Amir’s loneliness living as a motherless child, his friendship with Hassan, his complicated relationship with Baba that continues even in adulthood, and his guilt stemming from what he let happen and made happen have all been well captured. Hassan is immediately lovable and the author is able to convince us that such a genuinely noble character can exist. All the others – Amir’s Baba, a complex character who never stops being a proud Afghan despite a massive change in fortunes, his wife Soraya who has her own relatively minor demons to conquer, her parents who probably fit Afghan stereotypes of an older generation couple, and Rahim Khan, who serves as a father figure to Amir and finally shows him the path to redemption – serve as perfect foils. (more…)