Posted in Disappointing, tagged Books, Fiction, Indian writing in English, Book Reviews, Indian Writing, Novels, Indian Novel, Indian Writers, Indian Fiction, Indian Novels, Escape, Manjula Padmanabhan on May 21, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Two budding flowers and few drops of blood, the cover says it all. It took me a while to make the connection. Deep, I must add.
Actually the only new IWE book the Bangalore Airport had was this one. Only later did I hear that most critics had trashed this one and not without some reason.
Escape is [...]
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Posted in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Highly recommended, tagged Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Books, Fiction, Authors, Indian writing in English, Indian authors, Book review, Indian Writers, Purple Hibiscus, Indian Fiction, Indian Novels, Anu Jayanth, The Finger Puppet on March 17, 2009 | 14 Comments »
Reading The Finger Puppet on the heels of Lost Flamingoes of Bombay, was very reassuring - all is not lost with Indian writing. Which brings me to my pet peeve - that authentic and deserving writers rarely get nominated for those awards. Shashi Deshpande’s In the Country of Deceit was the Indian nominee for the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize recently and Siddharth Shangvi’s book has also been nominated for [...]
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Posted in Disappointing, tagged Book review, Books, Indian authors, Indian Fiction, Indian Novels, Indian Writers, Indian Writing, Indian writing in English, Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, Review, Siddharth Dhanvanth Shanghvi, The Last Song of Dusk, The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay on March 8, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
If the ’Last Song of Dusk’ was bizarre, this one is bizarre too; less but bizarre all the same. Siddarth hid behind the facade of magic realism in his last book, this one however exposes him. ‘The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay’ is disappointing and does not stand up to all the hype created by the spin doctors. Even the [...]
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Posted in Disappointing, tagged Books, Indian writing in English, Indian authors, Book review, Indian Writers, You Are Here, Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, Babyji, Abha Dawesar on September 4, 2008 | 40 Comments »
She was on ‘We the People’ a while ago, awkwardly warding questions about how much of her blog is fact and how much was fiction. Meenakshi also talked about how the popularity of her blog resulted in her being approached by publishers to write a book. Ever since I was intrigued about her book and was looking [...]
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Posted in Disappointing, tagged Books, Fiction, Indian writing in English, Indian authors, Book review, Indian Writing, Novels, Timeri N Murari, Indian Fiction, Indian Novels on August 13, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Timeri N Murari is a name that you will see tucked away among the likes of Rohinton Mistry, Anita Desai, Anita Nair, etc in the Indian Fiction section of libraries and book shops. I had never tried reading Murari before and if this book is any reflection of his skill I won’t be reading anymore.
The novel is based on the [...]
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Posted in Disappointing, tagged Anna K Chacko, Book review, Books, Chitra Divakaruni, Fiction, Hyderabad, Indian authors, Indian writing in English, Kerala, Malayalis, Mistress of Spices, Syrian Christians on August 6, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
I am thoroughly confused about this book, I searched the book for clues, I trawled the Internet and yet I am not sure - some say this book is a memoir, some say fictionalised autobiography and some others say it is a novel. And what exactly is a fictionalised autobiography? It can only be one of the two – fiction [...]
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Posted in Highly recommended, tagged Book review, Books, Chandani Lokuge, Fiction, Indian Writing in, Novel, Pakistani Authors, Pakistani Fiction, Pakistani Novel, Review, Romesh Gunesekera, Saadat Hasan Manto, Shandana Minhas, Taslima Nasreen, The Match, Tunnel Vision, Turtle Nest on July 28, 2008 | 2 Comments »
I have started to widen my reading just to keep myself aware of what is else is out there. I looked at books coming out of our neighbours including Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. I read ‘Shodh’ by Taslima, ‘The Match’ by Romesh Gunesekera and ‘Turtle Nest’ by Chandani Lokuge. Amidst all the clamour about Taslima and her being bundled [...]
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Posted in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Recommended, tagged Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun, Books, Fiction, Book review, African Literature, The God of Small Things, Purple Hibiscus, Writings on July 21, 2008 | 3 Comments »
The Evening Standard said the ‘Purple Hibiscus’ is as revealing as Arundhati Roy’s ‘The God of Small Things’, which I did not really believe. To my amusement I found that the likeness grew stronger as the novel progressed. There are so many striking similarities that at times you wonder if Chimamanda had read Ms. Roy’s book. The sibling attachment, the abusive fathers – [...]
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Posted in Recommended, tagged Book review, Books, Indian authors, Indian Novel, Indian Writing, Kerala, Madhavan Kutty, Malayali Writers, Nairs on July 14, 2008 | 3 Comments »
I do regret missing out on the works of Thakazhi, O V Vijayan, M Mukundan, M T Vasudevan Nair and Vaikom Basheer in their original forms. I believe that at times the texture is lost in translations. However, Gita Krishnankutty who translated this book by Madhavan Kutty has done an excellent job. People who can understand Malayalam can comprehend the [...]
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Posted in Disappointing, Short Stories, tagged Book review, Books, Fiction, Indian authors, Indian Writers, Indian writing in English, Malayali, Short Stories, Under the Rain Tree, Vatsala Balachandran Warrier, Writing on July 11, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
I should have judged the book by its cover this time. Sometimes my quest for checking out unheralded authors backfires, and how. This is another book that I regret having bought, not for the cost but the anticipation and effort. After having read short story collections by Kunal Basu, Shinie Antony, Vassanji and Rohinton Mistry, [...]
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