The Vodafone-Crossword Book Awards 2008 shortlist is star-studded — and finding place are ‘The Enchantress of Florence’ by Salman Rushdie, ‘Sea of Poppies’ by Amitav Ghosh, ‘Unaccustomed Earth’ by Jhumpa Lahiri, ‘Past Continuous’ by Neel Mukherjee and ‘Escape’ by Manjula Padmanabhan.
This was announced by a panel comprising publisher-writer Urvashi Butalia, authors Mani Shankar Mukherji and [...]
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Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Anjali Chandran, Authors, Book review, Fiction, Indian authors, Indian Fiction, Indian Novel, Indian Novels, Indian Writers, Indian writing in English, The River Has No Camera on June 16, 2009 | 5 Comments »
If one went by the title or the packaging, one could have easily missed this book. If you took a little trouble and pulled it off the shelf and read the blurb, you may take a chance. That’s what I did. Anjali Chandran launched this book in 2001 and I dont remember reading about it, [...]
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Posted in Disappointing, tagged Book Reviews, Books, Escape, Fiction, Indian Fiction, Indian Novel, Indian Novels, Indian Writers, Indian Writing, Indian writing in English, Manjula Padmanabhan, Novels 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 Uncategorized, tagged Anita Nair, Indian authors, Indian Fiction, Indian Novel, Indian Novels, Indian Writers, Indian Writing, Indian writing in English, Jaishree Misra, Kerala, Malayalis, Rohinton Mistry, Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai on April 25, 2009 | 8 Comments »
Disappointing, was my thought as I turned the last page. Another Indian author that I had not tried for a long time despite several people urging me. The fact that she is related to Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai as stated by Wikipedia was certainly one reason to try this one out. May be this is not [...]
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Posted in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Highly recommended, tagged Anu Jayanth, Authors, Book review, Books, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Fiction, Indian authors, Indian Fiction, Indian Novels, Indian Writers, Indian writing in English, Purple Hibiscus, 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 Recommended, tagged Chennai, Indian authors, Indian Fiction, Indian Novels, Indian Writing, Indian writing in English, No Onions Nor Garlic, Srividya Natarajan, Tambrahms on February 16, 2009 | 12 Comments »
I attempted this one more out of compulsion, so that P did not crib about her failed attempts to make me read Seven Ancient Wonders by Matthew Reilly. By the fourth page even the mallu on the PA system saying, “Ladies and gendlemen, flight number won, seero, seero….. from Chennai to Baaingaluur”….. could not distract me. I have not giggled as much [...]
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I was wading through Lament of Mohini by Shreekumar Varma and feeling any book would be a reprieve when I started on ‘In The Country of Deceit’. I have to admit that it started off well and then it just tapered off especially towards the end as though the author also lost interest and just was not sure [...]
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Posted in Recommended, tagged Anglo Indians, Bangalore, Book review, Brinda Charry, Indian authors, Indian Novels, Indian writing in English, Life in Bangalore, Naked in the Wind, Nostalgia on September 7, 2008 | 6 Comments »
It almost seems eerie that I read this book given the recent religious strife in Orissa. It also received the Golden Quill Awards this year. An interesting book, I liked it. Scout’s honour, I was definitely not intrigued by the fact that as a boy I stayed on Campbell Road. It had nothing to do with my [...]
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Posted in Disappointing, tagged Book review, Books, Fiction, Indian authors, Indian Fiction, Indian Novels, Indian Writing, Indian writing in English, Novels, Timeri N Murari 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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