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An eclectic collection of books
The road to knowledge is long and endless. And occasionally thought-provoking books make one's progress along this road easier. Reading, in this age of the multi-media, is not just a past time.
`Sarai', in Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Bengali, Persian and Turkish, mean "an enclosed space in a city, or, beside a highway, where travellers and caravans can find shelter, sustenance and companionship; a tavern, a public house, a meeting place; a destination and a point of departure; a place to rest in the middle of a journey."
It is befitting that a series of books on contemporary issues and life is called `Sarai Reader'. The series figures among the exhibits at the Book Fair organised by DC Books, which began at the Gangotri Hall the other day.
The `Sarai Reader' has so far brought out three titles - `Public Domain', `The Cities of Everyday Life' and `Shaping Technologies'. These collections of essays break away from the convention in opting for eccentric but innovative layouts and contents. They are pointers to the future of reading. They are reflections of modern society.
The `Reader on Public Domain' has essays under sections such as `Old Media/New Media: Ongoing Histories'; `Internet Interventions'; `Wetware: Bodies in the Digital Domain'; `Free as in Freedom': `Software as Culture' and `{lt}Alt/Option{gt}'. Under these heads is, what has been described by the editors, as "a navigation log of actual voyages and a map for possible journeys into a real and imagined territory that we have provisionally called the `Public Domain'."
The publishers retain the courage to chalk out a new path in subsequent editions as well. Published annually, the Sarai Reader's fourth edition would be on `Crisis/Media', a juxtaposition of crises in our social sphere and explosion of communication.
Also featured in the exhibition, are titles such as `Blue Gold' by Canadian activist, writer, and policy critic, Maude Barlow, `Holy Water from the West', by K.R. Ranjith, `The Nobel Book of Answers', `Agnes's Final Afternoon: A Essay on the work of Milan Kundera' by Francois Ricard, etc. `Blue Gold' is about the politics of commercialising water resources and `Holy Water' is about the `Cola-nisation' of the Third World. The Nobel Book of Answers, with a foreword by Jimmy Carter, winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2002, is a collection of essays by Nobel winners such as the Dalai Lama and Mikhail Gorbachev who write on various aspects of life.
A series that is in demand is one on improving fluency in English language, brought out by the Kochi-based Adult Faculty Council.
Featured in the fiction section are `Short Stories by Latin American Women: The Magic and The Real', a collection of stories. The first story in the book is by the Chilean author, Isabel Allende. Also featured is Ms. Allende's memoir, `My Invented Country', which the blurb says is about "truth stranger than fiction". Then there is `The Advocate - A Sardinian Mystery' by Italian playwright and novelist Marcello Fois and a collection of complete works by Arthur Rimbaud, the precocious boy-poet of French symbolism.
Among the Malayalam titles, there are `Nastapradeshangal' and `Kannadilokam', collection of essays, in two parts, on communalism and fundamentalism by Anand, `Mattathi', a new novel by Sara Joseph. The exhibition also features 80-odd titles published under the `Novel Carnival' by DC Books, starting with `Khatakavadhom', which is a translation of `The Slayer Slain' by Ms. Richard Collins of Kottayam that was done in 1859, to `Lanthabetheriyile Luthiniyakal' by N.S. Madhavan, written in 2003. The exhibition will end on February 20.
By Anand Haridas
Photo: H. Vibhu
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Life
Bangalore
Chennai
Hyderabad
Kochi
Madurai
Thiruvananthapuram
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