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This fortnight at Crossword...
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These Foolish Things by Deborah Moggach,
Chatto & Windus, Rs. 1,130
DEBORAH MOGGACH'S Tulip Fever is soon to be filmed by Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks. Her writing has a certain filminess to it — it is fast-paced, humorous, and filled with little plots.
She's quite an old hand at it by now, having written over a dozen novels.
Moggach herself lives in North London, but the people and places in her books go all over the world. The one we are talking of here — These Foolish Things — is set right here in Bangalore in a home for the aging, located close to Brigade Road, the Oberoi, Ramanshree, and more.
It might amuse Bangaloreans to know that one of the things that persuaded Norman, aging Lothario and father-in-law of Dr. Ravi Kapoor, to come to Bangalore is having heard that "the women in Bangalore are the most voluptuous in India"!
Kafka's Last Love by Kathi Diamant
Secker & Warburg, Rs. 870
THIS "GRIPPING literary detective story" explores the brief, passionate relationship between Kafka and his last lover — the mysterious Dora Diamant, about whom very little has ever been written (this is her first biography) — who he met and lived with before succumbing to severe tuberculosis less than a year later, a moth short of 41.
Kathi Diamant, the author (no relation of Dora Diamant) is the Director of the Kafka Project at San Diego State University and has researched among Gestapo files, documents in Moscow, and other unpublished material to construct a riveting tale of love and loss. One wishes, though, that it could have been a little less prone to syrupiness. Dora's life in itself is quite a tale, albeit a sad one, and it's interesting to put it alongside the more documented love affairs of Kafka. Definitely worth a read and also worth owning it if you are a Kafka fan.
Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo
Collins, Rs. 525
MICHAEL MORPURGO is a well-known, award-winning writer of children's literature, having authored over 90 books, several short stories, screenplays, and musicals. He also "helped to instigate the foundation of the Children's Laureate" with Ted Hughes.
When Morpurgo was researching for this book, he interviewed three farm boy veterans of the First World War, and in what they told him "there was no poetry, only horror and regret and great sadness for the loss of good friends". It's this terror and horror that spills out of the pages of Morpurgo's Private Peaceful, mixed with a little unintentional poetry, adding a poignancy to this short, unambitious little tale of World War I.
Love and Lust by Pavan K. Varma and Sandhya Mulchandani
Harper Collins Publishers India with India Today Group, Rs. 550
HAD THIS book not been an Indian publication, it would have cost twice as much. An extremely varied and absorbing collection of erotic literature from ancient and medieval India, this collection is definitely not like the customary range.
Of course, it has the usual suspects — Kamasutra, poems from Sangham literature, Kalidasa etc.. But it also has some uncommon entries, ranging from extracts of Puranas, Vedas, Tantric texts, Jain tales, bits from the Manipravala literature of Kerala, from Prakrit and Sanskrit, Rajasthani court poetry, and Telugu courtesan poems... The list could go on and on. Definitely a book that would grace any booklover's shelf.
KALA KRISHNAN RAMESH
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