Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | Friday Review | Young World | Property Plus | Quest | Folio |

Print Pick

Short biographies

This is a well-documented set of a hundred short biographies of people who have left their footprints on the sands of Indian history, in different ways. Included are persons from almost every field of activity - writers, artists, scientists, social reformers, educationalists, politicians and freedom fighters. Find here also Britishers who spent a major part of their adult lives in India and contributed in a major way to the country are also included.

100 Great Lives; H.D.Sharma; Rupa; Rs. 495

History, culture and lore

Kaleidoscoped in this book is a landscape of history, culture and lore. In the bastions and ramparts of the citadels in Bundelkhand, is the setting of events resonating in thought, letter and song. A range of history, culture and lore is chronicled. When Rani Lakshmi Bai rode out of her citadel at Jhansi to engage the British, a legend was born to inspire an entire national movement; Kalinjar fort defied Mahmud of Ghazni and daunted Delhi's formidable Sultan Sher Shah Suri; and the loftiness of Datia, Orchha and Deogarh is among the most venerable of the country's heritage. Time and the elements have taken their toll, but these strongholds - monumental symbols of our past - continue to hold the senses.

The Forts of Bundelkhand; Rita Sharma, Vijai Sharma; Rupa; Rs. 795

Poignant narrative

Set in 1938 India and based on the film by Depa Mehta, Water follows the life of eight-year-old Chuyia, a child-bride who is abandoned at a widows' ashram in Benares after he fifty-year-old husband dies. There, she is expected to spend the rest of her life in penitence. Unwilling to accept her face, Chuyia becomes a catalyst for change in the lives of the widows. When her friend, the beautiful widow-prostitute Kalyani, falls in love with Naraan, a young, upper class Gandhian idealist, the affair boldly defies tradition and threatens to undermine the delicate balance of power within the ashram. A haunting and lyrical story of love, faith and redemption.

Water; Bapsi Sidhwa; Penguin; Rs. 325

Short stories

Knut Hamsun published only three collections of short stories during his life, and after 1906 abandoned the form altogether. In contrast to his world-famous novels, these stories are hardly known outside Norway and most of those in this collection are now translated into English for the first time. They provide fascinating commentaries on the novels Hamsun was writing at the time and some already contain echoes of his much later work. A fishing boat plies off Newfoundland, crewed by immigrants with no common language; a young boy finds a tooth in a graveyard and is haunted by its owner; a flighty young woman drives a man to murder and suicide..With stories ranging over every imaginable human emotion and situation brilliantly translated by Robert Ferguson, this volume is a rare treat.

Knut Hamson Tales of Love & Loss, Rupa; Rs. 195

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail