Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, May 05, 2002
Literary Review
Published on Sundays
News Update

Features
Magazine
Literary Review
Life
Metro Plus
Open Page
Education
Book Review
Business
SciTech
Entertainment
Young World
Quest
Folio

Group Sites
The Hindu
Business Line
The Sportstar
Frontline

Home

Don't shoot the critic
Nobody likes bad reviews but honest reviewers are like doctors who must sometimes recommend radical surgery. Though it may seem cruel, it keeps the literary community alive and vibrant in the long run, says MANJULA PADMANABHAN.
Interview
FACE TO FACE
Rasta time in free verse
He's a poet in search of politics. He's a crusader who believes in justice for all. He's a Rastafarian who views paganism as the original world religion. Could it be a coincidence, then, that BENJAMIN ZEPHANIAH is one of ...


'Interiority... is about survival, hope'
In an understated and discerning manner, SUSAN VISVANATHAN'S novella The Visiting Moon explores the mind of a woman and a writer against a backdrop of friendships and a possible love. Here, she answers some of ...

People
IN FIRST PERSON
Receive me, then, Calcutta
For NABANEETA DEV SEN, it was hard to keep away from poetry, her parents being poets. Yet, keep away she did, when the vicissitudes of life took her elsewhere. And through many crossings she kept coming back to it. A personal narrative of a poet's r elationship with her craft.

Tribute
PROFILE
Remembering Sheila Dhar
PARTHO DATTA pays tribute to a woman who, through her writing, built bridges across various divides.
CHILDREN'S LITERATURE
A feisty girl child
THE capacity to survive is always a good test for any literary work, Pippi Longstocking, written by the Swedish author Astrid Lindgren and published in 1954 in English (translated by Edna Hurup), has weathered successive generations and ...

Columns
CLASSICS REVISITED
Cultures of corruption
To grow up requires a whole life, but to grow old one night like this is enough. Ignazio Silone, on seeing a relative stealing from a victim buried in the rubble. ALL European novels are never anything except a philosophy expressed in ...
DIFFRENT REGISTERS
'It runs in the family... '
AFTER the film and TV invasion, not many people remember the grand mythological and social plays performed with songs and long dialogues, with a harmonium player singing after the main singer. Sometime back, friends spoke to me about G.V. ...
WORDSPEAK
Sanitising language
THE present column looks further into associations with a country's name that are archaic, either misleading or unknown in the country of origin, or plain pejorative. Indiamen were ships engaged in trade with India or the East Indies; Indian ...
ENDPAPER
Confessional prose
With Love began as a personal and literary response to Salinger. But most of the writers end up sounding like disillusioned ex-disciples of a guru.

Book Review
SOCIETY
The fire every time
Names have an effect on cities and Bombay and Mumbai evoke very different images. The transition from one to the other also marks the rise of a politics of hatred, says DOM MORAES, reviewing a book on violence in the city.
LITERARY BIOGRAPHY
Home and exile
Falstaff: Why? She's neither fish nor flesh; a man knows not where to have her. King Henry IV, Part I. IN the Nobel Prize award citation, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences praised the works of Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul ...
PHOTOGRAPHY
Documenting history
Gandhi is valuable for the rare pictures it contains from the Mahatma's early political career, says S. THEODORE BASKARAN.
PROFILE
Heady brew
The Cooking of Music is a must-read for anyone who loves good writing and good raconteuring, says GOWRI RAMNARAYAN.
GENDER ISSUES
Between militaries and militancies
Militarism and Women is pertinent for the connection it establishes between seemingly disparate developments which link up to form a grid of oppression and violence. And it is mostly women who are at the receiving end, says AMMU JOSEPH.
FICTION
Feminist veneer
A simple-minded sermonising undermines Nambisan's novel, says MUKUND PADMANABHAN.
MEDIA
Views of a veteran
IT is no longer necessary now for you to be proficient in the art of shorthand and typing skills to become a journalist. And with newspaper organisations across the spectrum laying claims to objectivity (notwithstanding the fact that it is merely ...
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Not a good girl
My Girlhood is told from a child's point of view and it has the immediacy of personal observation as well as a clinical detachment, says RIMI B. CHATTERJEE.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Contours of a modernity
AT a critical point in Goswami's life as a young widow, there are two options before her. She can go to London, "that land of ancient Western tradition and culture" (p.99), or she can go to Vrindaban, "the centre of ancient Hindu tradition and ...
TRANSLATION
Unflattering portrait
Dahan raises questions regarding translations — between languages and between reality and fiction, says ABHIJIT GUPTA.
NARRATIVE
Small-town saga
There is a beautiful rhythm and an unhurried pace to Badami's prose and one looks forward to her next book, says IRA PANDE.
First Impressions
MYTH, Reality and Legend. A tough mixture you would say. But as the letters of the alphabet join and form the most ordinary of words, they tell you a story that is so extraordinary that you feel it could happen anytime, anywhere. Slowly and ...
POPULAR CULTURE
Low kitsch, high price
THOUGH it looks like a coffee table book about Indian poster art, A Historical Mela — the ABC of India, is in fact a catalogue for an auction of Modern and contemporary Indian art, rare books on Indian architectural heritage and fine ...
POETRY
Four too many
Greater representation of fewer poets might have resulted in a better anthology, says MANOHAR SHETTY.

Extracts
Spaces of encounter
Exclusive extracts from Susan Visvanathan's The Visiting Moon, published recently.

Book Watch



News: Front Page | National | Southern States | Other States | International | Opinion | Business | Sport | Miscellaneous | Index | Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education | Book Review | Business | SciTech | Entertainment | Young World | Quest | Folio |

The Hindu Group: Home | About Us | Copyright | Archives | Contacts | Subscription
Group Sites: The Hindu | Business Line | The Sportstar | Frontline | Home |

Comments to : thehindu@vsnl.com   Copyright © 2002, The Hindu
Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu