The Ugly Duckling mirrors his life
T
hings one never gets used to, do exist. Like the privilege of being able to read Hans Christian Andersen in his original language. The Danes are a small population, but how exclusively lucky.

BestSellers

OFF THE SHELF
Jinnah lauded, Gandhi assailed
V.N. Datta
Jinnah: A Corrective Reading of Indian History
by Dr Asiananda, Open University Press, New Delhi. Pages XIV+ 438.
The title of the book under review gives the impression that it contains a full-scale biography of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, but that is not to be. The subtitle of the book suggests that the author’s intention, seemingly laudable, is to set right the distortions that have vitiated and polluted the contents of historical studies.

Authorspeak
Gurbani’s appeal is universal
Roopinder Singh
As you make your way to the address given by V. Bhanumurti, you can’t but be aware that you are driving into one of the posh areas of Delhi. Yet his first-floor apartment is spartan. Books and papers everywhere, a warm welcome from the lady of the house, Suryamanikyam, and you are ushered into a room full of… more books.

Fiction
Spy who thrilled me
Rajdeep Bains
Operation Karakoram
by Arvind Nayar. Rupa. Pages 360. Rs 195.
Inspired by Fredrick Forsyth, Robert Ludlum and Jeffrey Archer, according to the author, but also with shades of Shashi Tharoor—Operation Karakoram is a political thriller set in 1995 against the backdrop of the volatile situation existing between India and Pakistan.

Voice of the underdog
Kuldip Dhiman
Naresh Pandit is at the forefront of modern Hindi writing from the region
E
ven after 30-odd years, the nightmare still haunts him. It started with a shootout on a cold winter night in the late seventies in Chandigarh’s Sector 15 market. The violent brawl ended with the loss of three or four lives. But that night, a writer was born.

The canons of warfare
Vijay Oberoi
Indian Army Doctrine
by Headquarters Army Training Command. Pages:123
The book is a two-part document; the main part is unclassified and in the public domain, while the second is the classified adjunct, for restricted circulation. This review is only of the unclassified portion. Doctrine as a concept is not widely understood. Many have confused it, wrongly, with military operations and plans.

The truth about lies
Harbans Singh

Tell Me No Lies
Ed. John Pilger. Jonathan Cape, London. Pages 626. £12.50.

D
isobedience may or may not be the original virtue, though Oscar Wilde claimed it was, but it has down the ages motivated individuals to pursue a path, the importance of which is revealed many years later. Among those endowed with this virtue are a select few who have opted to be journalists and whose second nature is to believe a thing only when it is officially denied.

Sense of Sen
Saibal Chatterjee
Always Being Born: A Memoir
by Mrinal Sen
Stellar Publishers. 310 pages

T
his book is much like an early Mrinal Sen film. Provocative, non-linear, constantly moving forward and backward in time, tilting at imagined and real sacred cows and flitting in and out of an introspective mode, it pulsates with energy and is packed with wonderful vignettes of a life well lived. But the ultimate effect that this "something like an autobiography" has on the reader is more akin to what the more composed films of his later years had on their viewers.

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