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Myth
unveiled
G.S. Bhargava
The Year of the Rooster by Guy
Sorman. Full Circle Global. Pages 302. Rs 495.
The
author of this spotlight on the ‘myth’ of China, Guy Sorman,
is a French writer who spent a full year—from January, 2005, to
January, 2006—the Year of the Rooster in the Chinese calendar—in the
continental country. He visited small villages, medium-sized towns and
mega-cities, meeting people from different walks of life and with
divergent ideological attitudes.
Horror
of Gujarat revisited
Guy Mannes-Abbott
Fireproof by Raj Kamal Jha. Picador. `A312.99
Raj
Kamal Jha’s third novel is based on the "mass
massacres" that began on 28 February 2002 in Gujarat. Jha visited a
smouldering Ahmedabad in May 2002, and wrote a taboo-breaking article
for The Indian Express.
Pilgrim’s
visit within
Himmat Singh Gill
Standing Alone in Mecca by Asra Q. Nomani.
Harper Collins Publishers India/The India Today Group. Pages 413. Rs
395.
Nomani,
a young single mother residing in Morgan, USA, makes the Haj pilgrimage
with her infant son and parents, and returns to find that many men will
not permit her front-door access and common seating with men at the
local mosque. This journey to Saudi Arabia ends as a sort of
self-discovery of her inner resolve to urge tolerance and equal rights
for the modern Muslim woman, in the face of opposition.
Secrets
of success
Puneetinder Kaur Sidhu
The Starbucks Experience by Joseph A. Michelli. Tata-McGraw Hill.
Pages 209. Rs 299.
The
Starbucks Experience is a blend of home-brewed ingenuity and
people-driven philosophies; the same philosophies that have made
Starbucks one of the world’s "most admired" companies,
according to the Fortune magazine. Management consultant Joseph
Michelli reveals through his book that this admiration is not misplaced.
Master
storyteller
Jyoti Singh
Snake Catcher by Naiyer Masud. Penguin Books. Pages 243. Rs 250.
Placed
at par with Kafka, Borges and Murakami, Naiyer Masud is indeed a
master storyteller. Passionately involved with fiction, he began writing
stories in his early boyhood but did not start publishing until the
1970s. It was his friendship with Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, Urdu
literature’s most astute critic who revived his desire to write
fiction.
The
Twain legend
S. Raghunath
"WHEN
your audience is restive," a lecture manager once advised a new
client, "It’s always a good idea to tell a story about Mark
Twain." New stories about
Twain keep popping up in magazines and radio programmes (Hal
Halbrook’s enormously successful impersonation of Twain old ones are
refurbished and given new tag lines and since the great humourist is in
no position to repudiate them, the Twain legend continues to grow).
The
poet of love’s longing
Rooma
Mehra pays a tribute to Jalalu’ddin Rumi in his 800th birth
anniversary year
When
love crosses all boundaries of pain, it becomes poetry – and
when a poet gains enlightenment, he becomes a saint and a mystic. Jalalud’din
Rumi was one of the world’s most revered mystical poets and perhaps
the greatest Sufi poet of all time.
Book
on princess of wails
Four
months short of Diana, Princess of Wales’ tenth death
anniversary, and explosive book about her is about to hit the stands.
The book, titled The Diana Chronicles, has been penned by the
late Princess’ ‘friend’ Tina Brown, who not only portrays her as a
"media-savvy neurotic". Brown, who in 1985 attacked the Prince
of Wales’ neglect of his young wife as the reason for their crumbling
marriage just four years into their supposedly ‘fairy-tale’ life,
has this time turned the tables on Diana, and portrays her as a
"spiteful, manipulative" woman who was more enamoured by the
thought of being Queen than by Charles.
Boozy
flirty chronicle
Author
Zachari Leader has hilariously recorded the drinking and
philandering of late novelist Sir Kingsley Amis in the new biography The
Life of Kingsley Amis. According to the New York Post,
Kingsley, who wrote Lucky Jim and That Uncertain Feeling,
often passed out from drinks at lunch and dinner.
Back
of the book
Martyr Bhagat Singh: An
intimate View
By K. L. Johar Sneh Prakashan.
Pages 368. Rs 600
The
book brings out a saga of Bhagat Singh’s sacrifices in the
national movement culminating in his martyrdom on March 23, 1931. The
forced exile of his uncle Sardar Ajit Singh, frequent jail pilgrimags of
his father Sardar Kishen Singh and a good number of other
revolutionaries steeled his resolve to make the supreme sacrifice.
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