The making of a legend
Review by Rachna Singh
Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War
By Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara.
HarperCollins.
Pages 314. Rs 295.
The Bolivian Diary
By Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara.
HarperCollins.
Pages: 303. Rs 295.
Victoria & Albert Museum, London, held an exhibition on Che Guevara in 2006. Director Steven Soderbergh made a film on Guevara succinctly called Che which opened in January, 2009. A search on the Net yields a Che store that sells knick-knacks on Guevara. Time magazine rated Guevara as one of the 150 most influential people of the 20th century. This ‘Che’ cult began in the 1960s with Alberto Kordo’s photograph of Guevara, aptly titled ‘Guerrillero’. Since his death in 1967, the stylised visage of Ernesto Guevara has become an icon of radical chic within popular culture. But more importantly, he is revered even today as a symbol of freedom.

Nightmare revisited
Review by Kavita Chauhan
The Idea of a University: Jamia Millia Islamia
Ed. Rakhshanda Jalil.
Aakar Books.
Pages 80. Rs 175.
An encounter between the Special Branch of Delhi Police and a group of suspected terrorists in Batla House, in the neighbourhood of Jamia Millia Islamia University, started when some students were picked up from the university by the Delhi Police in connection with the seven blasts in the Capital.

Visible work, invisible women
Review by Manmeet Sodhi
Women Farmers of India
By Maithreyi Krishnaraj and Aruna Kanchi.
National Book Trust.
Pages 161. Rs 45.
The book argues that "the face of the Indian farmer is a woman’s face". With men moving out of agriculture, women’s work has become more visible over the last few decades. The book offers critical perspectives on various issues, including gender inequality, technological empowerment, ownership of land, unmet collective needs that women have like public provision of health care, hygiene, water, energy. More importantly, it provides valuable information on the policies and programmes for women development as well as women welfare in different Five-Year Plans.

Books received: ENGLISH

Ganga calling
Review by Rajbir Deswal
The Holy Ganga
 By Kaushal Kishore.
Rupa & Co. Pages XXV+288. Rs 150.
 The popular legend credits that the Ganga was brought on Earth by sage Bhagirath who did penance and performed austerities to please the Gods, in order to cleanse the sins of his ancestors and to perform rituals for their salvation, with the holy waters. Sagar, who was the great-grandfather of Bhagirath, had 60,000 sons who perished in a fire, after they incurred the wrath of Rishi Kapila.

Marxist ideology examined
Review by Harbans Singh
Red and Black: What’s Wrong with the Communist Party of India
 By Arun Srivastava
Yash Publications. Rs. 900. Pages 304.
For much too long the common people of India have believed that the Communist Party of India (Marxist), popularly known as CPM, was the true manifestation of the communist movement in contemporary India. The uninterrupted rule of the Left Front under the leadership of CPM since 1977 and its intermittent rule in Kerala was ample proof of this. This party and its allies in the Front had believed that they had reinvented themselves and therefore survived the upheaval caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union. The survival had, in fact, strengthened its claim to being the anointed sentinel of Marxism in the country.

Story of woman behind walls
Papri Sri Raman
There was no five star hotel launch and cocktails at the release of the English and Malayalam translation of the novel Irandaam Jamangalin Kathai (The Hour Past Midnight) by Salma, which is author Rokkaiah’s nom de plume. The recent launch happened at a dimly lit auditorium in Chennai where long shadows danced on a floor on which dancer, Chandralekha, had once set her steps to music.

Tęte-ŕ-tęte
Costume charisma
Nonika Singh
Dolly Ahluwalia Tewari, India’s talented and one of the most original costume designers in the film industry, tasted success with her very first film The Burning Season that fetched her a nomination for the Prix Genie awards. Today the designer has many more reasons to preen. For she has just finished "dressing up" none other than matinee idol Amitabh Bachchan in Soojit Sircar’s forthcoming film Shoe Bite.

SHORT TAKES
Pakistan — the culprit, or victim?
Review by Randeep Wadehra
Pakistan in Regional and Global Politics
Ed. Rajshree Jetly. Routledge.
Pages: xxxv+365. Price not mentioned.
Across the border things are getting increasingly worrisome; the situation is threatening to engulf Pakistan in a civil war that will have rather catastrophic ramifications for the entire subcontinent. While American and NATO forces are involved in the war against terror Russia, China and Iran are waiting to jump on either side of the fence.
 Caste-Class Struggle-1
By Sukhdev Singh Janagal. Hashia Publications.
Pages 223. Rs 200.
 Problems of Indian Nationalism
By Bhagwan S. Gyanee. Unistar.
Pages 140. Rs 295.

TWITTERATURE!
Two students in the US have summarised the stories of some of the world’s greatest literature into 140-character messages using the popular microblogging site Twitter. Emmett Rensin, an English and philosophy student at the University of Chicago, and friend Alexander Aciman, who is studying comparative literature, condensed the plot lines in Twitterature: The World’s Greatest Books Retold Through Twitter, soon to be published by Penguin.





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