Sunday, January 6, 2002		Books

WRITE VIEW
Conflict resolution in South Asia and global power play
Review by Randeep Wadehra
Conflict and Peacemaking in South Asia edited
by P. Sahadevan. Lancer’s Books, New Delhi. Pages 533. Price Rs 850.
TODAY, the once ignored South Asia has suddenly become a hot topic – and not merely because of the WTC bombing and Taliban. The region’s economic potential and India’s rise as a power and possible strategic ally in the West’s scheme of things are some of the "positive" factors contributing to the change in perception.

Book review 2001: Between le Carre and Naipaul
Review by Robert McCrum
THE year began, as it ended, with the premature death of a writer associated with the UK’s University of East Anglia, a remote but vigorous campus that, shaking off its identification with Malcolm Bradbury’s History Man, is fast becoming the Mecca of contemporary English writing

Tales from women’s world
Review by Alka Tyagi
A Storehouse of Tales
edited by Wasi, Jehanara and Malashri Lal ..Shrishti Publishers, New Delhi. Pages 199. Rs 200.
IT has been a sheer coincidence that I was looking for short fiction of the last decade when somebody directed me to the book, "A Storehouse of Tales" published recently. The book came as a welcome relief because there is complete dearth of primary material on the contemporary short –fiction written in English.

The non-ideology of Taliban and its threat to Pakistan itself
Review by Parshotam Mehra
Taliban: the Story of the Afghan Warlords
by Ahmed Rashid. Pan Books, London. Pages xx+276.
WITH Mullah Omar and his close comrade-in-arms, the Al-Qaeda chief, Osama bin Laden, literally on the run and an uneasy interim government in the saddle in Kabul, is the trauma of the Taliban finally over? Hard to say and difficult to believe. For a close reading of the slender volume under review would seem to suggest a different story.

Cultural politics of Hindi nationalism
Review by Akshaya Kumar
Hindi Nationalism
by Alok Rai. Orient Longman, New Delhi. Pages 138.
VERY often it is the Indianness of Indian English writings that is challenged by the indigenous critics; the Indianness of writings in various native Indian languages is taken for granted and therefore seldom debated.

Chamba, oh Chamba
Review by Ram Varma
Swept Away — A novel
by Deepak Munjral. Minerva Press, New Delhi. Pages 568. Rs 390.
ONCE in a while, in the galaxy of popular contemporary novelists of Indian English like Shashi Tharoor, Upamanyu Chatterjee, Amit Chaudhari, Amitav Ghosh, Vikram Seth, Vikram Chandra and others, comes a novelist Deepak Munjral with his debut novel "Swept Away", maybe to disturb their literary hierarchy.