Sunday, January 20, 2002		Books

Erotics of reading a text
Review by Shelley Walia
Roland Barthes: The Professor of Desire by Steven Ungar. The University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln. Pages 206. £22.50.
IN the face of criticism on both sides of the Atlantic, Steven Ungar, in "The Professor of Desire", peels away with impeccable scholarship the various myths surrounding Barthes, the teacher and the mythographer.

A conqueror and consolidator
Review by Ivninderpal Singh
Chandragupta Maurya by Purushottam Lal Bhargava. D.K. Printworld, New Delhi. Pages x+160. Rs 220.
TRIBAL political organisations were giving way to territorial states towards the end of the Vedic period. But the territorial idea was gradually strengthened in the sixth century BC with the rise of large states with towns as their seats of power. The people now owed allegiance to the janapada (territory) rather than the jana (tribe).

Old rural tale with a message
Review by John McGahern
That They May Face the Rising Sun by John McGahern. Faber, London. Pages 298.
IT is 12 years since John McGahern’s last novel, "Amongst Women", though since then he has published his magnificent "Collected Stories". The slow pace of this extraordinary writer seems mirrored in the pace of the novels themselves.

Oh Kolkata, oh Rohtak!
Review by Satya Pal Sahgal
I WAS in Rohtak in connection with that funny thing called refresher course which is happening all over India, courtesy University Grants Commission. It was an experience of sorts.

A shoddy cut and paste job
Review by Harbans Singh
Inside Afghanistan — End of Tailiban era? by L.R. Reddy. APH Publishing, New Delhi. Pages 1+345. Rs 795.
THE preface claims that "in this study for the first time an attempt has been made to critically examine the genesis of the crises in Afghanistan, its historical roots, conflicting geopolitical interest of big powers in the post-cold war period".

IMF and public health
Review by Uma Vasudeva
Public Health and the Poverty of Reforms: The South Asian Predicament edited by Imrana Qadeer, Kasturi Sen and K. R. Nayar.
STRUCTURAL Adjustment Programmes (SAP) as devised by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) were introduced in South Asia only in the early nineties. The first phase of these reforms in the health sector predicted differentiated effects for the region.

Chandigarh scholar encounters Said and exults at the experience
Review by Dev Dutt Bayala
Post-Modren Encounters: Edward Said and the Writing of History by Shelley Walia. Icon, Cambridge. Allen & Unwin: Australia. Pages 177. $7.95.
EARLIER attempts to simplify matters ended up in putting an excessive and unnecessary scholarship, leaving one all the more bewildered in the labyrinth of post-colonial theory. The task of explaining and clarifying the fundamental concepts of these theories had been undertaken by excessive jargonising and unnecessary complications.

WRITE VIEW
Of enterprise and empowerment of women
Review by Randeep Wadehra
Women Entrepreneurship edited by K. Sasikumar. Vikas Publishing, New Delhi. Pages 204. Rs 295.
THERE is hardly any male bastion left in India that women have not stormed into. Armed forces, medicine, civil services, mountaineering and other adventure sports, and much else. So, could entrepreneurship have remained beyond the Indian woman’s reach for long?