Sunday, May 12, 2002		Books

Fighting for (western) civilisation
Review by Shelley Walia
Civilisation by Clive Bell. Rupa, Delhi. Pages 216. Rs. 95
THE Bloomsbury Group, consisting of Virginia Woolf, her husband Leonard Woolf, the critic and economist, the novelist E. M. Forster, the biographer Layton Strachey, the art critic Clive Bell, the painters Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, and the economist John Maynard Keynes, was an informal association of English intellectuals who met frequently from 1907 to about 1940 debating serious questions of art, morality, philosophy, and religion.

Subsumed under colonial discourse
Review by Anupama Roy
Woman and Empire: Representations in the Writings of British India (1858-1900) by Indrani Sen. Orient Longman, New Delhi. Pages 211. Rs.450.
REPRESENTATIONS of women were central to the construction of a male self-identity in the colonial period. The aggressive masculinity of the colonial enterprise, intertwined with the 'civilising' mission and racial superiority, contributed towards the construction of 'women' and the terms of their inclusion in the colonial enterprise.

Why did independent India and Pakistan retain British generals?
Review by Rajendra Nath
War and Diplomacy in Kashmir 1947-48 by C. Das Gupta. Sage Publications, New Delhi. Pages 239. Rs 250.
IN 1942, the Indian National Congress passed the famous Quit India Resolution, asking the British to leave India. As India was the brightest jewel in the British Empire, the British were against the Independence Movement. However, in 1947, they had to leave India.

A bit of a grey area
Review by Hephzibah Anderson
The White Family Maggie Lee Saqi Books. Pages 420 £11.95.
THE shortlist for this year's Orange Prize for fiction is dominated by home-grown talent, but of its six contenders none is more deliberately British than The White Family. In this, Maggie Gee's eighth novel, she has left behind the experimental excesses of her youth to focus on the prejudice and violence she perceives as ingrained in contemporary society.

Reliving the of pangs of Partition
Review by Sandhya Chaudhri
Pangs of Partition, Vol. II, The Human Dimension, Edited by S. Settar & Indira Baptista Gupta, Indian Council of Historical Research, Manohar Publishers & Distributors, New Delhi, 2002, Pp 358, Rs. 700/-.
THE Volume II ‘Human Dimension’ can be called a people’s history as it takes us away from the history of the official records to the domain of tragedy where the drama of Partition was enacted with a pang in the heart. Based on experiences, recollections and reminiscences in the form of eye-witness accounts, testimonials and oral narrations, it listens to the marginal voices and focuses on popular culture of the period. It provides a microscopic view of the fallout of Partition.

WRITE VIEW
A wise friend for the fretful ones
Review by Randeep Wadehra
Stress Management compiled by Ajanta Chakravarty. Rupa & Co. New Delhi. Rs 95. Pages: 64.
STRESSED out? Not surprising, considering the sort of lifestyle we are forced to adopt. Old values espousing self-restraint and contentment have given way to an acquisitive mindset, triggering off a frenzied pace of living. It takes its toll in the form of perpetual personal dissatisfaction and social strife as well as various physical and psychological ailments.

Pain and yearning lend philosophical depth to Ghalib’s verse
Review by Amar Nath Wadehra
Love Sonnets of Ghalib
Translations and Explications
by Dr. Sarfaraz K. Niazi. Rupa & Co, New Delhi. Pages: xliii + 1019. Price: Rs. 995/-.
EXPERIENCE churns up emotions. Emotions ignite ideas. Ideas fuse with passions to give birth to poetry. Poetry is a sensitive soul's ultimate form of expression ranging in hue from the profane to the sublime. Nowhere is this truer than in Mirza Asadulla Beg Ghalib's renderings.

Listening to women writers’ voices
Review by Ashu Pasricha
Women and Self by Rajni Walia Delhi: Book plus, 2001, Pages: 200, Rs 400.
FEMINIST research has unearthed a mine of unacknowledged women’s writing from the past and from diverse nations and cultures. Among women novelists, it is usually Jane Austen, who is singled out as a name worth mentioning. She is followed by other well-known women novelists, like the Bronte sisters. George Eliot and Virginia Woolf.