Sunday, September 8, 2002		Books

The myth of western civilisation
Review by Shelley Walia
Enduring Western Civilization edited by Silvia Federici, Prager, Connecticut, USA. Pages 210. $ 42.
THE revelation about the evil capabilities of the human race would be revealed only after the holocaust. As Hannah Arendt points out in her book Origins of Totalitarianism, ‘We can no longer afford to take that which is good in the past and simply call it our heritage, to discard the bad and simply think of it as a dead load which by itself time will bury in oblivion. The subterranean stream of Western history has finally come to the surface and usurped the dream of our tradition.’

Telling Sikh history
Review by Surjit Hans
Historical Dictionary of Sikhism by W.H. McLeod. OUP, New Delhi. Pages 349. Rs 395.
I must declare my interest before the readers. My name figures in the acknowledgements. The first edition of this book was published in 1995 by the Scarecrow Press, London. The Oxford University Press’ second edition would make the book accessible to readers in India.

Breathing fresh life into a classic
Review by Vikramdeep Johal
Mother India by Gayatri Chatterjee. Penguin Books. Pages 87. Rs 250
A classic usually suffers the fate of a historic monument—both are taken for granted by the masses. Familiarity breeds indifference, if not contempt. However, there are always those "passionate few", as litterateur Arnold Bennett put it, who keep a classic alive from one generation to the next by rediscovering it.

Short takes
A look at the Kashmiri poetess who gave voice to women
Review by Jaswant Singh
Lal Ded: The Great Kashmiri Saint-Poetess edited by Dr S.S. Toshkhani. APH Publishing Corporation, New Delhi. Pages 151.Rs 395.
A 14th century Kashmiri poetess, Lalleshwari, popularly known as Lal Ded, continues to influence the Kashmiri mind even in modern times. The sayings or "vaakhs" of this spiritual seer preach harmony between people of all creeds and faiths. Her poetry presents the vision of a peaceful and melodious world of joy.

Engaging tale of biases and racialism
Review by Bhavana Pankaj
Paddy Indian by Cauvery Madhavan, Penguin Books, Pages 237, Rs 250
Hmm.mm, it’s a nice book. Not something that you’d feel incomplete without if you didn’t read it. It’s funny, yes. Not the way Anurag Mathur’s The Inscrutable Americans was. You don’t exactly hold your sides and laugh till you cry. It makes you chuckle alright, but only in the mind...

Learning to manage oneself with respect to time
Review by D.S. Cheema
Cool Time and the Two Pound Bucket by Steve Prentice. Macmillan India Ltd. Pages 298. Rs 220.
"WE the physicists work with time every day", said late Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman, "but don’t ask me what it is. It is just too difficult to think about." Some define time as "Time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once." For centuries our calendars and clocks have tried and failed to tame the greatest mystery of the universe, time.

Adventures from the land of fairies
Review by Madhav Tankha
Artemis Fowl and Artemis Fowl: the Arctic Incident both by Eoin Colfer, Viking Books, 2001, Pages 280, UK £12.99, Puffin Books, 2002, Pages 288, £2.99 respectively
THOSE who are anxiously awaiting J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter: The Order of the Phoenix, the fifth book in the Harry Potter series, should know that they might have to wait a little while longer. In the meantime, they are well advised to read some other books written on the lines of Harry Potter. Apart from the now well-known Lord of the Rings trilogy, there are some newer books, which are well worth a read.

Meet the author
"I write for the sheer pleasure of telling stories"
BESIDES being a cartoonist and a graphic artist, 42-year-old Ravi Shankar Etteth is the deputy editor of India Today. And with the recent launch of his debut novel The Tiger By The River (Penguin), he has also become a writer. Humra Quraishi met Ravi Shankar Etteth for an exclusive interview. Excerpts: