Beating about the Bush
Roopinder Singh
Dude, Where's My Country?
by Michael Moore. Penguin, Pages 269. £ 7.99.
THERE were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. President Bush and Prime Minister Blair have both admitted to this recently. Everyone who had read Michael Moore's latest book, on which the docu-drama Fahrenheit 9/11 is based, will nod his head and say: "I knew that all along."

Complex and dazzling feat
David Mitchell’s Booker-shortlisted Cloud Atlas is a brilliant epic, full of elaborate metaphors and shifting voices. But this is no dry literary exercise: it’s even got a car chase, writes John Walsh.
Cloud Atlas
by David Mitchell. Sceptre. Pages 529. Rs 250.
SINCE David Mitchell’s debut novel, Ghostwritten, was published in 1999, readers have got used to his command of a score of different literary registers and voices, his breezy ability to twist several disparate story lines into a cat’s cradle of allusion and thematic intertwining.

Booker shortlist
Three-horse race
Louise Jury
SARAH Hall was the only woman to survive to the next round of shortlisting for Britain's most prestigious literary honour, £50,000 Man Booker Prize (with all except one of the women and one of the first-time novelists on the long list failing to make the grade), with her second novel, The Electric Michelangelo, which was not even originally submitted by her publishers for consideration but "called in" by the judges.

Notes of dissent
Elfriede Jelinek, the controversial Austrian writer and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature 2004, takes a politically confrontational view of women's writings, writes Shelley Walia.
Elfriede Jelinek, the controversial Austrian writer and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature 2004, takes a politically confrontational view of women's writings. She hoped that if they were to recognise the politics of their own theory, they would become politically effective.

Derrida
De-constructed
Rana Nayar
"Jacques De-rri-da is de-ad. Can-cer of pan-creas claimed his life at the age of 74." Though this irreverent, playful way of announcing Derrida’s departure may make his admirers squirm, it would have certainly won instant approval from the guru of ‘deconstruction.’

Signs and signatures
Mulk Raj Anand
The man and the novelist
Darshan Singh Maini
Mulk Raj Anand’s crowded life of 99 years was so eventful as to offer many an interesting story. So each of his friends had something personal to relate, and the expanding Anandiana kept swelling till the end. My own impressions of "Uncle Mulk" are associated with our meetings in his Cuffe Parade house, Mumbai, and with his frequent visits to the Punjabi University, Patiala, where he would frequently drop in for the chat or a meal, wearing his favourite cor duroy trousers, with his ubiquitous bottle of brandy in his hip-pocket.

Unconvincing thesis
M.L. Raina
Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace
by Sumantra Bose. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. Pages 307. $25.94
ONE of the sidelights of the tragic conflict in Kashmir is the amount of punditry it has spawned in the last half century. Journalists, academics and politicians of all hues have from time to time added their nuggets of wisdom to the inordinately detailed reportage on this issue.

Spelling out the straight path
Sikandar S. Bhayee
Lest We the Sikhs Go Astray
by Gajinder Singh. Pages 168. Rs 220.
THE title is a polite reminder, but also highlights the extent to which the precepts and practices of the Sikh way of life have deviated. This book with its 19 essays outlines the key practices of Sikhism as dictated by the Gurtram and Sikh history, its traditions and ethos.

The courage of Begum Samru
Samra Rehman
Samru: The Fearless Warrior
by Jaipal Singh. Srishti. Pages 197. Rs 195.
THE meteoric rise of Begum Samru, the protagonist of the historic novel, dazzled her contemporaries and even today, it astounds. Starting out as a prostitute, she ended up as the commander of her own troops; the recognised ruler, in her own right of the rich principality of Sardhana, a Moghul noble, who was honoured with titles bestowed by the Emperor.

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