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Rupture
and recovery
Rumina Sethi
No Woman’s Land:
Women from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh write on the Partition of
India.
Ed. Ritu Menon. Women Unlimited, New Delhi. Pages 202. Rs 300.
The last decade has brought us face
to face with our hitherto hidden history with the many books on
Partition: the two volumes of Pangs of Partition by S. Settar and
Indira Baptista Gupta, Translating Partition by Ravikant and
Tarun K. Saint, Inventing Boundaries by Mushirul Hasan and The
Partitions of Memory by Suvir Kaul.
Intimate
enemy
Parshotam Mehra
The Lion and the Tiger: the Rise and Fall of the British Raj
1600-1947.
by Denis Judd. OUP. Pages. xiv+234. Rs 345.
It is more than half a century
since the British rule in India came to an end yet it continues to evoke
no dearth of literature: memoirs, personal accounts and any number of
books.
Punjab’s
Unhoye
Roopinder Singh
The Survivors
by Gurdial Singh. Translated by Rana Nayar. Katha India Library, New
Delhi.
Pages 248. Rs 250.
Gurdial Singh is now a much
acclaimed writer and winner of Jnanpith Award. Much of his life, this
was not so—he is very much a son of the soil who struggled as a school
teacher, taught in college and then became a professor at the Bathinda
Regional Centre of Punjabi University.
Beautiful
& brutal
Baljit Singh
Wild tales from the wild
by Saad Bin Jung. Roli Books. Pages 203.
The two defining moments in
India’s resolve to conserve its wildlife and associated habitats
occurred in the 1970s. The first was the launch of Project Tiger and the
other, the promulgation of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972.
First-hand
accounts
Arun Gaur
Essays on the History of the Mizos
by Sangkima. Spectrum Publications, Guwahati and Delhi Pages 299. Rs
550.
If one who does not belong to the
North-East comes to stay in Mizoram for a few months, he would encounter
questions that are not easily answered. And when one is further caught
up in the local socio-cultural milieu and sometimes even in the turmoil
that would appear to be almost a part of some aboriginal savagery, one
desperately looks for answers.
Behind
the scenes
Kavita Soni-Sharma
City Flicks: Indian Cinema And The Urban Experience.
Edited by Preben Kaarsholm. Seagull Books. Pages 274. Rs 300.
Critics have come together in this
book to tell us about Indian cinema. These "cinegogues" are
known to peel off its outer surface to reveal the meaning
underneath. Some times they do a good job of it, at other occasions we
are given poetic assertions which are difficult to swallow.
Fun,
fact and fusion
Chetna Keer Banerjee
Role Call Again
by Poile Sengupta Rupa &
Co. Pages 131. Rs 95
Meant "for all those who went
to school", this book indeed recreates images that would be
familiar to anyone who’s ever been a teacher or among the taught. A
collection of short essays, it provides funny insights into things that
characterise school life—the flurry of activity that marks each new
session, class arrangements, annual days, the anxieties of examination
time and so on.
Book
Notes
Hitler
redux
A secret biography of Nazi
dictator Adolf Hitler commissioned by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin is to
be published later this month, the book’s British publisher has said.
Stalin’s Hitler Book was presented to the Soviet dictator in
December 1949, in a limited edition of one, and was put in his personal
archive before being discovered by German historian Matthias Uhl last
year.
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Llosa’s new love
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Sequel
to Peter Pan
Scottish
crime fiction goes global
Martin Roberts
If
Edinburgh were all about men in kilts playing bagpipes, its medieval
castle and the world's top arts festival, then British crime writing
might have drifted into a stately old age.
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