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Message of the
Gurus
Roopinder Singh
Guru Granth Sahib—The Guru Eternal
by Mohinder Singh.
Himalayan Books, New Delhi.
Pages 256. Rs 4,500.
GURU
Granth Sahib is revered by millions of Sikhs all over the world
and the occasion of tercentenary of the ‘Gurta Gaddi Divas’ has made
the need to focus on the text and its unique and sacred message even
more acute.
The
Indian reality
Jyoti Singh
The White Tiger
by Aravind Adiga. HarperCollins.
Pages 321. $ 16.32
WINNER
of the Man Booker Prize - 2008 for fiction, one of the world’s most
prestigious literary awards, The White Tiger, is not just the
story of Balram Halwai, the protagonist who undergoes a metamorphosis.
Black deeds
Himmat Singh Gill
Doctors from Hell
by Vivien Spitz
Jaico. Pages 318. Rs 395.
POSSIBLY
one of the most difficult book reviews that this reviewer has done in
the last three decades, has to be court reporter Vivien Spitz’s
horrifying and nerve chilling account of the Nuremberg War Crimes trial
of Nazi doctors who willingly carried out murderous experiments on Jews,
Gypsies, and Polish and Russian PoWs during WW2 in the name of service
to the fatherland and medical research.
History
of a forgotten world
Kavita Soni-Sharma
Once a Prince of Sarila—of
Palaces and Elephant Rides, of Nehrus and Mountbattens
by Narendra Singh Sarila.
I. B.Tauris, London. Pages 300. Rs 895.
THE
erstwhile Raja of Sarila, Narendra Singh Sarila’s book is an
autobiography about life in princely India in the 1930s and 40s.
Travails of ordinary people
Shalini Rawat
Dissonance and Other stories
by Jayakanthan. Translated by Dr K.S. Subramanian.
Katha. Pages 145. Rs 250.
ONCE,
as the story goes, a queen, exasperated by the dust and heat of a
journey, ordered her palanquin-bearers to stop by a pond. She wanted to
bathe.
Memoirs
of a civil servant
R. L. Singal
Legacy to Bureaucracy
by V. P. Sawhney.
Lancer Publishers, New Delhi. Pages 575. Rs 895.
THE
book is a record of the author’s personal memoirs. Since his family
was uprooted in 1947 (when he was barely 12 years old) from Lyallpur,
West Pakistan, it also contains his reflections on pre- and
post-Independence India.
The feminist code
Eliza Parija
SHE
is considered the Judith Butler and Virginia Woolf of contemporary Oriya
literature. And yet for her, feminism is not just about battling male
hegemony. For Dr Sarojini Sahoo, an award winning Oriya writer, feminism
is linked with the sexual politics of women.
Monica
Lewinsky: New toon on the block
MONICA Lewinsky is once
again in the news, for she has been transformed into a cartoon character
for a graphic novel. The Alcoholic by Jonathan Ames and Dean Haspie
shows a booze-addled writer meeting the Portly Pepperpot at a book
reading.
SHORT TAKES
Spiritual
wisdom
Randeep Wadehra
The Mystic Eye
by Sadhguru. Jaico, Mumbai.
Pages: x+262. Rs 250.
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