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Memoirs, movies and other matters

Hitch-22: A Memoir
By Christopher Hitchens.
Penguin. Rs 599.

OVER the last 30 years, Christopher Hitchens has established himself as one of the world’s most influential public intellectuals. In this long-awaited memoir, Hitchens re-traces the footsteps of his life to date, from his childhood in Portsmouth with his adoring, tragic mother and reserved naval officer father, to his life in Washington DC, the base from which he would launch fierce attacks on tyranny of all kinds.

Along the way, he recalls the girls, boys and booze, the friendships and the feuds, the grand struggles and lost causes, and the mistakes and misgivings that have characterised his life.

Hitch-22 is, by turns, moving and funny, charming and infuriating, enraging and inspiring. It is an indispensable companion to the life and thought of our pre-eminent political writer.

Manasarovar
By Ashokamitran.
Penguin. Rs 225.

In the 1960s, known as the golden age of Indian cinema, screen icon Satyan Kumar migrates to Chennai from Mumbai. He meets Gopalan, a middling scriptwriter. An inexplicable bond forms between the two across the divide of class and language. Gopalan's son dies and his wife's dementia acquires homicidal overtones. Both men flounder as they try to reconcile with pain and sorrow - and finally the need for redemption in a canvas that bustles with a cast as diverse as Jawaharlal Nehru and the silent mystic Meher Baba.

Beautiful from this Angle
By Maha Khan Phillips.
Penguin. Rs 350.

Amynah Farooqui writes "Party Queen on the Scene", a weekly anonymous gossip column for a Karachi magazine. Amynah makes no apologies for her life of casual sex and recreational drugs. She is just the polar opposite of her best friends Mumtaz and Henna, who she wishes would lighten up - especially Mumtaz who is too uptight to be the daughter of a drug baron. When party animal Monty Mohsin makes a money-spinning reality show, "Who Wants To Be a Terrorist", it triggers a slew of projects to cash in on the trend and a chain of events that tear the friends apart. Tragedy strikes and the lives are lost in the melee forever.

Granta 112 Pakistan
Ed. John Freeman.
Penguin. Rs 599.

Packed with 200 million people speaking nearly 60 languages, Pakistan is one of the most vibrant places in the world today. Granta 112 Pakistan brings to life the landscape and culture of the country in fiction, reportage, memoir, travelogue and poetry. Like the journal's issues on India and Australia, the issue celebrates the talent, which has burst onto the English language publishing world from Pakistan in recent years. — IANS

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