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Into
the world of great painters
These two volumes bring out
the artists from the shadows of their ‘masters’and recognise the
contributions long eclipsed by their patrons and scholars alike
Masters of Indian Painting
1100-1900 (Two Volumes)
Eds M. C. Beach, Eberhard Fischer and B. N. Goswamy.
Artibus Asiae Publishers, Zurich.
Pages 839, with more than 500 coloured illustrations.
Reviewed by Mahesh Sharma
THE
"Masters" volumes are a landmark in the history of Indian
miniature painting. The vision of these two volumes goes back to The
Family as the Basis of Style, the path-breaking work that B. N.
Goswamy published in 1968, replacing the hitherto accepted
understanding of "style" as a court/regional phenomenon.
Aesthete
assassin
Satori
By Don Winslow
Headline/ Hachette.
Pages 537. Rs 395.
Reviewed by Roopinder Singh
NICHOLAI
Hel stayed in my mind
forever since my first encounter with the meditative ‘naked kill’
practitioner through Trevanian, the author of the 1979 bestseller, Shibumi.
One among the millions of readers of this bestseller, I would
sometimes find a nugget of useful information in my mind, and on
further reflection its provenance could be traced back the book that
was a richly-layered thriller. Like many readers, I wanted more.
Glimpses
of life
Spotting Veron and Other
Stories
By Ankush Saikia.
Rupa. Pages 182. Rs 195.
Reviewed by Aditi Garg
EVEN
the simplest of lives have facets that fascinate, surprise, tickle and
sadden. There are no ordinary people, only untold stories. Stories
from around us and about the things that touch our lives are more
engaging as we can relate to them.
Suspenseful
whodunit
Love on the Rocks
By Ismita Tandon Dhanker.
Penguin.
Pages 211. Rs 150.
Reviewed by Puneetinder Kaur Sidhu
ISMITA
Tandon Dhanker’s Love on the Rocks, part of Penguin’s Metro
Reads series, is a romantic thriller that tests the bonds of love and
marriage against a backdrop of suspense and intrigue. Staged on the
high seas, this whodunit refreshingly explores previously uncharted
settings in Indian fiction by placing its characters on a ship.
Praising
puns
S. Raghunath
A good pun may be admitted
among the small excellencies of a lively conversation. — James
Russell
When common people like puns and make them, then a nation is on a high
level of civilisation. — G. C. Lichtenberg
THERE
is something to be said both for and against puns. They upset the
dignity of speech, flout the rules of civilised conversation and cut
the ground of logic from under us. On the other hand, to a great
practitioner and artificer of words, a pun is a language on vacation.
It exposes the
vulnerability of language to the onslaught by irreverence.
Tête-à-tête
Realising
life with clinical precision
Nonika Singh
A
dynamo of acting prowess, veteran actor Mohan Agashe is as dynamic in
person. Before you pop the question, he has an answer. But then,
reading minds is both his profession and passion. A qualified
psychiatrist, Agashe can’t say whether art imitates life or
vice-versa.
Fact
and fiction
Zafri Mudasser Nofil
In A Scandalous Secret, reality creeps into fiction, says
author Jaishree Misra
Jaishree
Misra, whose A Scandalous Secret is the story of an
Indian woman who gave up her new-born child for adoption when she was
a student in England, feels her novel has a bit of reality invariably
creeping into fiction and that makes it credible.
Potter
casts one final spell on Bloomsbury
Nick Clark
AS
fans waved goodbye to Harry Potter with the release of the final film
in the series, the teen wizard once again cast a spell over publisher
Bloomsbury, whose sales "surged" in response.
Short
Takes
Heart and
heartbreaks
Reviewed by Randeep Wadehra
Blinkers Off
by Andaleeb Wajid
Rupa & Co. Pages 270. Rs 295.
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