|
It’s
Shakespeare centrestage, yet again
Reviewed by
Shelley Walia
Subalterns in Shakespeare: A
Postcolonial Review
Ed Anand Prakash.
Shakespeare Association,
Kurukshetra. Pages 240. Rs 795
It
is interesting to note that for years the debate between the
conventional literary critics and the postcolonial revolved around the
need to move away from the cultural hegemony of the canon, the power
structures implicit in the curriculum around the world. "Will is
no great shakes" was a statement that did provoke the Shakespeare
lobby which would react by asserting that the postcolonial studies was
more of a bandwagon, a fiefdom of no significant consequence.
Interestingly, Shakespeare’s return to English Studies is ironically
via the postcolonial.
When
US muddled at policy level
Reviewed by Rakesh Datta
The Art of Intelligence
By Henry A Crumpton. The Penguin Press, New York. Pages 338. $27.95
Clausewitz
in his classic On War stressed that the art of war in its
highest sense is policy – a policy that fights. It equally brings
out the role of intelligence generally responsible for major conflicts
in the world. For instance, when Al-Qaida (AQ) assaulted US
chancelleries in Dar-es-Salam and Nairobi in August, 1998, killing
more than 200 people including Americans, it actually brought the
onset of new techniques of warfare to which the US was not prepared as
a matter of policy.
Mind
over matter
Reviewed by Vikrant Parmar
Incognito
By Lata Gwalani. Frog Books. Pages 267. Rs 195
‘Be
enigmatic, remain incognito' - goes a saying. Implies verbatim for
Lata Gwalani's book Incognito, where she remains enigmatic till
the last 40-odd pages and thus incognito. Post the initial few pages
where the protagonist, Anjali, relates the story of her four friends
— Shailee, Rachna, Anuradha, Shakti — and how they 'decide' to
murder the respective men in their lives, Vikram, Rohit, Avnit and
Kartik - to her doctor, the narrative becomes episodic.
Making
a difficult life simple for special children
Reviewed by Chandni S Chandel
Parenting Your Complex Child
By Peggy Lou Morgan. Indiana
Publishing House. Pages 183. $16.95
No
teacher, no doctor, no book can teach you parenting unless you do not
become a mother yourself, they say. The author rightly puts her
mentor’s quote aptly right in the beginning "If only the world
could understand you through your’s Mom’s ears and eyes",
which can be a motivating force for you and your special-needs child.
This book offers disciplined and inexpensive ways of dealing with a
special-needs child, suffering from autism, Down Syndrome, ADHD,
bipolar disorder, etc. Morgan’s book is a handy help book for all
mothers as she shares first-hand experience of rearing a child with
multiple or single disorders.
The
road to self realisation
Reviewed by Balwinder Kaur
The Man Who Tried to Remember
By Makarand Sathe (translated by Shanta Gokhale).
Viking. Pages 237. Rs 399.
Amnesiac
Achyut Athavale is trying to collect the pieces of his life, while he
is locked in a cell and facing murder charges. Haunted by ghosts of
memories, he clings to cold hard facts delineating and deconstructing
social structures instead. Being highly disenchanted and
disassociated, he doesn’t consider degrees of culpability; instead
condemns himself. It portrays the fragility of a highly intellectual
mind which has failed itself in small but crucial ways. Beginning in
medias res, the book is a postmodern riddle on the subjectivity of
perspective and experience.
|
