Published by Scribner, 2000, 320 pages. This book on writing starts with two contradictory epigraphs: “Honesty is the best policy” and “Liars prosper”. Good fiction is a mix of the two. Writers invent, but also draw upon what they know. This book is far more than a primer on writing well. Stephen King starts and …
Continue reading On Writing—A Memoir of the Craft: Stephen King
Published by Simon & Schuster, 2016, 528 pages. It was in the early 80s that I first heard Bruce Springsteen. Looking for new music, I raided the tiny music shop in Secunderabad (India) and picked up Born to Run. I was hooked. The music spoke to me, although I was from a different culture and …
Translated from Russian by Keith GessenPublished by Picador / Dalkey Archive Press, 2005, 240 pages. Original version published in 1997. "Chernobyl is like the war of all wars. There's nowhere to hide. Not underground, not underwater, not in the air." On 26 April 1986, Energy Block No. 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station was …
Continue reading Voices from Chernobyl—The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster: Svetlana Alexievich
Published by Rupa Publications, 2007, 100 pages.Review by Sadhana Ramchander How many people you know grew up in a zoo? How many people you know have a father who started a zoo? This is the stuff of my own childhood dreams (before zoos became bad places), and I became very excited when I saw this …
Published by Vintage Press, 2008, 224 pages. There is something primeval about crows and ravens, which is probably why they often get a bad rap in fiction. They are often portrayed as the harbingers of bad tidings and connected in some way to evil. And when we are not seeing them as some sort of …
Continue reading Crow Country: A Meditation on Birds, Landscape and Nature—Mark Cocker
Published by Hodder & Stoughton, 1997, 374 pages. My fascination with Turner’s paintings began in the late 1970s. I was in my late teens, and we had just moved to Delhi. Instead of buying me new clothes for an upcoming festival, my mother, very sensibly, took me to a bookshop. The first thing I saw …
Published by Faber & Faber, 2000, 592 pages. I hesitated about writing this review because you have to be a real fan of Sergio Leone films to enjoy this book, and I wasn’t sure how many of the readers of this blog are. But you know that I can be a bore about films I …
Continue reading Sergio Leone: Something To Do With Death—Christopher Frayling
Published by Princeton University Press, 2011, 488 pages.Review by Susanne Karine Gjønnes The key question Sheldon Garon, Professor of History and East Asian Studies at Princeton, tries to answer is why are some countries thriftier than others, and in particular, why is the US saving so little? Through a comparative historical analysis, Garon tracks thriftiness …
Continue reading Beyond Our Means—Why America Spends While the World Saves: Sheldon Garon
The Scum of the Earth by Arthur Koestler Published by Eland, London, 2006, 253 pages. Originally published in 1941 by the Left Book Club.Review by Tom Peak Arthur Koestler was a curiosity. So often spent rowing against the tide, his life personifies the experience and aura of the twentieth century intellectual more than any other. So …
Continue reading Koestler’s Kafkaesque Nightmare: Parallels Beyond Perception
Translated from Italian by Ann GoldsteinPublished by Alfred A. Knopf, 2016, 233 pages. Original version published in 2016.Review by Imran Ali Khan In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri is a beautiful read that explores the relationship between a writer, language and the nature of the self. The book explores the writer's relationship with Italian, a …
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