Tag Archive for ‘book review’ at Asian Window

Tag Archive for 'book review'

India, literature and culture

Published

on June 21, 2008

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In The Telegraph, UK, Ivan Hewett reviews Clearing a Space by Amit Chaudhuri:

He values the novelist R K Narayan because in his fictional town of Malgudi “he presents a small India of material desires and ambitions, and gently mocks the transcendentalism of… the Orientalists’ vision of India with its grand spiritual heritage”.

There’s a sweet earnestness about Chaudhuri’s tone that strikes a charmingly old-fashioned note, though he hasn’t entirely resisted the infection of jargon terms from post-colonial theory such as “subaltern” and “binaries”.

He can be trenchant, castigating the Hinduism pedalled by the Bharatiya Janata Party as “kitsch”, and saying it has embraced capitalism “a little too well”. And he’s not too high minded to give a proper “close reading” to Bollywood. He points out that the way it uses locations from Windsor Castle to California as backdrops for songs mirrors “strangely but compellingly, the world of conspicuous excess and extreme poverty we now live in”.

How Osama bin Laden’s family grew rich, powerful and divided

Published

asianwindow

on April 3, 2008

in Books

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In The washington Post, Milton Viorst reviews “The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century“, by Steve Coll:

Change the names and locations, and Steve Coll’s marvelous book about the bin Laden family would begin like a familiar American saga. An illiterate youth arrives in a land of opportunity from his impoverished homeland and, by dint of ambition, talent and hard work, becomes immensely rich and powerful. He collects properties, airplanes, luxury cars and women — tastes he passes on to his sons. He earns a niche in the pantheon of great builders of his adopted country.

The youth is Mohamed bin Laden, justly venerated in Saudi Arabia. But collective memory plays funny tricks, and in the West he will be permanently remembered as the father of Osama. The bin Ladens, though their Horatio Alger story overlaps Western experience, emerge as unmistakably Middle Eastern — to the point of being torn asunder by today’s religious struggles. Coll, a Pulitzer Prize winner and former Washington Post managing editor, leaves the psychology to his readers. He prefers writing on economics and politics, leavening them with anecdotes and gossip; the result is a fascinating panorama of a great family, presented within the context of the 9/11 drama.

Roots, migration and exile

Published

asianwindow

on March 25, 2008

in Books

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[Updated on March 31]

In The Hindu, Mukund Padmanabhan speaks to Jhumpa Lahiri ahead of the launch of her new book of short stories, Unaccustomed Earth (Random House, Rs 450, pp 333)

The recent literature of emigration and exile is forged by perspectives that emerge from at least two cultures, identities and, in some cases, languages. The themes in migrant literature, however, vary, depending not only on the country of origin but also on the pattern of the migration itself. The attention of first generation migrant literature is often directed at the act of migration, the passage to another land, the reception in the emigration country, issues of rootlessness and racism, nostalgia and longing. While some of these issues do crop up in second generation migrant writing, it does so often in a much more morally complex way. Affiliations are more ambivalent, there is a recognition that global uprootedness is…well…a global phenomenon, and the focus, in an odd way, is not on the country of origin or arrival, but in a community that does not fully belong to either.

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And in Hindustan Times, Indrajit Hazra reviews the book

One way of looking at nostalgia is to see it as a yearning for an old habit. In that sense, Jhumpa Lahiri’s latest book, a collection of short stories that has the quietness and the cleanliness of a modern breakfast, is not about diasporic dilemmas, but about coming to terms with new habits and reconciling with broken ones.

Unlike in her novel, The Namesake, or in her debut collection, The Interpreter of Maladies, the stories in Unaccustomed Earth do not as much deal with the differences of uprooting oneself from one’s culture and setting tentative roots in a new one, as they do about that other space-time difference: the generation gap. What Lahiri does, in the manner of an irony-less Evelyn Waugh, is to use the (anticipated, perceived or real) effects of translocation of an older generation as fodder for embarrassment-cum-concern for their children.

Continue reading ‘Roots, migration and exile’

The name is Rajnikanth

Published

asianwindow

on March 7, 2008

in Books and Movies

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[Updated on March 25]The Tamil superstar wasn’t present but his daughter, director Soundarya filled in. Rajnikanth’s official biography [The Name is Rajnikanth by Gayathri Srikanth, Rs 490, Om Books] was released in Chennai at a function during which journalist Cho Ramaswamy compared Rajni with Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, saying the film star would make a good CM because, like Modi, he ‘follows the principles of the Mahabharat’.

“Rajnikanth is a good administrator. If he enters politics and becomes the chief minister, he will take Tamil Nadu towards prosperity”, Cho, known to be a critic of both the DMK and AIADMK brand of politics, said.

ThaIndian has the full story (courtesy IANS) here.

Shobha Warrier in Rediff interviews Rajnikanth’s biography, Gayathri Srikanth:

Your phone’s ringtone is Rajnikath’s dialogue from Sivaji. Did you choose it after you started the book?

Yes. After I finished the book, I decided that I must have a Sivaji ringtone. I also programmed it in my husband’s phone though he protested saying he was a doctor!

Can Rajini rescue this book?

Sadanand Menon reviews the book in Outlook

Rajnikanth in his superstar avatar, wriggles out of every tight spot with capers that would have left Houdini in a cold sweat. Consider this. Rajini faces three gangsters. He has a gun, but only two bullets. He throws his knife at the middle gangster and aims a bullet at the knife. The bullet hits the knife, gets sliced in two, and veers off to kill gangsters on either flank, even as the knife takes care of the guy in the middle.

Another time, Rajini is chased by a gangster. This time his gun has no bullets. Gangster turns and fires a shot. Guess what Rajini does? Nah, not even in your wildest imagination. He sidesteps, catches the bullet in his own gun chamber and bang…. The gangster is history.

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