Category: Books
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Critics and readers: A tale of two lists
‘Readers and critics don’t always think alike, as The Guardian discovered when it asked the two groups to name their favourite novels ’It is a truth universally acknowledged that critics and readers do not think alike. Those first five words are borrowed from the most famous opening line in the…
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Misunderstood favourites: Born in the USA and The Charge of the Light Brigade
Revisiting Tennyson led me to Springsteen—and to the uneasy thought that we often hear only what we want to hear. A poem or a song may acquire an identity of its own, quite unlike what the poet or singer intended. I was reading a biography of Lord Tennyson when an…
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The Crusades and the West’s later role in the Middle East
The Iran war suddenly made me think of the Crusades. I am surprised I have not yet seen any comparisons being drawn. There are, of course, obvious differences. This is not, for most of the adversaries at least, a religious war. They are not fighting for the Holy Land. The…
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John Keats: Romantic in sweet unrest
People who indulge their senses to excess are often reproved as sensualists or voluptuaries — a censure that would never attach to Keats. Yet has there ever been a more sensuous poet? His vivid imagery and his evocation of the physical world — the fragrance of flowers, the beauty of…
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Comic, comedic and comedy: From Shakespeare to Wodehouse
The Oxford Dictionary of English gives only a partial definition of comedy. A comedy, it says, is a film, play or broadcast programme intended to make an audience laugh. That is true as far as it goes, but it misses something essential. What truly defines a comedy is not simply…
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Truman: His biography by David McCullough
He approved the plan to drop atomic bombs on Japan to end World War II. He had American troops defend South Korea from North Korean aggressors backed by Russia and China. His actions shaped the postwar world, binding Japan and South Korea to America. Yet Harry Truman, the 33rd US…
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The Golden Road: Dalrymple celebrates the wonder that was India
The historian A.L. Basham wrote a book called The Wonder That Was India. William Dalrymple ringingly extols the wonders of that land in The Golden Road, offering a paean to ancient India as a fountainhead of human civilisation. Dalrymple paints a fascinating portrait of a civilisation that, for over a…
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Source Code: Bill Gates decodes Bill Gates
The earnest, high-minded philanthropist Bill Gates donating billions to safeguard public health we see today has another side, revealed in his memoir, Source Code. It’s striking how engaging he – once the world’s richest man – can be. As in the first chapter, titled Trey, after his nickname. “It was…
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Updike romanced the 1950s
John Updike never disappoints. Anytime I pick up his books, I am mesmerised by the beauty of his prose. I don’t read him for his plots, his pace; his novels are to be lingered over and savoured for their vivid images and sensory details. He is a sensuous writer whose…
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A Strange and Sublime Address: Calcutta as it was
A Strange and Sublime Address vividly recalls Calcutta as it was in the 1970s and 1980s. Amit Chaudhuri’s first novel, published in 1991, A Strange and Sublime Address tells the story of a Bengali boy’s visits to Calcutta. Ten-year-old Sandeep goes with his mother from Bombay (Mumbai) to Calcutta to…
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