Category: Books
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Software billionaires like 19th century tycoons…
Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Ballmer, Steven Jobs and Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy are all about the same age, says Malcolm Gladwell. So were John Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Jay Gould and JP Morgan, the biggest 19th century tycoons, he adds. Some generations are luckier than others and benefit from…
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Ian Buruma, Naipaul, and old letter on Singapore
The writer Ian Buruma says he was approached to write Naipaul’s biography a long time ago. He says this in his review of Patrick French’s biography, The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul. Buruma writes in his article in the New York Review of Books:…
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Second Indian Booker winner in three years
The award for the best English novel by a writer from any country except America goes to… an Indian for the second time in three years! Aravind Adiga has won the 2008 Man Booker Prize worth 50,000 pounds ($87,000) for Commonwealth writers for his novel, The White Tiger, set in…
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Bengalis in 1920s Singapore
I am glad that Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong spoke at the Global Indian Diaspora Conference this morning. His presence there while Singapore officially went into recession underlines the deepening ties between the two countries. India too is caught in the economic turmoil. Indian banks from tomorrow will be…
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The anti-American on the Nobel Lit com
I would be surprised if this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature goes to any English language writer, for Doris Lessing won the award last year and English language writers have been getting the award every alternate year since 2001 when Naipaul was the winner. But no American writer has won…
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Death of a Writer: A mystery deep with poetry
I was floored by this Michael Collins mystery, captivated by its lyricism and intrigued by its plot. A novel nominated for the National Book Award turns out to be eerily similar to the real-life murder of a teenager. But it was written before her death. Suspicion naturally falls on the…
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Gandhi in his own words
Today is Mahatma Gandhi’s 139th birthday. He was shot dead by a Hindu nationalist at a prayer meeting in New Delhi on January 30, 1948, at the age of 78, only five months after India’s independence — for trying to protect the Muslims during the communal riots that followed the…
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The White Tiger: Clever but…
I am surprised that Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger is on the shortlist for the Booker Prize but not Salman Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence. Would anyone want to read The White Tiger a second time? No doubt it’s a clever book but I was repelled by the details. What…
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Sea of Poppies: Riveting history
Englishwomen in the early 19th century bathed only twice or thrice a week in India – and mocked the Indians for bathing every day. The memsahibs – Englishwomen – were bathed in their bathtubs by their maids who soaped and scrubbed them, asking what to them sounded like “Cushy?” “Cushy?”…
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A Dylan Thomas poem for the restless
Dylan Thomas’ most famous poems such as Fern Hill or In My Craft Or Sullen Art can be easily found online, but I have never come across this poem on the Net. It’s haunting. Maybe it will appeal to anyone who has moved from one place to another or is…
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