Category: Books
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Langston Hughes “sings” America
I just heard recordings of Langston Hughes reading two of his poems. He reads beautifully in a well-modulated voice. And the recordings are crystal clear. Click on this link, I, too, sing America, or go to the Poetry Archive website. The recordings were made by the Folkways label in 1955,…
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The Enchantress of Florence
The Enchantress of Florence begins and ends like a movie. It openswith a golden-haired stranger arriving in the Mughal emperor Akbar’scapital, Fatehpur Sikri, and ends with Akbar meeting a legendarybeauty. What happens in between has the fairytale quality of theArabian Nights and uses the same literary device. The Enchantress of…
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Le Carre: The spy who almost went out into the cold
John Le Carre was tempted to defect to the Soviet Union when he worked for MI6 during the Cold War in the early Sixties. “I wasn’t tempted ideologically, but when you spy intensively and you get closer and closer to the border . . . it seems such a small…
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Two Indians still in the Booker fray
I am not surprised Salman Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence has failed to get past the long list to the short list for the 2008 Man Booker Prize even though bookmaker Ladbrokes installed it as the 4-1 favourite. As I wrote in an earlier post, the West might find the…
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Fowler and Burchfield
Only Oxford University Press knows how many copies of Fowler’s Modern English Usage edited by RW Burchfield has been sold. But one thing it is not — the Fowler. Jonathan Yardley in his homage to the other classic stylebook, The Elements of Style by Strunk and White, does not even…
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Salman Rushdie, Florence and Tang sculptures
Bookmaker Ladbrokes has installed Salman Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence as the 4-1 favourite to win the Man Booker prize this year. I find the book hard to put down, having finished two-thirds of the novel in the last two days, getting the references easily as an Indian, but I…
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Paul Theroux on Singaporeans and Indians
“Singapore is an example of a place where people are self-conscious in the presence of foreigners,” says Paul Theroux,” because they feel that you’re going to criticise them for having accommodated themselves to their government and this way of living.” “It’s like a gated community,” he adds. “You go in…
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Enid Blyton beats Shakespeare
Enid Blyton beats Shakespeare! It had to happen. Blyton is more reader-friendly. I am surprised Agatha Christie didn’t beat Shakespeare. But she’s also in the top 10. Here are Britain’s best loved storytellers, according to a survey by Costa Book Awards, formerly the Whitbread Literary Awards. See there is only…
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