Shattering the Stereotypes: The Delhi Gang Rape and the Need for Nuance”
Just had my article “Shattering the Stereotypes: the Delhi Gang Rape and the Need for Nuance” published by ANU’s South Asia Masala blog. In December and January I spent a few weeks in Delhi, a city I...
View ArticleRoad to Katmandu, Patrick Marnham (1971)
I had seen this book for sale in Canberra’s Academic Remainders Bookshop while I was waiting to hear whether I’d got the job I wanted in Kathmandu. I was tempted to buy it right away, but decided that...
View ArticleStupid Guy Goes to India, Yukichi Yamamatsu (2012) Translated from Japanese...
Stupid Guy Goes to India, by Yukichi Yamamatsu. Translated from the 2008 Japanese ‘Indo e baka ga yattekita’ by Kumar Sivasubramanian. Chennai: Blaft and Tranquebar, 2012. (Purchased from Book...
View ArticleGodavari, Fahmida Riaz (2008) Translated from Urdu by Aquila Ismail
Godavari, by Fahmida Riaz. Translated from the 1998 Urdu novel of the same title by Aquila Ismail. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. (Purchased in India). Though very short at only 110 pages, Fahmida Riaz’s...
View ArticleThe Water People, Joe Simpson (1992)
The Water People, by Joe Simpson. London: Abacus, 1993 (1992). (Second-hand acquired copy). Joe Simpson’s The Water People is the story of childhood friends, Chris and Jimmy, who set off into the...
View ArticleBehind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity,...
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, by Katherine Boo. New Delhi: Hamish Hamilton, 2012. (Purchased in India). It was Ramachandra Guha’s endorsement on the front...
View ArticleJaipur Literature Festival 2014- Day 4
Day 4 of the JLF 2014 brought sunnier skies, meaning that sitting around outside became much more pleasant. It was also a Monday, so much of the throng had returned to Delhi (or wherever else from...
View ArticleMy commentary on the Doniger “The Hindus” case
My commentary in Himal Southasian on the disgusting case, in which Penguin India succumbed to the irrational, fundamentalist petition against the American scholar’s book: “The recent case of American...
View ArticleAsymptote’s take on the Wendy Doniger case
Most of what I’ve been reading on Penguin India’s decision to withdraw and pulp Wendy Doniger’s book The Hindus: An Alternative History is fairly similar: outraged and persuasive. I even wrote such a...
View ArticleBurmese Days, George Orwell (1934)
Burmese Days, by George Orwell. Harcourt: 1962 (1934). (Purchased in Cambodia). When I was about nine or ten years old my family bought its first video player, my parents got it for Christmas. But the...
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