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	Home    Reviews   print this page Review of the week From Dawn Monica Pradhan's The Hindi Bindi Club reviewed by Shagufta Naaz "Take three mothers, add three daughters. Stir in some ethnic flavour and spice with cross-generational conflict. Add a dash of age-old Indian wisdom, sprinkle with romance and there you have it: Monica Pradhan’s debut novel, The Hind-Bindi Club. Or at least, that’s what you expect. Like a dish that looks appetising but lacks some unidentifiable ingredient, the novel promises a delicious read but somehow fails to deliver." Read More... May 5th 2008 From Outlook Magazine 'Pretty Confused', 'Pretty Sinister', 'Pretty Average': Don't judge the book by its cover. Shobhaa De looks pretty on it but can't say the same about her book. By Bhaichand Patel "Why does a book that is ostensibly about India have a portrait of the author on its cover? Let me explain. When David Davidar was the publisher at Penguin India, he once caught his staff sniggering over a manuscript that Shobhaa De had submitted. "Don’t laugh," he told them sternly, "her books pay your salaries."" Read More... April 28th 2008 From Dawn The 'Woman Warrior' celebrates victory by Mohsin Maqbool Elahi "Maya Angelou, author of the best-selling books I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Gather Together in My Name, and the Heart of a Woman, has also written several collections of poetry including Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ’fore I Die. She read her poem On the Pulse of Morning at the inauguration of President William Jefferson Clinton on January 20, 1993. She also wrote 10 one-hour programmes for the television series called ‘Blacks, Blues, Blacks’, which highlight Africanisms still current in American life. However, the book under discussion here is Angelou’s 1993 book Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now which is considered by many to be an inspirational book." Read More... April 21st 2008 From VOW Nepal Kagajma Dastakhat: A review by Neelam Karki "...Kagajma Dastakhat (is) a collection of eight short stories written by Neelam Karki ‘Niharika’. In the story, Abha, an unmarried woman tries to fight against societal gender discrimination only to face obstacles from her own family. The paragraph is the description of Abha’s feelings incited by an old woman who refuses to eat food outside because she is a Brahmin..." Read More... April 16th 2008 From the Guardian Don't forget the F-word: Erica Jong on how the hope she had for women in 1968 has been extinguished "It's an artifice of journalism to choose a given year and pretend that year "changed everything". We constantly hear in the United States that 9/11 "changed everything", yet - for most of humanity - life is still as nasty, brutish and short in 2008 as it was in 1008 or 2008 BC. If it is so for man, it is doubly so for woman - since women and children are the main victims of war - if we go by numbers. But can numbers measure pain? Probably not." Read More... April 8th 2008 From The January Magazine Bee Season; Review of Amulya Malladi's The Sound Of Language by Linda L. Richards "While Amulya Malladi’s five novels have not had huge pushes behind them, they have been wonderful is their consistancy and the largesse of the vision that drove them. The author gives every impression of building a solid and passionate following..." Read More April 2nd 2008 From The Los Angeles Times An Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri Review by Lisa Fugard "With her Pulitzer Prize- winning story collection "Interpreter of Maladies" and her novel "The Namesake," Jhumpa Lahiri established herself as a clear-eyed and compassionate chronicler of the lives of expatriate Bengalis and their first-generation American-born children. In her latest work, "Unaccustomed Earth," a powerful collection of short stories, those children have left home and are starting families of their own, as they struggle both with tangled filial relationships and the demands of parenthood. The straddling of two cultures has been replaced by the straddling of two generations." Read More... March 26th 2008 From The New York Times An Investement Banker finds Fame Off the Books A profile on Chetan Bhagat, author of Five Point Someone and One Night at the Call Centre By Donald Greenlees "HONG KONG — Until about four years ago, Chetan Bhagat was an investment banker distinguished from the suited phalanx in this city’s crowded financial district only by his secret hobby." Read More. March 19th 2008 From Dawn Remember Me? By Sophie Kinsella Bantam Press, London "Right off the bat, I should admit that I generally detest chick-lit. The 20-something heroines, the wealthy love interests, the contrived searches for the perfect relationship and the trite endings — I hate all of it. I used to think that the instant I picked up one of ‘those’ novels my brain would turn to mush. At its worst, chick-lit is boring, repetitive and frothy. At its best though, the writing is witty, bold and slightly irreverent: see Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones Diary. Finding these gems amidst a market flooded with formulaic titles and pink covers is no easy task. Alongside the standouts (The Devil Wears Prada, The Nanny Diaries) is Sophie Kinsella." Read More... March 13th 2008 From The TLS Giles Whittell SPITFIRE WOMEN OF WORLD WAR II HarperPress Penny Summerfield and Corinna Peniston-Bird CONTESTING HOME DEFENCE Men, women and the Home Guard in the Second World War Manchester University Press. "They shared a burning desire to “do their bit”, but they could not have been more different: the flying few, who realized their dreams, and the down-to-earth many who didn’t. These two books about British women in the Second World War could not be more different, either. Exuberant Giles Whittell is a Times journalist and a travel-writer, sober Professor Penny Summerfield and her associate, Dr Corinna Peniston-Bird are professional historians; but both stories are of patriotic women pressing to share what men regarded as their territory and thus, for those who thought about it, advancing the cause of women’s equality." Read More March 7th 2008 From the Guardian My Life As a Traitor by Zarah Ghahramani with Robert Hillman 250pp, Bloomsbury, £12.99 "Evin prison stands in the Elburz foothills overlooking Tehran, and casts a shadow over all Iran. Built for the Shah in the 1970s, it symbolises a sort of continuity of despotism between the monarchy and the Islamic republic." Read More... 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