Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita is a highly imaginative Russian novel about human relations, greed and corruption, life under Stalinist rule, and, well, just about everything else.
Read More ›
I picked up this short book in New Delhi’s Khan Market just before my 13 hour plane ride back to the US and it kept me well entertained for the first part of the flight. Author Nalin Verma offers 37 folk tales and fables from Bihar, his homeland. These stories are filled with virtually every […]
Until the Lions: Echoes from the Mahabharata by Karthika Naïr. This review appeared in the Harvard Review on January 28, 2020: https://www.harvardreview.org/book-re… The Mahabharata, the larger of India’s two epics, was composed roughly 2,000 years ago. This literary hulk of 100,000 verses (200,000 lines) narrates the multigenerational story of two groups of cousins that battle […]
by Hank Heifetz Kalidasa is often said to be the Shakespeare of India and The Origin of the Young God is considered one of his best poems. It is the story of the how the tender and lovely Parvati (the daughter of Himalaya) wins over the ascetic god Shiva, as well as their courtship, marriage, […]
I first travelled to India in 1971 as a participant in the University of Wisconsin’s Junior Year in India program. A propeller plane trudged across the Atlantic Ocean, Europe and the Middle East on it’s way to the Subcontinent. My ultimate destination: Varanasi (then, Benares) in northern India, the holy city on the banks of […]
I Take This Woman by Rajinder Singh Bedi. My rating: 4 of 5 stars. I find it a bit odd to review a novel that was written more than fifty years ago. But I feel the effort is worthwhile even if it inspires just one person to read this classic novel by the award-winning Urdu […]
Dalits, Dynasty and She by Sanjay Chitranshi. My rating: 3 of 5 stars. Dalits, Dynasty, and She is a very good semi-fictional portrayal of Indian politics, especially as relates to caste tensions, scheming, greed and corruption. The story has real potential, and I was truly engaged in the first hundred pages. But, after that, I […]