The second of the books my aged father presented me for my birthday this year is The Silk Road: A New History by Valerie Hansen. Written and published in 2012 by OUP, the book is an account of life in Central Asia and Western China during ancient times when the Silk Road trade is said… Continue reading The Silk Road: A New History Full of Strange Surprises
My aged father presented me Ghost-Eye for my birthday last month, and it was after a long time that one was reading a novel by Amitav Ghosh. Actually, it’s not a novel in the real sense of the term, but a strange tale of supernatural proportions. It’s a story that combines reincarnation, superstition, fantasy and… Continue reading A Fishy Tale of Reincarnation Cases in Modern Times
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
A couple of months ago, I happened to chance upon Indian Philosophy by Dr. S Radhakrishnan, a two-volume edition published by OUP in India. I was actually browsing on Amazon India searching for The History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell which I wished to re-read and add to my now-depleted library of books thanks… Continue reading Indian Philosophy a Compendium of Indian Thought
When I was working in the advertising industry in Delhi more than 20 years ago, I used to frequent book shops – of which Delhi has many good ones – and buy and read books voraciously. However, I always had a pile of unread ones waiting to be read since there was my work in… Continue reading Sita Valles, Somebody’s Idea of a Revolutionary
While reading Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and The Making of Modern Asia which my aged father gave me for my birthday this year, I was thinking that this is a book for international readers since the history of India’s partitions has been told many times. But through the first chapter itself, I was surprised to… Continue reading Shattered Lands Surprises, Though Not Pleasantly
I was reading a book by VS Naipaul after a really long time, when my aged father presented me with The Enigma of Arrival for my birthday last month. I was looking forward to reading it, since I hadn’t read this particular book before. Of course, I had the nagging doubt that unprofessional PR agency… Continue reading The Enigma of Arrival, a Departure from My Reading of Naipaul
At a time when India seems to be scaling new heights at least in GDP rankings globally, there couldn’t have been a timelier book on India and its place in the world than The Golden Road. William Dalrymple’s latest book, The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World attempts to tell the story of… Continue reading Dalrymple’s Golden Road Dazzles, But Lacks Depth
Some of you might have seen my posts on LinkedIn about a new book, The Corporation in the 21st Century by John Kay, that I bought and was reading recently. Actually, it was a review that I read in the Financial Times that prompted me to buy and read it. I must admit that I… Continue reading The 21st Century Corporation in the Rear-view Mirror
Last month, I finished reading Salman Rushdie’s Knife, the book he wrote about the attack on his life in the US, having survived it. This book was sent through my younger sister, Bhavani, last year ostensibly for my aged father to read. Unprofessional PR agency idiot bosses have been meddling for decades now, with and… Continue reading Wielding the Pen on the Knife
