Dryad Press publisher (and co-founder of The Writer’s Center) Merrill Leffler talks with Ken Langer, author of A Nest for Lalita.
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Nayantara Sahgal has written another gem of a book. The author has captured the horror of our times in a story where ordinary people become victims of nationalist fervor. I only wish she had spent more time in the heads of the main characters as they undergo and are forced to live with the aftermath […]
I am in total agreement with the Ron Charles’ review (Washington Post). Sometimes I wonder if Rushdie isn’t terribly insecure, since he seems to be on an eternal quest to impress his readers with his wit. He seems to be too clever by half. Unfortunately, this cleverness comes at the expense of emotional substance. I […]
Rereading The Time Machine was not only a pleasure, but haunting and prescient. Written more than a hundred years ago, the Time Traveler finds himself in a future world where the workers (Morlocks) and upper-class citizens of leisure (the Eloi) have virtually no contact. It is our world in the extreme, where the gulf between […]
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3420639082?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1 “Rhythms of Life” and “Wives of the God King” (another book by the same author, also available on Goodreads) are the two foremost scholarly books on India’s devadasis, generally translated as temple dancers, although their job description is much deeper and more complex than that moniker conveys. Professor Marglin’s credentials are impeccable; she holds […]
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.
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 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 […]