The plot is simple, the action confined to one room, the characters very few, and as a result there is hardly any dialogue, just a long, slowly expanding monologue by the unnamed woman.

“The Patience Stone” is almost Beckett-like in its sparing emptiness  -  and interestingly Samuel Beckett wrote in French, a foreign language, as did Atiq Rahimi, an Afghan living between Paris and Kabul.

The plot line is simple in the extreme.  A woman tends her injured husband, who has been shot in the neck. He is comatose but breathing.  We never learn their names, nor those of their two little girls who make a happy, noisy but brief appearance in the story.

We are not even sure where the story takes place, right from the title page :

As she tends her husband who lies there, eyes unseeing, not moving, not eating, just breathing regularly, the woman starts by speaking briefly to him, and the accompanying narrative is brief and staccato-like.

Gradually the woman talks more and more to her inert husband, a man she hardly knows, even after 10 years of what would seem to have been a loveless marriage.  The only person in her husband’s family who seemed to care for her was her late father-in-law.  Her brothers-in-law spy on her, ogle her, and abandon her, and their brother, when they most need help.

The days follow a similar pattern – the woman cleans her inert husband, gives him a drip, puts eye drops into his unseeing eyes, and on the rare occasions when she leaves the room, we never follow her into the streets.

War rages on outside, in the street, in the courtyard of the shelled house next to her, but we never see it.  We hear it.  We hear the explosions, we feel the tremors, but for the woman, as every other person caught up in war, life  – such as it is -  has to go on.  So she sweeps the floor, and talks to her husband, and prays, and reads the Koran.

The brief intrusion of the reality of war into her life takes place when she is not there, having gone to sleep at an aunt’s house with her 2 little girls.  Taliban fighters break into the room and ransack it, stealing whatever meagre possessions they have – the comatose man’s watch and wedding ring, and his Koran.  It is a brief shocking moment, an ugly flip-side of the eruption of the man’s daughters into this room.

As the woman talks, she gradually confides in her husband.  She talks of her fears about being married off to an unknown stranger, of her misery in her in-laws’ home.  She talks of her childhood.  She rails against the hypocrisy of war, and the cruelty of his family.  She reproaches her husband for not loving her or caring for her, and she hates the futile war that has made him into what he now is.

Her language and her stories get earthier, and cruder, and more graphic, and searingly truthful as the days unfold.  She curses and swears and tells her unresponsive husband the fears and drams and nightmares of her innermost soul :

The book is beautifully written, in sparse but such moving prose, that we come to know every inch of that room in detail, and are every bit as fearful of the war and violence raging outside as the woman, as her deranged neighbour, as the stammering boy.

If ever the world needed an ode to the futility of war, to the brutal reality of its aftermath, to the tragedy that is the lot of Afghan women, and to the hypocrisy of blind adherence to religion, “The Patience Stone” is that ode.

A beautiful, moving book.

Published by Vintage Books, the paperback costs £7.99

This story of murder and its consequences, set in modern-day suburban Tokyo, is (in the words of all good book reviews) a gripping page-turner.  Seriously, however clichéd that description might sound, this novel really and truly is a page-turner.

The story is – without spoiling anything for you – about a murder, about the attempt to cover it up, and the ensuing police investigation that sets out to find the murderer.

Couldn’t be simpler, right ?

And there you are so wrong.  Nothing could be less simple, for this is a novel full of twists and turns, and shadows and secrets, and ever more twists and turns, and the ending…but I cannot, and will not reveal the ending to you, as that would be nothing less than criminal.  The ending is a killer.

(Apologies for the puns)

Keigo Higashino sets the story against the backdrop of ordinary, regular, day-to-day routine life in Tokyo.

This is a world of school, university, and buying take-away lunches.  A world of homeless people camping quietly on waste land alongside a muddy river. A world where neighbours in apartment blocks hardly know each other, yet nod politely whenever their paths cross.  A world where old university friends, now middle-aged, get together for a chat about work over excruciatingly awful cups of instant coffee.  Commuting to the suburban train station, going for a movie, playing badminton – all completely mundane, unremarkable events – until you put a murder into the equation.

I use the word “equation” deliberately, because one of the main characters in the novel, Ishigami, is a brilliant mathematician, a legend to his university peers.  Ishigami, fat and balding and a lifelong bachelor, is now a high school maths teacher, struggling to install a passion for mathematics in his students, but failing even to arouse a flicker of interest.  In a book that is quite dark, the moments when we see Ishigami with his failing maths students provide some of the lighter moments.  And when Ishigami abruptly cancels the re-re-take exam of the students who have failed even his deliberately easy re-take exam -  well, your reviewer for one, wished she had had such a sympathetic maths teacher in school.  We all share the relief of the poor struggling students who are saved from relegation.

The central characters of the book are very much “there” for us the reader, but we are never told too much about their innermost thoughts, despite the dramatic events in which they are all caught up.  One stays at a certain remove from them, although hoping all along that events will turn out in a certain way (which I can’t explain here, obviously) but there isn’t too much emotional involvement with them as people.

Rather, the mathematical imagery that is so fundamental to the plot takes over and drives the narrative.

Actions and their consequences.

The probabilities of  x result if z happens – the plot is almost like a maths formula (but don’t let that put you off, really and truly) working through to its natural and logical conclusion.

Except that it isn’t.

Read this page-turner for its cleverness, its twists and turns and its unexpected and dramatic ending.

A truly great read.

The paperback is published in India by Hachette and costs Rs 350.

This review is a part of the Book Reviews Program at BlogAdda.com. Participate now to get free books!

I am in book club in Delhi with the author’s wife, Theo.  So I am not totally impartial, especially since we were all privy to some of the labour pains involved in the final stages of this fascinating book.  I cyber-followed Jim’s book tour earlier this year with great interest, and we ladies of book club were all happy that Theo could join him for part of it.

Secondly, I am not in the least a sports fan, know absolutely nothing about basketball, and have never even watched a single match, not even on TV.

So, I approached this book from a different perspective, to be honest, much more intent on the culture clashing promised on the title page than the ins and outs of basketball.

Right.

Review time.

First things first – loved the look and the feel of the book – a nice hardback, and those slightly uneven, rough-cut pages were reassuringly solid and real, if that makes any sense.

Mr. Yardley – oh what the heck, may I call you Jim ? -  so Jim Yardley, clearly a basketball fan of serious note, used to live in China, where he was the foreign correspondent for the New York Times.

His book chronicles the ups and downs and oftentimes downright bizarreness of a not very good Chinese basketball team that employs an American coach.

Culture clash doesn’t even begin to describe it.

The author spends lots of time with the team and the looser entourage of translators, coaches, and trainers in the unattractive, gritty, highly polluted industrial city of Taiyuan.  He stays in Taiyuan, he travels with the team throughout China, and is clearly both a sounding board and a listening post for both the Chinese and the handful of Americans caught up in the world of the “Shanxi Brave Dragons.”

Jim Yardley’s approach to the story of the Brave Dragons, the sometimes hapless team whose fortunes form the core story of the book, is to chat around and about the subject of basketball and the games, and then through this prism, introduce us to background sporting history, his thoughts on Chinese politics, and his wry, often hilarious observations of Chinese society.

It was the latter that made the book for me.

Sure, I was happy that the Brave Dragons ended the season ranked 10th (surely not a plot spoiler ?) but the whole sporty aspect of the book didn’t enthuse me as much as the author’s often beautiful writing about China.

You see, the trouble for me with the basketball bits was, to be perfectly honest, I didn’t really follow the nuances.

Some of it was almost impenetrable :

I have no idea what an alley oop dunk is, but it does sounds amazing, I have to say :

Where Jim Yardley is unsurpassed is when he describes the China in which he lives, a country evolving every day, eager for change yet sometimes afraid of it. Anxious to understand American culture and oftentimes failing totally -  which is more than can be said for most of the American players who appear disinterested by China and the Chinese, intent only on money and winning the game their way, and with no interest whatsoever in trying to learn any of the language of their host country.

The author’s descriptions of the smoky, dirty, noisy city of Yaiyuan bring the place to life, warts and all :

He has a fine eye for people, both their appearance and their conversation.  Garrison Guo  -  a translator -  is one of the nicest people in this cast of amazing characters and from the first moment he walks into the pages of the book, I was hooked :

A soufflé of 1970s hair -  now how gorgeous a description is that ?

 Guo’s English is good, and this is – amazingly -  why :

We presume Garrison didn’t learn English the “Crazy Emglish” way :

There is a certain amount -  no, correction – lots of linguistic tangles, but these are so well handled by Jim Yardley that you laugh along with the Chinese players, never laugh at them.  The author writes with a sensitive helping hand.  The hilarious “groove” moment is a case in point :

Jim Yardley is equally perceptive when it comes to his fellow ex-pats, closel guarding their hard-earned China expertise :

During a noisy taxi ride along shockingly awful roads with Garrison, the latter asks Jim Yardley a question.  The author’s answer is, in essence, the explanation of why he wrote the book :

These cultural tangles, the author’s attempts to understand them himself and then explain them to us are the backbone of this funny, informative look at politics, economy, history -  and, of course, his beloved basketball -  alley oop dunks included.

The hardback edition of “Brave Dragons” was published by Knopf in 2012 and sells for US$ 26.95

Well, to be honest, I read the Venice section in Varanasi, and the Varanasi section once I was back home in Delhi, and by then able to say “Ah yes, the Ganges View Hotel” and ” Of course, Assi Ghat,” having just visited them.

Adding to the deliciousness of it all, having literally just read the incident in the Venice section about real life African sellers of knock-off Prada handbags actually being part of an art installation, we arrived at Assi ghat on our first morning to find a Bollywood shoot in full flow.

So the question remains – were the completely OTT, utterly fabulous, wildly photogenic saddhus and holy men for real, or were they from casting central ?  Whatever the outcome, it was a suitable metaphor for this hilarious, entertaining book.

“Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi” is clever, screamingly funny in parts, with the Venice part definitely funnier than the Varanasi part.

There are two definite stories, one taking place in a dramatic, picturesque, crumbling waterside town, and the other taking place in a dramatic, picturesque, crumbling waterside town.

But are the two stories connected ?  Ah, that is for you, dear reader, to determine.

The Venice story is certainly funnier and more obviously dazzling, writing-wise. I laughed out loud several times reading the Venice part in Varanasi (oh dear, is this getting too interwoven ?)

In the Venice story we meet Jeff, a middle aged jaded, freelance writer going on what is basically a junket to the Biennale in Venice. There, he meets the gorgeous Laura who is young and beautiful and irreverent and mysterious, and they embark on a 3 day fling. Copious amounts of booze, lines of coke and mammoth -  nay epic – sex sessions are the order of the day, and then she leaves Venice, and the novella ends with Jeff alone and downcast.

Cut to the Varanasi section.

Here we see the town through the eyes of an un-named middle-aged, world weary, freelance journalist. Who may or may not be Jeff. We are never told.  But there are enough clever links and references to nudge you into thinking it may well be.

But if you don’t feel that it is Jeff, it doesn’t alter the story in the slightest.

Our narrator goes to Varanasi to write a story for a British newspaper, and just stays on.  He doesn’t make a conscious decision to stay on, just sort of drifts into it, and drifts through his life there, and towards what is possibly his death.

To my delight, when reading this second half of the book, having just watched a Bollywood movie being shot on the ghats, we see that our narrator….yes, you’ve guessed….he also watched a Bollywood movie being shot on the ghats.

So many delicious worlds within worlds.

There are lots of clever little references linking the two halves of the book, be it a dream or bananas (you’ll see why) or a lovely woman whose name begins with L.

As a fellow Brit, I loved Mr.Dyer’s acerbic observations on our country and countrymen.

Here he is describing a sour-tempered Indian shopkeeper in London :

Or Jeff”s hilarious reaction to his own somewhat unexpected use of the clipped word “Quite” :

His power of language is so sublime that a waiter, whom we meet for one fleeting second and never again, has an over-powering personality :

And as for this description of Venice -  well, after all that possible film within a film feeling in Varansi, with possible saddhus posing for the Bollywood cameras, this seemed to sum up perfectly the deliciously clever mood of this fun, entertaining, clever but ultimately sad book :

Published by Random House India, the Indian hardback costs Rs 395.  (I have no idea how much the Venice edition sells for…)

It is a stunning read, and one that every thinking Indian should read -  well, not just Indians, everyone who has a heart and a conscience should read it, but to Indians it will have a special resonance.  And it should be mandatory for everyone in Mumbai.

Ms Boo chronicles the lives of some of the dwellers of Annawadi, a Mumbai slum, close by the airport but a lifetime apart from the world of travel and hotels and leisure as it is possible to imagine.

As a respected, award-winning journalist, Ms Boo invested years in this book, visiting the slum so frequently that the inhabitants soon ceased really noticing her as an outsider.  They all had their tragically difficult lives to get on with, scraping together every paise they could find to try and keep body and soul together, so there was little time for sitting and staring at a foreigner.

And so, for years, Ms Boo visited, talked, watched, observed, interviewed, recorded, filmed, checked, cross-checked -  and then some.

And the result is this amazing expose of life at the bottom of the pile.  Literally, since we meet scavengers, children who collect rubbish for a living.  We meet people who have a just-about home – rickety huts next to mounds of sewage.  Life doesn’t get much worse than in Annawadi.

Ms. Boo’s narrative is quite simply extraordinary, when you realise (and this is not a plot spoiler, by the way) that her book is not a work of fiction, but 100% pure fact.  Everyone of those slum dwellers, corrupt officials, bribe-taking policemen, venal nursing staff -  every man jack of the exists. And is named.

This book pushes reporting about poverty and corruption in India to a whole new level.

And throughout this compelling, albeit oftentimes heart-breaking chronicle, you never for a moment glimpse the presence of the writer, Ms Boo.  She does not insert herself into the narrative for even a fleeting moment.  She sits, listens, observes and lets the children and adults of Annawadi do the talking.

And how they talk.  Here is the ambitious Asha, who sees politics as the way out of the desperate poverty of the slum :

Her dutiful daughter Manju, the girl hoping to be the first female graduate from the slum, studies hard, though often not really undertsanding everything she is being supposedly taught.  So she “by-hearts” everything :

Asha is the ultimate pragmatist, banking everything on the success of her daughter, for who she has words of advice :

The inhabitants of this appalling slum lead equally appalling lives of deprivation and degradation, tempered by a weary awareness that there may well be a better world out there.  It’s just not for them.  They see the airport and the airport hotels and the flashy cars, but always through the prism of what rubbish and garbage this brave new glittering world may leave behind for them, the bottom of the social pile.  The rag-pickers and scavengers.

I have to say that after reading this sensational book, I look at the filth and rubbish that lies all around my Delhi nighbourhood with a slightly different view.  I loathe the rubbish.  But then again, I would, wouldn’t I ?  It is a blight for me, not a business opportunity.

I found the criticism of the Cooper Hospital amazing, because 20 years ago, when I lived in what was then Bombay, I had to take the illiterate, non-Hindi-speaking wife of one of my Nepalese staff there for some unidentified stomach complaint, which our local GP couldn’t identify.

When I went to admit her, I nearly died.

A waiting room full to busting with hundreds of poor Indians, row after row after row, all waiting patiently.  One tiny hole behind a thick grille into which you had to contort yourself to speak.

Everyone told me “They are closed for lunch”.

But, I hate to admit it, I played the foreign card.  My woman was writing in agony, as were many other people in the waiting room, by the way.  People were bleeding too.

I marched right to the head of the queue, to the quiet, weary smiles of everyone else waiting -  why are Indians so consistently polite to foreigners ? -  and when the person behind the thickly grilled window said, in Hindi, “Closed,” I played my second card.  That’s the one where I pretend I can’t speak any Hindi, and act appallingly stupid to boot, not understanding basic hand gestures and facial expressions.

I’m not proud.

So I walked behind the counter, pushed open his cubicle door, and insisted my poor Nepalese lady got admitted.

Eventually they did admit her, mainly to get rid of me, I suspect, because I just stood there talking louder and louder, until she was taken off to the ward.

I remember we had to provide all medicines and food, and I also remember throwing a scene at the state of the bed-sheets, making them strip the filthy many-times-used ones and put clean ones on for her.

So clearly some things haven’t changed in 20 years.

I’ve told this Cooper Hospital story many times over the years, but never has it resonated the way it did when reading this book.

When the poor of Annawadi die, there is little reason to pay them any more attention in death than in life :

There isn’t an aspect of the world about them that doesn’t seem to exploit the poverty and lack of status of these slum-dwellers.  The police, NGOs, hospitals, social workers, even Sister Paulette -  they all abuse or ignore these people.  I loved the vignette of the Congress party workers delivering manhole covers, just before the elections -  and then promptly taking them back for use in another slum.

Do yourself a favour and read this amazing book.  It’s not always an easy read.  Beautifully written, incisively observed, but the subject matter is searing and uncomfortable at times.

“Behind the Beautiful Forevers” (the title is delicious, once you understand what it means) is published by Hamish Hamilton and the hardback costs Rs499

What could have become, in the hands of a writer, a rather exciting derring-do, gung-ho type of book about white mercenaries trying to stage a coup in Africa is, instead, a badly written, profanity-laced, confusing story.

Not that I have any sympathy whatsoever with white mercenaries trying to stage a coup in Africa, you understand.

No sympathy whatsoever.

But I used to live in Africa, and was there all during that rather bizarre time when Simon Mann and his band of merry men were captured and put on trial.  Given the South African angle, the fact that the coup-implicated Mark Thatcher was living in Cape Town, the whole drama played out to a slightly bemused African audience, including us.  It was even rumoured, gleefully, in South Africa that Mr.Mann’s Equatorial Guinea coup plot was lifted from Frederick Forsyth’s 1974 thriller “The Dogs of War.”

So I was prepared to be open-minded.

Also, since the copy of the book I read was loaned to me by an old and dear friend of Mr. Mann, I was also possibly prepared to be a tad more sympathetic than usual.

But so alienating was the tone and style of the book, so utterly confusing was the narrative, that any flicker of sympathy was extinguished almost as soon as the book started.

This is his opening page acknowledgment, for goodness sake :

Confused ?

Mr. Mann tries, through his staccato, verb-less, effing and blinding style to portray himself as some kind of ethical saviour of the poor oppressed African blacks.

A word of warning, Mr. Mann mentions race and colour and being white a lot.

This saviour of the poor oppressed African blacks etc etc is how he talks up the previous mercenary coups he led in Sierra Leone and Angola.  Yet the opening sentence of his prologue actually says it all.

“This about oil. Oil wars. In Africa mostly”

Precisely.

On the dust cover of Mr. Mann’s book is a quotation :

“When I set out to overthrow an African tyrant, I knew I would either make billions or end up getting shot…”

Precisely.

The book goes back and forth between the earlier coups and the preparations for the disastrous coup to Equatorial Guinea.  A straight-line narrative would have helped clear the murky waters of politics, confusing acronyms, top-heavy descriptions of weaponry but Mr. Mann prefers to swing back and forth, rapidly losing the reader in the swirl of events and the random introduction of characters without any explanation.

The one constant in the book is his liberal use of the f word.

No-one is a prude these days, but the f word is not a consistent substitute for vocabulary :

I’ll spare you more quotations.

Mr. Mann sneers openly at the people he meets, be they African politicians :

or potential coup-backers and contacts, be they foreign :

or British :

Nor does he spare his former chum and investor, Mark Thatcher :

His dislike of his former friend knows no bounds :

“Loves to play the officer and gentleman” -  harsh words from Mr. Mann, who tries to shield Mr. Thatcher later on, when he is being interrogated, because -  well, because, Mr. Thatcher has connections :

The book covers in great detail Mr.Mann’s imprisonment in Zimbabwe, where the effing and blinding style gives way  – just a little – to a searingly graphic account of the life he leads in prison.  Mr. Mann is definitely a more sympathetic character in this section of the book, surviving what is clearly great deprivation, cruelty and terror.

And then the book stops.  Just like that.

The Equatorial Guinea part of the book simply doesn’t happen.

One minute he is on a plane on the way there, terrified of facing torture and almost-guaranteed death, and then the next moment he is out, back in England with his beloved Amanda.  Of his trial, he tells nothing.

Why ?  Legal reasons, one presumes.  Must be for the same reason that we never hear about the trial.

I never worked out who the Boss was.  I thought it must be Tony Blair for a while, but am not so sure now.

Perhaps, one day, someone else will write the story of this failed coup attempt and fill in the blanks for us.

“Cry Havoc” is published by John Blake and the hardback costs £19.99

I’ll leave that one till the end.

There is a nice regional spread in the stories.  The urbanisation of Bangalore is the backdrop for Ahmed Faiyaz’s poignant “Mr. Periera” describing a world where neighbours still -  just about -  know each other and are proud of each other’s achievements and care for each other, despite the rapid pace of change taking place around them.

“Alabama to Wyoming” by “Paritsh Uttam” is a well-observed but sad story, about a young man who is kind and helpful and ends up being a figure of fun.  You the reader share in Sid’s shame, as he hears the mocking words he is not supposed to hear.

What I found interesting was that quite a number of stories dealt with extra-marital affairs and lovers, which is already quite a revelation.  Urban India is changing rapidly, and nothing illustrates this as clearly as the sexual behaviour of the middle class characters in a story such as Salil Chaturvedi’s “Silk”.  Lying being massaged by the gossipy Sarada, Priyanka hears about her friend’s affair.  It’s quite a clever device.  She knew her friend had been away on a holiday, but little did she realise the ramifications, so as she lies there being massaged, she joins all the dots together, and learns about the darker side of her friend Malini’s affair.  I quite liked this story, though I didn’t quite understand the ending.

“Double Mixed” by Namita V Nair is also about extra-marital affairs, but the plot is slicker than the previous story, making the ending clever and not at all predictable.

“Across the seas” another story by Ahmed Faiyaz seemed to speak of a slightly more old fashioned India.  An India that moves at a a slower pace  -  writing letters, waiting for a telephone connection, sending jars of pickles to the US via a friend -  all slightly timeless, but charming none the less.

“Paisley Printed Memories” by Sneh Thakur was my second favourite story (I’m saving the best till last), and a clever, moving one, too.  Her descriptions of the build-up to the wedding, with the baraat arriving while the bride-to-be gets ready inside her house is well-done and the bitter-sweet twist at the end of the tale makes it a poignant read.

The opening story, “Amul” by Arvind Chandrashekhar is clever, but I’m not quite sure that I “got” it.  I think the little girl has cancer.  She is apparently in Class V yet uses the word “damn” which puzzled me.  I liked the story, but something didn’t ring true in the language for me.

Which brings me to the head-and-shoulders-above-the-rest star of this collection. “The Interview” by Manisha Lakhe is beautifully written, in descriptive prose that has you sitting with the author in the Mumbai taxi in the rain, while the taxi-driver squeezes the car into impossible spaces, talking all the while, to the soundtrack of the windscreen wipers.  Ms Lakhe doesn’t try and fit too much into the story, and by telling it from the perspective of a conversation between just 2 characters, the reader is better able to concentrate on her great use of language.

This is exactly what a short story should be.  A beautifully neat well-written little gem.

In the introduction, the editor writes “A word of advice – give each story breathing space, before you begin the next one.”  Sound advice.  This is a collection to be dipped into at will, and returned to at will.

Published by Grey Oak, the paperback costs Rs 199.

This review is a part of the Book Reviews Program at BlogAdda.com. Participate now to get free books!

The author’s daughter, Catriona, is a friend, and indeed we are in book club together in Delhi. So, yes, I knew a little from Catriona about her mother, but since the former is as well mannered as her mother seems to have been, there is no bragging whatsoever, so I only knew a little.

Then, in December, I went to Nagaland for the first time, to the Hornbill Festival with one of my oldest and dearest friends from Oxford, Jane, who had read the book as a teenager, and dreamed of going ever since. In fact, it was “Naga Path” that inspired Jane to go to Nagaland, and I went along for the ride, as it were.

I hadn’t quite joined the book-Jane-read-as-a-teenager and Catriona’s-mother dots, until the three of us all met in Kohima for the Festival.

I have just finished reading “Naga Path”, while holidaying in Assam, appropriately enough, and can quite understand how such a well-written, derring-do story would capture any teenager’s imagination. It captured mine, I can tell you.

Now for the facts.

Ursula Graham Bower arrived in India as a young woman, a pretty debutante who developed a passion and an unflinching love for the Naga people, in what was then Assam.

Ms Graham Bower lived for years in the late 1930s/early 1940s amongst the Zemi tribe, as an anthropologist but also as a mentor, and, for some, a reincarnation of one of their legendary heroines.

And thus the legend of the Naga Queen came into being. Ms Graham Bower seems never to have traded on the adulation and devotion of her beloved Zemi tribe, living with them in harmony, affection, occasional irritation, and much humour.

The author’s descriptive prose is little short of intoxicating, making the reader see the serried ranks of hills going on into the horizon, and smell the fire and dust and smoke. Her love for the land and the people is palpable in her writing, which is almost a love-song to the Nagas.

Ms Graham Bower’s writing makes you fall in love with the Zemis in the way she did. We meet a cast of characters whom she describes succinctly and affectionately, pointing out their foibles, their worries, their problems, with great humour and respect.

She never once patronises the Nagas, who were (for those who may not know it) head-hunters. Far from it, she is quick to point out the intelligence and wicked sense of humour of the Nagas.

One of the most delicious episodes in the book is the account of how her inseparable companion and mentor Namkia (“the old sinner”) gets himself space on the otherwise crowded train to Calcutta. Namkia stands there, resplendent in his red cloak, telling the initially packed compartment about how, during hard times, he and his wife had agonized over which of their children to kill and eat, finally deciding on the baby.

“it really was exceptionally good, most tender – boiled with chillies”

By the end of the story, Namkia is alone on the train bench, and he “spread out his bedding and slept in comfort, at full length, all the way to Calcutta : and every time a fresh entrant approached him with a hint to move over, the rest of the carriage said, as one :”Look out ! Man-eater!” and Namkia turned slowly over and murmured :”Now the last time I tasted human flesh__________”

Ms Graham Bower’s story gets more and more fascinating, since at the outbreak of World War II she becomes part of V Division, gathering information on the Japanese movements on the far north-eastern flank of India. Although the story is fascinating, this is perhaps the least compelling part of the book, since there is an awful lot of technical detail, and far less of the colour and passion of the early days.

Throughout this section of the book, the author down-plays the risks involved in her wartime work, of the dangers and discomforts in which she and her Naga companions lived. Risk of capture, torture, death at the hands of the Japanese is not mentioned, and whatever discomforts she talks about is all done in an almost breezily cheerfully stoic style. No whingeing or complaining for Ms Graham Bower.

Rather, what comes across is the good humour and resilience of this young woman leading her Naga scouts through the countryside, intelligence gathering for the Allies, in difficult terrain, with minimal supplies, and in horrid weather.

Having just read Fergal Keane’s magnificent “Road of Bones” about the siege of Kohima, one can only begin to imagine the real risks the author ran, but which she almost glosses over.

The end of the book, which came far too quickly for my liking, introduces us to her husband, and describes their delightfully impromptu marriage, following what can only be called a super-whirlwind courtship and engagement. Ms Graham Bower’s Nagas approved of her choice, and the descriptions of the ceremony they hold for the newly wed couple, as befits the woman they consider their daughter, is as moving and romantic a piece of writing as you could wish to read.

A wonderful book, which other than a few archaic terms, is as much of a joy to read today, as it was for my then teenaged friend Jane.

The only sad part of this review is the fact that this wonderful book is out of print. But do track it down in a library or from a second-hand book-shop.

It will fire your imagination, I guarantee.

The famous, formerly elegant Yacoubian Building is now a tad run down, and home to a host of characters, some of whom live in the elegant apartmens, and many others who live on the roof, literally.  In a reversal of the upstairs/downstairs analogy, here it is rather a case of upstairs/on top of upstairs.

Happily occupying tiny rooms on the roof, the inhabitants of the roof lead their busy lives, eking out a living, while their more fortunate fellow occupants live below them, largely unaware of the passions and dramas being played out over their heads.

The novel follows the lives of many of these inhabitants, some of whose lives cross, and others who don’t.  As a skilled storyteller, the author introduces us to each of his characters by plunging straight into their adventures. Thus we meet Zaki Bey in the opening sentence of he book, taking an hour to walk the 100 metres between his home and the Yacoubian building where he has his office, since he has to stop and talk to everyone he meets on the way.

We meet the young and clever Taha, the doorman’s son, who is brilliant academically and hopes to pass the exams into the Police Academy.  Taha is endearing and we witness with sadness, during the course of the book, his descent from optimism to bitterness and beyond, and if you are like the reviewer, you hope against hope that something might intervene to change Taha’s fate.

In a cast of many appealing characters, Taha stands out, for we the reader see how easily his fate might have been different, if only his contact with officialdom had been different.  But it wasn’t, and from the moment of his rejection, we know instinctively that this young man is headed down a violently different path.

As his life descends into chaos, the life of his childhood sweetheart Busanya moves in the opposite direction. Steering her way through the mine field of sexual predators, this clever but naive girl has a relativey happy ending. No, let’s be honest she has a very happy ending. She may have thought she was compromising, but she ends up in confused, but real love.

The Yacoubian Building is the clever focal point, of the book from which each of these characters leaves each morning to start their day, and where they return at night, often to sit on the roof, overlooking Cairo, and think over their day.

The themes of sexual predation and militant Islam run powerfully through this novel, and there is hardly a character who doesn’t have a brush with either.  The people who live in the Yacoubian Building think a lot about sex and money, and opportunities, and how to better their lives. And some of them think a lot about Islam.

The growing radicalisation of the Egyptian students is skilfully portrayed, as is their manipulation by their religious leaders and their parallel abandonment by their political leaders. From the moment Taha is arrested after a student demo, you have a horrible feeling that you know exactly where this young man is heading.

The book is written with obvious affection both for the city and the people of Cairo. The noise, the packed streets, the shabby chic restaurants, the dusty suburbs, are all described and brought to life with skill.

There are so many clever threads running through this book : militant vs casual easy-going religion. Westernised Egyptian life vs the poor, earthy village life, brilliantly portrayed in the passionate but sadly doomed affair between Hatim Rasheed and Abd Rabbuh.   Is God vengeful ? Is that why tragedy often follows illicit love in this book ?  There is huge sexual tension in the book, be it the agonies of being homosexual when it is both against your faith and against the law, or the love of a mother for her unborn child that ruins her life and her love.  There is the love of an ageing playboy for a young woman, and the indignities they must suffer as a result. Sex is very much a part of the lives of the residents of the Yacoubian Building, but it is rarely simultaneously consensual and uncomplicated sex.

The lives and loves of the residents are fraught with the consequences of their actions, all of which are played out against a backdrop of nosy, often noisy neighbours, who all know perfectly well what goes on in the lives of their neighbours.

As we dip in and out of the lives of the many residents of this building, itself a symbol of the decay and parallel change that is taking place in society, the story-telling style of the author sweeps us along.

Well written  – well, one imagines so, since this is the English translation – full of life, and death, and passion, and love, and religion, and sadness, the novel leaves you feeling both saddened by the way some characters lives have evolved, and yet also happy for others.

Published by Harper Perennial, the paperback costs £7.99

As the title implies, Ms Liddle takes you, the reader, on 14 historic walks through the city, in which she describes in great detail the sights and sites, “guiding” you and allowing you to wander on your own using her book as your companion.  The walks she has chosen include lesser known areas such as Janahpanah, as well as absolutely classic Delhi must-see places such as the Red Fort and Qutb Minar, which are on every tourist’s itinerary.

The author’s reason for including these better-known Delhi sites is disarmingly frank :

This is the sad reality of much of the (non) signage at Delhi’s monuments, making this book even more useful.

Ms Liddle’s approach to choosing each of her chosen walks is practical.

Again, quoting her own words :

” It should be a fairly pleasant walk – I have left out the particularly litter-strewn or overgrown paths.”

Given the parlous state of much of the city, I couldn’t agree more with her pragmatic approach.

Each chapter starts with a simple but detailed map of the walk (more on the maps in a moment) followed by an eminently practical listing of such information as the opening times, the cost of entry tickets, the closest metro stations and, very sensibly, the difficulty level of the walk.  And, super sensibly for Delhi, Ms Liddle also provides details of what amenities are available – water, snacks and that all important loo.

So, armed with these practical details, the author then describes in great detail but in clear, easy prose, the main things to see as you wander through, say, Mehrauli Archeological Park, or Hauz Khas, or through the Lodi Gardens.  Each main monument, or vista, or church or tomb has a number which refers back to the map. The maps are clear and simple to follow, and provide names for places which many a better guidebook has failed to do. Thanks to Ms Liddle, I now know that those two tombs opposite Aurobindo Place Market, the outliers of the wonderful Hauz Khas complex, are actually called  the Dadi-Pito or Biwi-Bandi.

The author explains architectural terms simply, for the layman, and wears her obvious scholarship and knowledge lightly, and in a charmingly un-stuffy way. The book is easy and pleasant to read, with an easy-going style, not like reading a standard guide book at all. Rather, you feel as though you are wandering through Chandni Chowk, or the Red Fort, or Safdarjung’s Tomb with a knowledgeable friend, who is gently pointing out things you might otherwise have missed.

If it doesn’t sound silly, the book is also quite light to hold, making you much more likely to pop it in your bag when you set out to on a walk.

I know I certainly shall.

This book is going to go with me as I re-explore the by-lanes of Chandni Chowk, and take another walk down Rajpath from India Gate to Rashtrapati Bhawan, learning more at the Lutyens Baker relationship as I stroll.

Published by Westland, “14 Historic Walks” costs Rs 495.

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