Having lived in Mumbai during the tumultuous days of 1992 and 1993, when this most cosmopolitan of Indian cities city lived through anti-Muslim riots and the subsequent bomb attacks, I was naturally intrigued by the story of Sanjay Dutt. Mr. Dutt, a Bollywood star, and the son of a well-respected, …
What an amazing world we live in. You know someone for almost 30 years, and only now discover the hidden, almost-mystical side to them. My Mumbai-based friend Lakshmi Narayan has just published her second book (& here’s a link to my review of her debut novel) and what a revelation …
Reading Abir Mukherjee’s “A Necessary Evil” was a fine balancing act between dying to know what happened next, and dreading the approaching end of the book. This absolute cracker of a novel is a fine and worthy successor to Mr. Mukherjee’s first novel “A Rising Man“, and it is with …
What a fabulous book “A Rising Man” is. And what a prodigiously talented writer Mr. Mukherjee is. A murder mystery set in Calcutta in 1919, this is an absorbing page-turner from the very word go. From the first moment you meet the narrator, Captain Sam Wyndham and his endearing deputy, …
There are some books about India that are just so perfect that reading them is a total & utter joy. “The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra” is one such book. Vaseem Khan’s novel is an absolute delightful and is so, well, quintessentially Indian, in that it manages to combine gritty …
What an extraordinarily good read this book is. And, rather puzzlingly, what an extraordinarily uneven book it is too. I dislike crisiticising someone’s writing, because it is such an intensely personal thing, but this excellent book is so uneven in its writing that it could almost have been written by …
When and where you read a book should not be an influencing factor in your appreciation of it. Or should it? Reading Madhav Mathur’s intriguing novel “Dvarca” in India (where I live), during the worst days of demonetisation, when millions of people found themselves with no access to their own …
We are living in interesting times here in India, ever since the government decided to wage a high-profile campaign against black money, but – everyone believes – actually aimed at political opposition. Which means that the just-published novel, “The Strongman’s Daughter” is deliciously bang up-to-date. For in the character of …
Dr. Rajat Chauhan is a respected figure amongst the Indian running community, and the wider, international community of ultra-runners. A doctor who runs ultra-marathons. A specialist in pain management who has conceptualised and organized one of the world’s toughest ultra marathons, the high altitude “La Ultra” in the Indian Himalayas. …
