There are some books that I re-read every few years, and always with undiminished pleasure. As it so happens, several of them are about India, some of them my ritual pre-monsoon, hot-weather reading. Kim. Heat and Dust. And, of course, “Chasing the Monsoon“, Alexander Frater’s marvellous travelogue about following the …
Disclosure time. Like the author, Mr. Harris, I, too, am a “firangi” (foreigner) married to an Indian, and based in Delhi. Like the author, Mr. Harris, I, too, am a runner – this piece of information will make sense anon. I haven’t met Mr. Harris, by the way, but we …
So there I was, power walking up and down my Delhi driveway (we are locked down, and not allowed out to exercise), listening to one of my favourite podcasts: Marathon Training Academy. It was a recent episode in which they were chatting with a British anthropologist who just happens to …
What a treat. 2 Philip Gwynne Jones novels in less than a week. No sooner had I finished “The Venetian Masquerade” than I picked up “Venetian Gothic” and thanks to a judiciously timed day of filthy, cold, freezing weather here in Delhi, where I live, plus a few accompanying aches …
What a riveting read this well-researched, well-written book is – and, by the way, let me give you its full title, before we go any further: “If – The Untold Story of Kipling’s American Years.” Mr. Benfey shines a light on the years that Rudyard Kipling and his young family …
I first read this extraordinary book about the state of one of India’s most sacred rivers a year ago, and was bowled over by the research as well as the empathy the writer shows towards India. Although lamenting the damage done to the Ganga/Ganges – this most holy & revered …
For those of you who don’t know me, I’m not much of a cook. Translation: I hardly know how to boil an egg. So I am totally not the kind of person to seek out cookbooks, but “Masala Dhaba” is totally different. Trust me. Firstly, it is written by Michael …
What a pleasure to re-read a book after some 8 years and find it every bit as entertaining. My Delhi book club was bang on trend when we read this book in late 2008, and I thoroughly enjoyed it at the time. We all did, I seem to remember. In the …
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 …
