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 …
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 …
Having only recently discovered the wonderful Sherlock Holmes meets Kim whodunnit, “The Game” by Laurie R. King, this reviewer decided to go back to the first book in this eminently readable series, which is actually a series about the gutsy young Mary Russell. aka Mrs. Sherlock Homes. In “The Beekeeper’s …
“Kipling Sahib” by Charles Allen is a well-written, well-researched, fascinating look into the Indian part of Rudyard Kipling’s life, those relatively few years he spent in India, but which marked him for life. And for literature. Charles Allen brings to this book all the detailed yet seemingly relaxed research of …
Ever wondered what happened to Sherlock Homes, after he fell over the Reichenbach Falls and was presumed drowned ? The only clue generations of Sherlock Homes fans had were two meagre sentences beginning “I travelled for 2 years in Tibet…” Jamyang Norbu’s clever, well-written novel fills in these missing 2 …
What a pleasure to discover a whole new genre of fiction, even though the rest of the world has seemingly known about it for years. Meet Mary Russell, the fictional wife of the equally fictional Sherlock Holmes. Miss Russell has to be one of the most charming derring-do heroines a …
