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Historians in the past have
speculated that the Indo-Pak
partition may not have happened if it were known that
Jinnah was suffering from
tuberculosis. Matthews takes
the ‘what if ’ to another level.
His ‘Ten Ideas without the
British’ includes gems like –
What if Aurangzeb had defeated the Marathas? What if
Robert Clive had succeeded in
committing suicide as a young
company writer? His counter
facts and projections makes
for interesting reading.
According to him, Jinnah
was ambitious to create a
country as a job for life for
himself, Nehru was arrogant,
Gandhi was divorced from
reality, the British were divisive,
while Mountbatten was uninterested and content
merely to be strutting his hour
on the world stage. Matthews’
division of the British Raj into
four periods, namely, greed,
scorn, fear and indifference,
puts in perspective the history
of that period, never attempted by anyone so far.
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The Flaws in the Jewel:
Challenging the Myths of
British India
Roderick Matthews, HarperCollins,
Rs 350 |
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Recipes from the man behind Mainland China, a thriller of the finest order, a peek at young, contemporary India, we bring you the latest
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It’s said that if you haven’t been to China, the next best place to savour authentic Chinese cuisine is Mainland China. Anjan Chatterjee, the man behind it, has now come out with a Chinese cookbook suited for the Indian kitchen. The author divides the cuisine into styles of cooking, namely Peking, Shanghai, Sichuan and Canton. The most helpful part of the book is its list of suppliers of basic Chinese ingredients in all the major Indian metros.
The Mainland China Cookbook
Anjan Chatterjee, Random House India, Rs 299
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A small village in Croatia has put out a contract on UK-based Harvey Gillot, an international arms dealer who let them down eighteen years ago by failing to deliver arms consignment they had paid for. The subsequent cat-andmouse situation that develops between the hit-man and the target is meticulously detailed and elaborated at length. Seymour’s 27th novel could have been a page turner if shortened, but thriller readers are unlikely to complain.
The Dealer and The Dead
Gerald Seymour, Hachette, Rs 295
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With age, your fire to run against the tide peters down but not in the case of Bangla’s enfant terrible writer Misra, whose stories took the literary world by storm in the sixties. He still continues to write for magazines, keeping his job as a schoolteacher. Though ignored by the mainstream, he takes his role as an anti-establishment writer seriously. His stories, a montage of images that flow into each other, tell a tale with greater power and urgency than narrative fiction.
The Golden Gandhi Statue from America
Subimal Misra, Harper Perennial, Rs 199
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Modern and contemporary, Call Me Dan explores a world we are too familiar with – the rut of the call centre jobs, cubicles we call ‘homes’ in Mumbai, differing intentions of
dating couples … The book is a hilarious take on new India, where arranged marriages and one-night stands are all part of a young man’s search for love. Meet Gautam Joshi, 30-year-old, stuck in a relationship that is going nowhere. Blondes and friends of friends are all drawn to Gautam. Well, not quite. It happens only when they call him Dan.
Call Me Dan
Anish Trivedi, Penguin Books, Rs 250 |
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