Salman Rushdie's latest work blends fiction, memory, myth, and mortality, offering a deeply personal meditation shaped by near-death, nostalgia, and literary playfulness
We don't remember Henry Fonda from the cinematic The Grapes of Wrath, nor Om Puri from Bhisham Sahni's Tamas (both excellent performances) but are awed by the films themselves
The book under review is a most refreshing departure from this pattern. It discusses how people at large participated in what it correctly calls the assembling of the Constitution
In the current discourse on the basic law of the country, the Constitution, leaders of both the ruling and the Opposition blocs are engaged in its competitive veneration, pronouncing it sacrosanct
In the United Kingdom, he joined the Labour Party and was an active participant in its policy formations for three decades after 1980. He was made a life peer in 1991
Tharoor's book glosses over how some senior Congress leaders in the 1940s and 1950s were uneasy with Hinduism not getting what they felt was due recognition in the Constitution
The basic dichotomy Dr Bhatia addresses is between the Constitution and courtrooms as sources of progressive and transformative social change and the Constitution as a statement of power
The book, he says in the epilogue, has been the labour of love: Eight years of interviewing 213 people and the reading of more than 100 books about the state
The back cover of The Other Mohan in Britain's Indian Ocean Empire calls it part travelogue, part family history, and scholarly. This reviewer disagrees
Knife is Rushdie's graphic account of the attack and his recovery interlaced with the love story of Rushdie and his current wife, Rachel Eliza Griffith
Jill Lepore's collection of essays takes readers on a guided tour through the rise and presumed decline of the US, with Trump emerging as the ultimate object of the author's scorn
Rosie Llewellyn-Jones's book explores the impact of East India Company on India, but it fails to address why British influence remained patchy, unlike in North America of the Antipodes