Shreekant Sambrani

The Eleventh Hour review: Salman Rushdie's meditations on mortality

Salman Rushdie's latest work blends fiction, memory, myth, and mortality, offering a deeply personal meditation shaped by near-death, nostalgia, and literary playfulness

In Frankenstein, Guillermo del Toro amplifies Shelley's morality tale

The Mexican auteur has made 13 films in his career, beginning 1993 with Cronos in Spanish

Homebound: The film pushes many buttons, and that keeps it from greatness

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

How ordinary Indians shaped the making of the Constitution

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

S Muralidhar's book spotlights SC's fault lines and judicial fallibility

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

Obituary: Meghnad Desai was true gadfly in the best sense of the word

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

Lesley Downer's new book offers a grand panoramic tour of Japan's history

Japan has received far more than its share of natural disasters, most massive earthquakes, volcano eruptions, gigantic tsunamis and ravaging fires

The KYC menace: Aadhaar-linked chaos frustrates daily transactions

The Supreme Court's instruction last week to include Aadhaar is supposed to ease this situation somewhat

Deborah Baker's 'Charlottesville' reveals essence of the new American right

The new American right is a Hydra-headed monster. Mr Trump isn't its cause, but its distilled essence

Shashi Tharoor's book offers a partisan polemic on the Constitution

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

Gujarat's 19 century trailblazer: 'My Truth' revives legacy of Veer Narmad

Narmad was, thus, our very own Samuel Johnson, besides being his own James Boswel as well! The Narmad-Johnson comparison goes deep

Gautam Bhatia's book offers a refreshing critique of India's 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 Gujaratis: Salil Tripathi's book shines but falters under its ambition

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

A tale of two Mohans: Missed opportunities in a meandering narrative

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

A pointless epitaph: Clumsy retelling mars Coomar Narain scandal revisit

Kallol Bhattacherjee's 'A Singular Spy' attempts to tell an espionage tale but leaves many key questions unanswered

The Nagarwala scandal, unreconstructed

Journalists Prakash Patra and Rasheed Kidwai revisit the 1971 SBI scam after reviewing declassified documents, but with underwhelming results

Rushdie at the cutting edge

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

Rediscovering Márquez

As India stands at the threshold of an election, a Márquez comment assumes unusual significance

Why American democracy is not in decline

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

How not to write history

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