THE HANDBOOK OF REVIEWS Somdatta Mandal 2015 1 Foreword I have been reviewing books for the last two decades. Some of them have been commissioned for newspapers and meant for the average reader whereas others have been published in national and international journals and aimed at more erudite academic readership. The lengths of the reviews also vary. Some are pretty short whereas others run into the length of an essay. The subject matter of the books reviewed is also wide ranging, beginning from popular fiction to serious academic deliberations. It includes fiction, anthologies, memoirs, biographies, criticism, books on cinema, on Tagore and other miscellaneous topics as well. Compiling all these reviews together in one volume under eight sub-topics has brought out the amazing diversity of the books reviewed. Apart from the sheer number, I have learnt a lot from the different subjects covered and I hope that the reader will find these reviews interesting as well. Somdatta Mandal Department of English & Other Modern European Languages Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan May 2015 2 I: ANTHOLOGIES Growing Up as a Woman Writer. Edited by Jasbir Jain Telling Tales: Selected Writing 1993-2003 by Amit Chaudhuri Memory’s Gold: Writings on Calcutta edited by Amit Chaudhuri The Essential Rokeya: Selected Works of Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880-1932). Edited, Translated, and with an Introduction by Mohammad A. Quayum The Golden Treasury of Writers Workshop Poetry. Ed. Rubana Haq The Best of Quest. Edited by Laeeq Futehally, Achal Prabhala and Arshia Sattar Wither Justice? Stories of Women in Prison by Nandini Oza The Art of the Intellect: Uncollected English Writings of Sudhindranath Dutta. Edited by Sukanta Chaudhuri The Oxford India Anthology of Bengali Literature (2 Vols). Edited by Kalpana Bardhan Post-Modern Bangla Short Stories 2002. Vol.I. Edited by Samir Roychowdhuri, Murshid AM & Rabiul Karim ‘The Wife and the Beloved’ and other stories: Best of Fifty Years (1936-1986) by Ashapurna Devi. Translated by Sanjukta Das Contemporary Australian Short Stories ed. by Santosh K. Sareen A Rainbow Feast: New Asian Short Stories. Edited by Mohammad Quayum Here and Beyond : 12 Stories. Edited by Cyril Wong Travellers’ Tales of Old Japan Compiled by Michael Wise Jora Shanko: The Joined Bridge: Select English Poems by Bengali Poets Edited by Madan G. Gandhi & Kiriti Sengupta II: CRITICISM The Diaspora Writes Home: Subcontinental Narratives by Jasbir Jain Indian Diasporic Literature and Cinema by Nilufer E. Bharucha Reclaiming Identity: Realist Theory and the Predicament of Postmodernism. Edited by Paula M.L. Moya & Michael R. Hames Garcia 3 After Melancholia: A Reappraisal of Second-Generation Diasporic Sensibility in the Works of Jhumpa Lahiri by Delphine Munos Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America by Vivek Bald The Other Indians: A Political and Cultural History of South Asians in America by Vinay Lal The Texture of Identity: The Fiction of M.G. Vassanji, Neil Bissoondath and Rohinton Mistry by Martin Genetsch Writers of the Caribbean Diaspora: Shifting Homelands, Travelling Identities. Edited by Jasbir Jain & Supriya Agarwal Exploring Gender in the Literature of the Indian Diaspora. Edited by Sandhya Rao Mehta Media, Gender, and Popular Culture in India: Tracking Change and Continuity by Sanjukta Dasgupta, Dipankar Sinha & Sudeshna Chakravarti The Naïve and the Sentimental Novelist by Orhan Pamuk Women, Gender and Islam. Edited by Therese Saliba, Carolyn Allen & Judith A. Howard Women in Colonial India: Essays on Politics, Medicine and Historiography by Geraldine Forbes Women of India: Colonial and Postcolonial Periods. Edited by Bharati Roy Ashapurna Devi and Feminist Consciousness in Bengal: A Bio-Critical Reading by Dipannita Datta The Politics of the (Im)Possible: Utopia and Dystopia Reconsidered by Barnita Bagchi Freedom and Beef Steaks: Colonial Calcutta Culture by Rosinka Chaudhuri Gender and Cultural Identity in Colonial Orissa by Sachidananda Mohanty Travel Writing in India. Edited by Shobhana Bhattacharji Theatre in Colonial India: Play-House of Power. Edited by Lata Singh Modern Indian Theatre: A Reader. Edited by Nandi Bhatia India and the World: Postcolonialism, Translation and Indian Literature: Essays in Honour of Professor Harish Trivedi. Edited by Ruth Vanita III: FICTION 4 The Gurkha’s Daughter by Prajwal Parajuly A Chughtai Quartet (Translated from the Urdu by Tahira Naqvi) We are Not in Pakistan by Shauna Singh Baldwin Something To Tell You by Hanif Kureishi Season of the Rainbirds by Nadeem Aslam The Assassin’s Song by M.G. Vassanji The In-Between World of Vikram Lall by M.G. Vassanji The Tyrant’s Novel by Thomas Keneally The Broker by John Grisham The Idea of Perfection by Kate Grenville That Summer Fletcher Greel Loved Me by Suzanne Kingsbury Sultana’s Dream and Padmarag by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain Lifelines: New Writings from Bangladesh. Edited by Farah Ghuznavi A Golden Age by Tahmima Anam How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life by Kaavya Viswanathan The Three of Us by Abha Dawesar The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy Queen of Dreams by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni One Amazing Thing by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Oleander Girl by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni So Good in Black by Sunetra Gupta The Lowland: A Novel by Jhumpa Lahiri Family Life: A Novel by Akhil Sharma The Age of Shiva by Manil Suri The Lives of Others by Neel Mukherjee 5 A Mirror Greens in Spring by Selina Sen Kalikatha Via Bypass by Alka Saraogi Pervez: A Novel by Meher Pestonji Sleepwalkers by Joginder Paul Rerun at Rialto by Tom Alter Danny Boy by Jo Ann Goodwin Chinese Mask Indian Eyes: A Mysterious Tale of Kolkata by Ananda Mohan Kar Of Ghost and Other Perils by Troikolyanath Mukhopadhyay (Translated by Arnab Bhattacharya) IV: MEMOIRS Warrior in Pink Sari: The Inside Story of the Gulabi Gang by Sampat Pal Daughters: A Story of Five Generations by Bharati Ray Chasing the Monk’s Shadow: In the Footsteps of Xuangzang by Mishi Saran Jewish Portraits, Indian Frames: Women’s Narratives from a Diaspora of Hope by Jael Silliman Persepolis I & Persepolis II by Marjane Satrapi My Ear At His Heart: Reading My Father by Hanif Kureishi The Tale of My Exile: Twelve years in the Andamans by Barindra Kumar Ghose Surviving in My World: Growing Up Dalit in Bengal by Manohar Mouli Biswas V: BIOGRAPHIES Sarala Devi: A Monograph by Sachidananda Mohanty The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V.S.Naipaul by Patrick French The Life of Graham Greene (3 Volumes) by Norman Sherry Martha Gellhorn: A Biography by Caroline Moorhead Less than a Treason: Hemingway in Paris by Peter Griffin 6 VI: TAGORE Rabindranath Tagore GORA: A Critical Companion. Edited by Nandini Bhattacharya Meeting Mussolini: Tagore’s Tours in Italy, 1925 and 1926 by Kalyan Kundu Shades of Difference: Selected Writings of Rabindranath Tagore. Edited by Radha Chakrarvarty Rabindranath Tagore: A Pictorial Biography by Nityapriya Ghosh Radical Rabindranath: Nation, Family and Gender in Tagore’s Fiction and Films by Sanjukta Dasgupta, Sudeshna Chakravarti and Mary Mathew Tagore: At Home in the World. Edited by Sanjukta Dasgupta and Chinmoy Guha Swades: Rabindranath Tagore’s Patriotic Songs. Translated by Sanjukta Dasgupta On Tagore: Reading the Poet Today by Amit Chaudhuri Tagore and Japan: A Retrospection. Edited by Abhijit Mukherjee, Pratyay Banerjee and Anindya Kundu Religion and Rabindranath Tagore: Selected Discourses, Addresses and Letters in Translation by Amiya P. Sen Rabindranath Tagore: One Hundred Years of Global Reception. Edited by Martin Kampchen and Imre Banga & Editorial Adviser Uma Das Gupta Jorasanko by Aruna Chakravarti VII: CINEMA Reading Rituparno by Shoma A. Chatterjee Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye by Andrew Robinson Deep Focus: Reflections on Cinema by Satyajit Ray Seeing is Believing: Select Writings on Cinema by Chidananda Dasgupta Mrinal Sen: Sixty Years in Search of Cinema by Dipankar Mukhopadhyay The Films of Buddhadeb Dasgupta by John Hood The Subject of Cinema and Another Cinema For Another Society by Gaston Roberge 7 The Cinematic ImagiNation: Indian Popular Films as Social History by Jyotika Virdi Filming Reality: The Independent Documentary Movement in India by Shoma A. Chatterji VIII: MISCELLANEOUS The Renaissance in India by Henry James Cousins India: A Traveller’s Literary Companion. Edited by Chandrahas Chowdhury Sita’s Ramayana by Samhita Arni and Moyna Chitrakar Tramjatra: Imagining Melbourne and Kolkata. Edited by Mick Douglas Picturing the Nation: Iconographies of Modern India. Edited by Richard H. Davies 8 The Reviews 9 I: ANTHOLOGIES Growing Up as a Woman Writer Edited by Jasbir Jain New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2007.Rs. 220.00, 528 pages --------------------------------------------------------------------------- We demand womanist critics in our regional languages, both men and women, to read us, to review us, to represent us in the right light, to give us our due at the turn of the century. -- Nabaneeta Dev Sen Though women live in the same world in which men live, a common debate that arises out of women’s writing is that it is marginalized, its perspectives are different, as is the use of language and space and the denial of individual feminine self. These issues not only stifle the female creative self, but also create a chasm between them and their male counterparts. Feminist or not, women’s writing is framed by gender-governed social constructs, socialization patterns, histories and myths and needs to confront them and their many pasts. Most women writers wish to belong to the mainstream, rather than be ghettoed and go down in history branded as someone who belongs to the margin. Sahitya Akademi, the central agency that has been promoting Indian regional literatures in a big way for a long time, took the initiative to explore the complexities of gender relations and their impact upon the creative mind by organizing two conferences on women writers.