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Book Reviews
Jul 08, 2011 02:58 PM
By Manubhai Madhvani with Giles Foden. Random House.India.ISBN 9788184000795 280 Pages Rs.395.
Review: By Mahadev Desai
Gujarati Lohana community is a close-knit, progressive community, known for its business acumen, enterprise and philanthropy. Some of the Gujarati Lohanas who left India for East Africa attained iconic status in corporate and philanthropic sector. In Tanzania it was the Chande family whereas in Uganda, the two renowned families were theNanji Kalidas Mehta family and the Madhvani family respectively.
The engrossing memoir ‘Tide of Fortune: A family Tale ‘by Manubhai Madhvani with Giles Foden narrates the astonishing family tale as well as the history of Uganda during 20th and early 21st Century. The patriarch of the Madhvani dynasty, Muljibhai Madhvani, who was born in Aasiyapat, India, in 1994, immigrated to Uganda, (Pearl of Africa), a British Protectorate, in 1908.
Muljibhai opened his first retail shop in Jinja, about 54 miles from the capital Kampala. The ...more
Jul 08, 2011 02:57 PM
By Miranda Kennedy Random House ISBN 978-1-4000-6786-2 Hardcover. 352 Pages
Reviewed by Mahadev Desai
Twenty-something NPR Editor and Reporter Miranda Kennedy left her job in New York City and traveled to India where she spent over five years in Delhi,”a city pulsing with possibility and hope” and “experienced friendships, love affairs and losses that open a window onto the opaque world of Indian politics and culture-and alter her own attitudes about everything from food and clothes to marriage and family.”
“Sideways on a scooter is a beautifully written memoir that weaves Kennedy’s own love affair with India into the lives of several Indian women she befriends, and into the bigger narrative of modern India’s transformation. Her understanding of the country, her stories of the tensions between tradition and modernity and her flowing, limpid prose make this a must-read for anyone wanting to understand modern India” Rob Gifford,NPR Correspondent.
And Susan Cheever, author of Ame ...more
Jul 08, 2011 02:53 PM
By J.K.Chande.Penumbra Press, Canada. www.penumbrapress.com ISBN 1894131835 Hardcover. $29.95
Reviewed by Mahadev Desai
Respected and distinguished Sir JayantilalKeshavjiChande, popularly known as JK or Andy, has written a critically acclaimed and engrossing memoir of his life and times in Tanzania.
Andy’s father, KeshavjiChande immigrated to the then British territory of Tanganyika (now Tanzania) to build a better life. Jayantilal (Andy) was born in Mombasa, Kenya on May 7, 1928 but grew up in a nondescript dusty village Bukene, fifty miles north of Tabora, where his father had owned a (duka) shop. Andy attended the only one-roomed Indian Public school, under the tutelage of the only Indian teacher who taught 40 students of varying ages, in Gujarati medium. There was no newspaper or radio. Andy had only Gujarati comics, marbles and volleyball for recreation. He was very close to his father and helped him with odd jobs in his shop in his spare time. He was devastated when hi ...more
Oct 27, 2010 06:22 AM
Howard Jacobson has been described as “Our funniest living writer…” by the Daily Telegraph on the back cover of his latest, Booker prize short-listed novel, ‘The Finkler Question’. Another testimonial about Jacobson on the back cover says the book is “a blistering portrayal of a funny man who at last confronts the darkness of the world.” The Finkler Question, it appears, is a not-so-funny novel by a normally humorous writer.
The Finkler Question is about three men, Julian Treslove a former BBC worker, his school friend Sam Finkler, a Jewish philosopher, writer and television personality and their former teacher, Libor Sevick, a Czech more concerned with the wider world that with exam results.
Libor and Finkler have both been recently widowed and Treslove finds it impossible to stay in a relationship, having had countless disastrous encounters. Yet, he is a man who finds himself obliged to fall in love with every single woman he meets, including Finkler’s wife. He is a huge fail ...more
Oct 08, 2010 04:13 AM
The acclaimed and multiple award-winning historian and travel writer, William Dalrymple has written his seventh book, a compelling and erudite blend of travelogue, and oral history recounted by nine fascinating characters living on the periphery of modern Indian society, in places suspended between modernity and tradition. As the author describes in the introduction to the book,” in reality much of India’s religious identity is closely tied to specific social groups, caste practices and father-to-son lineages, all of which are changing very rapidly as Indian society transforms itself at speed.”
In this detailed account of the varied spiritual lives of nine people, each of whom represent a different religious path,” the narrator(author) is firmly in the shadows, bringing the lives of the people he has met to the fore and placing their stories firmly centre stage. And though he empathizes with the characters, he is not judgmental and lets the characters speak for themselves. The Ni ...more
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