Anyone who has ever tried to penetrate the world of children’s book publishing will tell you what a daunting task it is. A few fortunate ones, like Pooja Makhijani ( Mama’s Saris) and Uma Krishnaswami (Monsoon) make it to the mainstream, ...

A motley group of would-be travelers waits for visa approvals at an Indian visa and passport office in an unknown city. When a massive earthquake strikes, they are thrown together in a struggle for survival. Quickly, roles are delineated; the leader, the caregiver, the rebel. After an abortive attempt at ...

Vikas Swarup's Q&A had a great concept, but it was a mediocre book that was catapulted into success by the creativity of Slumdog Millionaire's screenplay writers. His second novel, Six Suspects, has a plot that lacks the focus of Q&A but attempts to make up for it by invoking every ...

One of the benefits of leading an interesting life is that you can get a book out of it. Anita Jain, who has had a long and varied career as a global journalist, turns her wry observation skills on herself. After failing at the New York dating scene, Anita decides ...

By Vidya Pradhan “Books like these,” huffed a friend, “expose the vacuum in entertaining Indian literature.” He was referring to One night @ the call centre, Chetan Bhagat’s second book, and it was in response to an assertion by the New York Times on the blurb that the author was ‘the biggest-selling English-language novelist in India's history'. After a sensational debut with Five Point Someone, a lighthearted look at life at the Indian Institutes of Technology, Chetan Bhagat became an overnight celebrity with the Indian reading public (the book completed 190 weeks on the India Today bestseller list in January 2008). The first print of One Night.. , published in 2005, was snapped up in less than 3 days. But critics lambasted this offering. I remember thinking it was a rather maudlin and sentimental effort, with undesirably heavy doses of spirituality weighing down what could have been a satirical look at call centers and what the sudden push to prosperity has done for the Indian middle class. Still, a movie based on the book (tentatively called “Hello”) is in the works. The 3 mistakes of my life, his third book, is equally mawkish.

Kashyap Deorah, IITian and Returning Indian Entrepreneur,  with a yen for start ups from his college days through to his sojourn in Silicon Valley is now back to his roots in hometown, Bombay. Here are his views on 'Maximum City - Bombay Lost and Found', a 542 page tome by New York based journalist and writer, Suketu Mehta.

By Vidya Pradhan It has always been a puzzle why American schools cannot replicate the dominance and the reputation for excellence demonstrated by American universities. US students have always performed rather shamefully compared to students from other countries. In an international math assessment of 15 year olds in 2003, American students came 29th out of 34 places. The outrage reports like these have generated was the driving motivator for the No Child Left Behind(NCLB) act, President Bush’s accountability-laden education policy unveiled just a year after he took office. Linda Perlstein, who has been covering the education beat for the Washington Post for several years, decided to spend a year with an elementary school in Maryland to study the impact of NCLB on the school system. What emerges is a gripping tale of heroism, sacrifice and uncommon bravery on the part of the principal, teachers and staff of Tyler Elementary as they attempt to deal with the new standards and punitive threats that NCLB brings in its wake.

By Rohini Mohan Sunil Lala is a self published NRI author. American Khichdi is a collection of his musings in which he explores the life of the Desi who lives in America. From our obsession for Bollywood to our double standards when it comes to accepting our adopted culture, from the birth of an ABCD to the shock of the death of a loved one in a strange land, from life in India to the Khichdi that life is outside India; the book waxes eloquent on each of these varied topics.

By Rohini Mohan Set in Afghanistan from start to finish without straying into the immigrant experience, Khaled Hosseini’s new book, ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ is reminiscent of Rohinton Mistry’s ‘A Fine Balance’. Richly developed characters and a solid storyline set against the backdrop of the turbulent events that have rocked the country, it is a tale of troubled people living in troubled times. Often when an author’s very first book is a runaway success, the second, while breathlessly awaited, ends up being a huge disappointment. Not so with this one. The heart wrenching, intricately woven story telling and the strong splendid characters are now trademark Hosseini.

By Vidya Pradhan Curry has to be the most misunderstood and most misused word in the food lexicon. Even in South India, where the word first originated as ‘kari’, it could mean a dry vegetable dish or meaty gravy. And of course, the British have adopted it for their very own in a form that is probably unrecognizable to most Indians. Author Lizzie Collingham traces the evolution of British ‘Curry’ from the time of the Mughals to its various avatars in the early days of British and Portuguese occupation in India. In her epicurean voyage, she discovers that there is no such thing as an authentic Indian meal. Indian food as we know it today is a product of our history of occupation and the fusion of various traditions brought in by the many nations that sought to conquer us.