book-review
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Why Indian fiction learned to change society before it learned to question the self.
Every country carries a history, and in cumulative measure these histories are not so different from one another. Wars, famines, empires, revolutions — the costumes change, the wounds remain similar. What distinguishes one literature from another is not how much… Continue reading
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Jane Austen, Naipaul, and the Teacup of History
Author’s Note: This column grew from a memory I carried quietly for years—Naipaul’s remark on Austen, and the strange irony it held. Writing it helped me understand how literature outlives the noise around it, and how gentle voices endure longer… Continue reading
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THE THREE NATIONS OF FICTION
Every art has its capitals. Painters look back to Florence and Paris, musicians to Vienna and Leipzig. But if you ask where fiction — the novel and the short story — found its continuous home, you will not wander across… Continue reading
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Why is Premchand not so widespread in the world like Anton Chekhov
If you look on any railway platform book stall, one picture exists invariantly—square face tapering down, big alive eyes, and sunken cheeks—that is Premchand. I am not saying that he is alone, but company figures are not constant, except for… Continue reading
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DEPTH OUTLASTS FASHION—FROM DICKENS TO KAFKA TO TODAY
What is better or worse for literature? The quiet tyranny of prizes or the constant demands of the market. Between both poles, the writer digs the hole like a mole. To be somewhere, or to be nowhere. Yes, the nowhere… Continue reading
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A Literature That Missed the Inner Turn
Both scenes were not synchronous, nor did they get along. I’m talking about Indian literary writings and the rest of global literature during the incipient phase of the 20th century. That era’s clock faced two world wars, and amid them,… Continue reading
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When Fiction Turns to Polemic: Llosa and the Price of Leaving the Temple
Mario Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian Nobel Laureate, remained a towering figure in the literary world and died this year after a long literary life. I often wonder what his literary career might have been if he had avoided the journalistic… Continue reading
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WHEN WRTING IS BOTH VOCATION AND INVOCATION.
IN BETWEEN FLAME AND DISCIPLINE: A WRITER REFLECTS ON MURAKAMI’S CREED In Novelist as a vocation, Haruki Murakami lays out some important things about the writer’s attitude and routines. They are not similar but varied according to talents. If you… Continue reading
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The Political Machinery of the Book Volga se Ganga (From Volga to Ganga)
“Great art is born only when knowledge is transfigured into feeling.” Volga se Ganga (From Volga to Ganga) by Rahul Sankrityayan—when I read it for the first time, I didn’t dive through or formulate it with my own eyes, which… Continue reading
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Hemingway’s Lens:—“What Hemingway Forgot: Huck Finn is Still a Children’s Classic”
“All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.” —Hemingway Before Mark Twain, American fiction writing was a pupil of European, particularly British for a tone. What was the European Formal Tone? It referred to… Continue reading
Pragya’s Pen 