In Conversation with Padma Shri Anita Desai

Literary Review

In  Conversation

Explorations of the unknown

Anita Desai talks about how challenging it was for her as a writer to step out of her comfort zones. Excerpts from an interview with a writer who has quietly but consistently practised her craft for over 45 years. ZIYA US SALAM

‘I never go back to a story once it is in print. If I did, I would want to re-write it entirely...’

 
Anita Desai: Brings a quiet, unhurried quality to her writing.

There is an unhurried, laidback quality to her work that draws the reader in, like a flame attracts a moth. In the age of quick-reads, Anita Desai still draws attention with the same unwavering quality to her work that she first displayed when she penned Cry The Peacock, back in 1963. Nothing has changed her life. Neither three Booker nominations, nor being a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature or the Padma Shri she was conferred!

At one time, Desai, now with 16 books under the belt, said her life was not big or broad enough as it was all about family and neighbours. Now, people see a window into their life through her works. How gradual or pleasurable was this transformation?

Risking a break

“It was important to me. I could have chosen to remain confined within the limits of my world or to risk a break and step into the unknown. I chose the latter. It was challenging, at times frightening, because it separated me from what I knew intimately and well, but for the most part it was exhilarating and stimulating.”

An air of melancholy runs through most of her works. If in In Custody there is a brooding darkness, in Fire on the Mountain, she talks of estrangement and a sense of loneliness in solitude. Isn’t the work a bit dark?  more

Google, publishers reach pact: Millions of Copy righted books available online

SAN FRANCISCO : Settling a legal battle, Google on Tuesday reached an agreement with book publishers and authors that clears the way for both sides to more easily profit from digital versions of printed books.

The agreement, under which Google would pay $125 million to settle two copyright lawsuits over its book-scanning efforts, would allow it to make millions of out-of-print books available for reading and purchasing online.

It outlines the framework for a new system that will channel payments from book sales, advertising revenue and other fees to authors and publishers, with Google collecting a cut.

The deal goes some way toward drawing a road map for a possible digital future for publishers and authors.The settlement, which was subject to court approval, would have the greatest impact on the millions of books that were still protected by copyright but were no longer being printed.

Since 2004, Google has been working with university and research libraries to create digital scans of their collections. Of the approximately 7 million books that Google has already scanned, 4 million to 5 million are out of print.

Google now makes the content of those books available in its book search service but shows only snippets of text, unless it has permission from the copyright holder to show more.

Under the agreement, Google will now show up to 20 per cent of the text at no charge to users. It will also make the entire book available online for a fee. Universities, libraries and other organisations will be able to buy subscriptions that make entire collections of those books available to their visitors.

“This huge body of books that were effectively lost to the marketplace are being rescued,” said James Gleick, the author of five books. The settlement being paid by Google will go in part to establish a digital book registry that will administer the new system. — AP Source

Karl Barth on Revelation

Outlook is thirteen

ESSAY

Fully Loaded Magazine

In its 13 years, Outlook has honed a peculiarly Indian take on secular fair play that opens its pages to diversity and dissent

MUKUL KESAVAN

Outlook is now 13 years old. For a Jewish boy, his thirteenth birthday is the time he comes of age; an English-speaking Indian child is likely to be told that she (or he) is now a teenager, an otherwise alien time of life for most Indian children. What 13 means in the life-cycle of a magazine is less obvious because the average life expectancy of an English magazine in India is hard to reckon.  more

Appraising ‘The Jewel of Medina’

OCTOBER 16, 2008

** The Jewel of Medina

http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20081015_appraising_jewel_medina

Appraising ‘The Jewel of Medina’

Oct.15, 2008  

By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart 

“The Jewel of Medina,” a controversial work of historical fiction by American author Sherry Jones, was supposed to have gone on sale Oct. 15 in the United Kingdom. A series of events, however, have delayed its British release indefinitely.  

The book, which went on sale in the United States on Oct. 6, describes the life of Aisha, the young girl who became the Prophet Mohammed’s third — and according to many sources, favorite — wife.  

Some Muslims have labeled the book blasphemous and have branded the author an enemy of Islam. An associate professor of Islamic history at the University of Texas at Austin said Muslims would find the book very offensive and, in an August interview in The Wall Street Journal, likened it to soft-core pornography.  

While the author and publisher have argued that the book respectfully portrays Mohammed and his relationship with Aisha — in stark contrast to the Danish cartoonsthat have sparked so much protest and violence — the tone of the book is not the real issue.  

To many Muslims, not only is it offensive to ridicule Mohammed but it is forbidden and considered a dire insult to portray the prophet in any way outside the context of Islamic writings.  

This insult is magnified when Mohammed is depicted having intimate relations with his wife, a revered figure in Islam who is referred to in many Islamic writings as “Um ul Mumineen” (Arabic for “Mother of the Believers”). Because of this, in all probability many Muslims — not just a few radicals — will find the book offensive.  

“The Jewel of Medina” is scheduled to be released in 15 other countries in 2008, including major European markets, Russia and Brazil. There have been no known fatwas, or religious opinions, issued by Muslim leaders calling for action against Jones or any of the book’s publishers at this time. Likewise, a spokesman for the U.S. publisher notes that Jones has not personally received any threats related to the book. The book already has prompted one amateurish attack against the home of its British publisher, however, and we believe that as the issue percolates, we will see more violence in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in connection with the book.  more 

Aravind Adiga wins Man Booker prize for his first novel ``The White Tiger.''

India's Aravind Adiga wins Man Booker prize

Aravind Adiga with his book which won the prestigious Man Booker prize. Photo: AP

LONDON (AP): Aravind Adiga won the prestigious Man Booker prize on Tuesday for

Adiga won the 50,000 pound (US$87,000) prize for a novel about a protagonist who will use any means necessary to fulfill his dream of escaping impoverished village life for success in the big city.

At 34, Adiga was the youngest of the finalists for the literary prize.

The chairman of the judges, Michael Portillo, said the book was an impressive work.

``The novel is in many ways perfect. It is quite difficult to find any structural flaws with it,'' he said.

Some have accused Adiga, who lives in Mumbai, of painting a negative picture of modern India and its huge underclass but Adiga said the novel was meant to be provocative.

``It's not a book that's meant to ingratiate itself with anyone,'' Adiga told the British Broadcasting Corp. before the prize was announced. ``The tone of it was meant to be provocative and even a bit nasty at times. It's meant to get people thinking.''

Profoundly Indian

UMA MAHADEVAN-DASGUPTA

Born in Chennai, brought up in Mangalore, writing about Delhi, and living in Mumbai, Adiga loves Tamil, speaks Kannada and writes in English. And in this language of the “erstwhile master”, without exoticism and without sentimentality, he has written a profoundly Indian story. It is not as if other writers have not written about the other, forgotten side of India.

For example, Amitav Ghosh, whose novel Sea of Poppies also appeared on the Man Booker shortlist for this year, has written memorably, with rich detail, compassion and wisdom, about those on the margins of history and geography as has Kiran Desai, in her Man Booker Prize-winning second novel, The Inheritance of Loss. Adiga’s prose is not quite so elegant, but the force of his writing comes from its savage humour and its strength of feeling.

The pages of the 34-year-old Adiga’s novel, however, are different, in their dark humour.

They are also incandescent with anger at the injustice, the futility, the sheer wrongness of a life such as the one from where a bright little boy called Munna, who was later called Balram Halwai in his school records, and then called the White Tiger of the jungle because of his good performance during a school inspection, was pulled out of school and told to smash coal for a tea shop. Where private armies roam about the fields, men and women live sad and stunted lives, and dreams are cut short even before they are fully formed. more

Inter-textual: Names of God

El, Eloh, Elohim, Ilah, Allah, Ulu...

#29    13th August 2007, 04:40 PM

Aoyama  Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Tokyo and Paris Native language: 仏(佛)/法語 (Clodoaldien) Posts: 3,562

Re: El, Eloh, Elohim, Ilah, Allah, Ulu... To me, El, Eloh, Elohim, Ilah, Allah, Ulu (but for Ulu, I can't say for sure) all come originally from the root meaning above , still found in the name of Israel's national airlines (El Al = on and on/above and above). This is different from the concept of God (or Dieu, Dio etc coming from Deus/Zeus, of pagan origin). Here, basically, El -in Hebrew-just means "(what is) above" (like in Japanese Kami or Chinese Shang di, and probably many other languages where "above" renders the meaning of divinity), a meaning that you can also find in the word élite . more  Sometimes El is translated by idol(s) , to differentiate it from Elohim. Arguable. Jesus will say (?) Eli, lama sabactani (aramaic), here Eli = my God ...

Death of Ivan Illyich by Tolstoy

Death of Ivan Illyich by Tolstoy

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio wins Nobel Prize for Literature 2008

PARIS — The Swedish Academy on Thursday awarded the 2008 Nobel Prizefor literature to Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, a cosmopolitan and prolific French novelist, children’s author and essayist regarded by many French readers and critics as one of the country’s greatest living writers.

Bertrand Guay/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio

Related

From the Archives: Winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature (October 12, 2006)

Times Topics: Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio

Times Topics: Nobel Prizes

Citation by The Swedish Academy(nobelprize.org)

Mr. Le Clézio has written more than 40 books, 12 of which have been translated into English, an exotic canon of novels, essays and children’s books depicted by the academy as distilled from experience in Mexico, Central America and North Africa and suffused with a quest for lost culture and new spiritual realities.

In its citation, the prize committee in Stockholm called him an “author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization.” The prize, won last year by the British author Doris Lessing, was worth $1.43 million.
“I am very moved, very touched,” Mr. Le Clézio told Swedish public radio. “It’s a great honor for me.”
While his work is inflected with international experience, Mr. Le Clézio, 68, is the 14th French writer to win the prize since it was created in 1901, and the 12th European author to win since 1994, indicative of a trend that has become a matter of heated debate.
The Swedish Academy’s permanent secretary, Horace Engdahl, recently said that Europe was “the center of the literary world,” and suggested that American writers were too insular and too much under the sway of American popular culture to win. The last American writer to receive the prize was Toni Morrison in 1993.


more 

Book by Maxwell Pereira: The Other Side of Policing

 The Other Side Of Policing 

a new book by Maxwell Pereira

Unlike the often dull and drab police writings that lean more on academic hypotheses, this book written in an easy flowing simple narrative style, often in lighter vein, provides a fresh and engaging look at the gripping issues confronting contemporary law enforcement in the Indian context. In addition to the die-hard traditional crimes, the book discusses policing the ever newer challenges thrown up by emerging technologies, lifestyles and growing aspirations of an evolving 'democratic' society, of a people still stigmatised as hosting the world's largest chunk of those below the poverty line – all in an environment of the current bullish and booming economy steered and governed by a highly politicized bureaucracy and criminalized polity with scant regard for the rule of law.  more 

Dying to Get High: Marijuana as Medicine by Wendy Chapkis and Richard Webb

http://www.nyupress.org/books/Dying_to_Get_High-products_id-7726.html Dying to Get High: Marijuana as Medicine is an important and accessible book -- not heavy on academic jargon, but rather lively and engaging, like a true detective novel -- with a broad appeal to those interested in the medical potential of cannabis, an end to the drug war and grass roots activism. I asked the co-authors, Wendy Chapkis and Richard Webb, how working on the book changed them.

WENDY CHAPKIS: "I certainly was one of those people who thought that 'medical marijuana' was probably mostly a way for Americans to get around ridiculously punitive drug laws. It seemed like a reasonable strategy to me. But the very first time I walked into a WAMM [WoMen's Alliance for Medical Marijuana] membership meeting, looked around the room and saw people who were ghostly white and frail, people in wheelchairs, people huddled in small groups talking about a WAMM member who needed round the clock care, I realized that medical marijuana was no 'ruse.' These were very ill people. And, as I started doing interviews, the stories of the medicinal properties of pot blew me away. more

Canada PM Stephen Harper plagiarised Australian PM John Howard

Canada opposition party accuses PM of plagiarism

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Associated Press

Toronto, October 01, 2008

First Published: 19:48 IST(1/10/2008)

Last Updated: 02:03 IST(2/10/2008)

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A senior campaign staffer for the governing Conservative Party resigned on Tuesday after admitting he wrote a speech for Prime Minister Stephen Harper that plagiarised another leader's address urging support for the US-led war in Iraq.

The Opposition Liberals released transcripts of speeches delivered by then-Australian PM John Howard on March 18, 2003, and one by Harper two days later in Canadia’s Parliament when Harper was Opposition leader.

Liberal foreign affairs spokesman Bob Rae said nearly half of Harper’s speech was a word-for-word recitation of Howard’s. “How does a political leader in Canada’s Parliament —on such a crucial issue — end up giving the same speech as another country’s leader?”  more