Category: Books

This is another book recommended to me by Conrad Barwa. Mau Mau and Kenya: An Analysis of a Peasant Revolt by Wunyabari O. Maloba is a good book, though it is written somewhat in an academic language and hence can be dry at times. I guess that couldn’t be avoided since the book is based… Continue reading Mau Mau and Kenya

One of the major faults of Africa : A Biography of the Continent is a lack of maps. I like to look at a map of the region whne reading about it and I missed that sorely while reading John Reader’s book. The book covers only subsaharan Africa, but that is not a problem in… Continue reading Africa: A Biography

Thanks to Conrad Barwa who recommended this book to me. This is a good book which collects some stories of the riots and migrations that accompanied independence and partition of India in 1947. The book focuses on the Punjab, rightly so in my opinion since the Punjab is where most of the “action” happened. Partition… Continue reading The Other Side of Silence

I just finished reading “A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East” by David Fromkin. The title of the book comes from a quote by Field Marshall Earl Wavell: After the ‘war to end war’ they seem to have been pretty successful in… Continue reading A Peace to End All Peace

I usually alternate reading fiction and non-fiction. I have quite a few fiction books in the pipeline since I don’t care much about its standards if it’s interesting reading. However, I need to replenish the non-fiction books I plan to read this year. My current theme is history. Something about the India-Pakistan partition in 1947.… Continue reading History Book Recommendations

Moth Smoke : A Novel is, I think, Mohsin Hamid’s first book. It is a tale of an educated middle-class guy Dara Shikoh1 who goes from a banker to a drug addict and criminal. It is a story about drugs, sex, corruption and betrayal. Mohsin Hamid writes well and could become a great Pakistani author… Continue reading Moth Smoke

In Terror and Liberalism, Paul Berman has a few good ideas which either warranted a newspaper/magazine article or a much thicker book. Unfortunately, we got a 210 page book. The premise of the book is reasonable. Berman tries to compare the Islamists with the totalitarian ideologues of the 20th century, i.e, the fascists and the… Continue reading Terror and Liberalism

I finished reading Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963-65 some time ago but never got around to writing about it. Taylor Branch continues the mammoth project of writing about Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement in this second book of the series. I wrote about the first book, Parting the… Continue reading Pillar of Fire

I have finished reading White Teeth: A Novel by Zadie Smith. It is a very good and fun novel. I would recommend it highly. It has very entertaining images of the different characters and their peculiarities. The English guy Archie and his Jamaican wife Clara, the Bengali Samad and his wife Alsana and their children… Continue reading White Teeth