In popular imagination, the Allied invasion of continental Europe is dominated by the Normandy Landings. The opening amphibious landing scene in Spielberg’s ‘Saving Private Ryan’ and the Cold War narrative of the joint Anglo-American thrust to free Europe and clear the road to Berlin have both contributed to this narrative. The truth was that months … Continue reading The Forgotten ‘Battle for Italy’ and Naples in 1944
After “A Room with a View’, I felt I had to read Forster’s other famed work – “A Passage to India’. Though I’m late to the party, I’m convinced that this book would rank as one of the best works of fiction written by a foreigner about India. The closest rival to this claim would … Continue reading Forster’s ‘A Passage to India’
Military life inflamed their ironic sensibilities and their skepticism. A single crude acronym that captured the soldier's lowered expectations-SNAFU, for "situation normal, all fucked up"-had expanded into a vocabulary of GI cynicism: SUSFU (situation unchanged, still fucked up); SAFU (self-adjusting fuck-up); TARFU (things are really fucked up); FUMTU (fucked up more than usual); JANFU (joint … Continue reading GI Slang
E. M. Forster’s A Room with a View, beyond its exploration of class in Victorian Britain, also captures the tourism mania that gripped the country at the turn of the century. With the British Empire at its zenith, the continent and far-flung regions such as India, Egypt, and South Africa became accessible, exerting a powerful … Continue reading Forster’s ‘A Room with a View’
The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris was a sensation when it appeared in the 1960s. It arrived at a moment defined by free love, the Vietnam War protests, the hippie movement, rising race consciousness, and a broader rethinking of gender. Into this atmosphere, Morris dropped the provocative idea that humans are no different from apes … Continue reading Desmond Morris’ ‘The Naked Ape’
Jane Eyre was written in 1847, when India was on track to becoming the crown jewel of the Raj. So the references to India in Bronte’s novel, though a surprise to me, were very much with keeping up with the world she inhabited. Towards the end of the novel, Eyre is proposed by the clergyman … Continue reading ‘India’ in ‘Jane Eyre’
Erica Jong burst into the literary-feminist scene in 1973 with the publication of her provocative novel Fear of Flying, a work that became emblematic of second-wave feminism. The book is also remembered for popularizing the term “zipless fuck” - a metaphor for a fantasy of a sexual encounter entirely free of emotional complications, power dynamics, … Continue reading Erica Jong on Ted Hughes’ Irresistibility
When I moved to Delhi in 2009, the Eloor Library in South Ex was what sustained me during the initial days of my struggle to settle down in the city. The library, like all its other branches across Kerala and the key metros was well stocked and covered every notable genre. Sadly, the place shut … Continue reading Ten Years, Seven Hundred Books, One Kindle
On the 25th of February 1956, Sylvia Plath, a Fulbright scholar in Cambridge met Ted Hughes for the first time and their steamy encounter went on to become part of the literary folklore surrounding their lives. To cut a long story short, they fell for each other with a mad passion and Plath ended up … Continue reading “Mad Passionate Abandon” – Sylvia Plath’s First Encounter with Ted Hughes
I spent the Eid weekend, revisiting the Islamic Revolution of Iran. Scott Anderson’s ‘King of Kings: The Fall of the Shah and the Revolution That Forged Modern Iran’ and Ryszard Kapuscinski’s ‘Shah of Shahs’ (which I’m revisting after 15 years) are good primers about the revolution. Over the last two years, seeing the protests of … Continue reading The 1979 Islamic Revolution
