Book Review

Articles

• Prabhakaran’s militarist strategy led to doom, says revealing book | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  14 July, by M R Narayan Swamy

  The seeds for a miserable end to Velupillai Prabhakaran’s Tamil Eelam dream were laid by the man himself — a long, long, long time ago.
  This is the conclusion one draws after reading a brutally honest and at times painful sketch of the early years of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) by one of Prabhakaran’s earliest associates, Ganeshan Iyer.
  The Tamil work, Porattahil Enadhu Pathivugal, was first published abroad in 2011, two years after Prabhakaran was slain. It was (…)

• Marais’s Review of An Introduction to the History of Chronobiology by Jole Shackelford
  25 May 2024

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  An Introduction to the History of Chronobiology, Volume 1: Biological Rhythms Emerge as a Subject of Scientific Research
  by Jole Shackelford
  University of Pittsburgh Press 2022. 332 pp. (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8229-4732-5
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  Reviewed by Johanné Marais
  If you are not yet thinking of the cyclical nature in everything, you may want to pick up Jole Shackelford’s An Introduction to the History of Chronobiology, Volume 1: Biological (…)

• Bliss on Jaffary, ’Abortion in Mexico: A History
  13 September 2025

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  Abortion in Mexico: A History
  by Nora E. Jaffary
  University of Nebraska Press
  Series: Engendering Latin America
  2024, 163 pp.
  (paper), ISBN 978-1-4962-4021-7
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  Reviewed by Katherine E. Bliss (Global Policy Center, Center for Strategic and International Studies)
  In this new volume, historian Nora E. Jaffary examines how and why legal approaches to abortion in Mexico have changed over time. In particular, she seeks to (…)

• Raza on Hindi translation of Maulana Azad speech Qaul-e-Faisal
  26 November 2022

  Book Review by Aamir Raza
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  Qaul-e-Faisal: Insaaf ki baat by Maulana Azad Translated by Mohammad Naushad
  Setu Prakashan 198 pages Rs 325
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  The sedition law in India has colonial origin and served as an effective tool in the hands of the British imperialist rulers to suppress dissent against its actions and policies. In the last few years, the number of Sedition cases filed against the individual has risen substantially. The Sedition law has been repeatedly used to harass (…)

• Testimony Against Silence: Knife by Salman Rushdie and the Dark Mirror to India’s Present | Ismail Salahuddin
  30 August 2025, by Ismail Salahuddin

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder
  by Salman Rushdie
  Random House
  2024
  ISBN 10: 0593730240
  ISBN 13: 9780593730249
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  There are books that explain, books that imagine, and books that dare. But every once in a while, a book comes along that refuses to be just a book, it becomes a cry, a wound, a reckoning. Salman Rushdie

• Quinn’s Review of Silicon Valley and the Environmental Inequalities of High-Tech Urbanism by Jason A. Heppler
  5 October 2024

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  Silicon Valley and the Environmental Inequalities of High-Tech Urbanism
  by Jason A. Heppler
  University of Oklahoma Press
  2024. 224 pp.
  (paper) ISBN 978-0-8061-9374-8
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  Reviewed by Adam Quinn (University of Oregon)

• Review of Salman Rushdie’s Knife | Rishav Sharma
  1 June 2024

  https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738826/knife-by-salman-rushdie/
  Je Suis Salman
  On 12.08.2022, Salman Rushdie was at the amphitheater in Chautauqua, New York to talk about the censorship and security of writers in their country. In a harrowing incident at the venue, he was brutally stabbed multiple times by a religious fanatic, whom the author chooses not to name but call him A. The attack must not be gauged as an isolated incident of violence but an act to terrorize an artist. (…)

• Who Will Dominate the World? Democrats or Dictators? | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  25 March 2023, by M R Narayan Swamy

  BOOK REVIEW __0__
  Defeating the Dictators: How Democracy can Prevail in the Age of the Strongman by Charles Dunst Hodder & Stoughton Pages: 428; Price: Rs 799
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  A world increasingly in turmoil is locked in a bitter battle of ideas: democracy versus autocracy. There was a time when it seemed that democracy would simply overwhelm the world barring isolated spots. No more. As international affairs specialist and author Charles Dunst points out, autocracies and dictatorships of (…)

• Reconciling Gandhi and Savarkar: The Paranjape Way | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  22 November 2025, by M R Narayan Swamy

  Biographer Vikram Sampath may be convinced that the ideologies of Mahatma Gandhi and Veer Savarkar remain the perfectly irreconcilable polar opposites that would never meet. But prolific writer and veteran academic Makarand R. Paranjape disagrees. The feud between the two men of history, he is equally confident, was actually a family quarrel as they were both fellow freedom fighters and professedly fellow Hindus.
  And so, the unending antagonism between Gandhi and Savarkar needs a new (…)

• Review of Bala Ramulu Chinnala’s Development Strategies and Governance in India | Srinivasulu Karli
  22 November 2025, by Karli Srinivasulu

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  Development Strategies and Governance in India:
  Predicaments and Challenges
  by Bala Ramulu Chinnala
  Routledge
  2025
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  Reviewed by Srinivasulu Karli
  Post-independent India