Navtej Sarna

There comes a point in every long-gestation literary project that one doesn’t want to see it anymore. One hands it over to the editor...

In an entertaining and typically ironic talk in Delhi last week, Paul Theroux did at least two good things. First was the epiphany:...

When authors and editors put their heads together to decide on the name for a book, it is not an idle moment. The name, perhaps more than...

The infusions into literature and art of the light and reflections on the blue waters are too many to relate. An image in sepia from a...

From my room in The Oriental hotel, I can gaze endlessly at the muddy Chao Praya, as it flows sluggishly past the concrete and glass...

Dear Mr. Naipaul, Forgive me for not calling you Sir Vidia. Somehow, that doesn’t trip off my tongue easily. Perhaps it is the democratic...

Sometimes the very slimness of a book attracts. While there are times that one loves the feel of several tomes on the bedside table, each...

Sometimes things have a way of building up gently, unobtrusively. Serendipitous straws in the wind have been pulling me back to James...

To the writer of a column called “Second Thoughts”, it should have long occurred to read a book called Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow....

THE allure of a literary recluse is difficult to resist, particularly in a world where authors are falling over each other to be in the...

CALL it a leftover fantasy of youth, or perhaps the last burst of middle-aged angst, but I still want to do a Kerouac. Just pick up the...

THE two hours in Lahore permitted only a quick lunge into a highly recommended bookshop. But the pickings were good. The top catch was a...

I REMEMBER well that December evening in Moscow when I picked up a fresh copy of the slim volume of Chekhov's short stories that I have...

FOR a panic stricken moment, just before a short trip to Kabul, no book on Afghanistan comes to mind. Then suddenly, as the news spreads...

AN unfinished novel by a great author has all the poignancy of a bird shot in mid-flight. The same sort of questions are left, hovering...

A SMALL agency item, picked up from Russian TV channels, caught the eye recently. "Unknown vandals," it read, "have desecrated the grave...

THIS large glass window looks on to a peak the villagers call Shali. The early morning light caresses the valleys, skims the tops of the...

Ernest Hemingway stayed often at the Hotel Ambos Mundos in the 1930s and was a regular at El Floriditia. The La Bodeguita Del Medio makes...

In the early morning, the scene from the balcony would be very different — the sea held no dark secrets, the water had receded to reveal...

THE Gulf of Finland is a choppy grey this afternoon. Two long low hydrofoils waft uncomfortably in the water. The strong breeze blows in...