Navtej Sarna

To be quite honest, Isaiah Berlin, the Oxford political philosopher, has always seemed a bit too formidable to read. And except for one...

Every once in a while — sometimes in a very long while — you come across a book that you wish would not finish. You savour each sentence,...

I reach once again for the 1925 collection of Hemingway’s stories In Our Time, which contains the short story that best encapsulates what...

I do not believe that I am qualified to write on Faiz Ahmed Faiz. But the memory of a long ago Moscow afternoon tempts me. As a young...

The sky is a splattered sunset orange. The sun, a blazing hoop of fire, balances itself on the taught line of the horizon and then sinks...

There are times when the mind hesitates to enter a substantial book, aware that it will not be able to do justice. I thought I had sent...

When they fought each other for the throne after my father’s death, guns were mounted on those minarets and cannonballs flew over...

Normally I only glance furtively at obituaries; one never knows what, or rather, whom one may find in those columns. But the other day,...

The night throws its canopy gently over the Great Pyramids at Giza, as if it were reluctant to smudge their sharp silhouettes. And as the...

As opposed to travelling, aimless, whimsical wandering has been the source of some literary masterpieces… I step out without purpose,...

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...