There are so many ads that are offensive to women, that show them as weak, indecisive, vain or silly. There are protests against some—mostly the brazenly sexist ones—but soon it’s…

The Sky Is The Limit Canadian writer Esi Edugyan’s Washington Black, shortlisted for the Man Booker prize last year, and winner of other awards and much acclaim, is set in the…

Love & Longing In Dublin Sally Rooney’s Normal People, came out to rave reviews and inclusion in the Booker longlist. The novel is a sombre version of When Harry Met Sally, using accepted…

Comic Book History If a film buff wants to see a properly researched and authentic film on the Rani of Jhansi, then Sohrab Modi’s Jhansi Ki Rani (1953) is the one…

The Making Of A Leader There is a scene in Abhijit Phanse’s Thackeray, in which the leader is a pall-bearer of one of his followers killed in a violent agitation. This…

Emil And The Detectives is a classic story for children, written by German writer Erich Kastner in 1929, and illustrated by Water Trier. The Nazis burnt most of Kastner’s books, for…

The Lady Vanishes British novelist Belinda Bauer’s Snap was longlisted for the Man Booker Award last year, one of the rare suspense books to be included in that hallowed roll. The opening chapter of the…

Hard-Boiled Detective Sara Gran’s tough-yet-vulnerable protagonist, Claire DeWitt, belongs to the best tradition of those never-say-die, hard-boiled detectives of classic noir crime fiction. A female version of Dashiell Hammett or…

Exam Scam The problem with India’s education system is far deeper that what Why Cheat India can even attempt to get at. The extent of the rot is conveyed through a list of statistics at…

Manic Mumbai For a first-time director –Pia Sukanya– to even attempt a film like Bombairiya is as admirable as it is foolhardy, because a plot in which multiple characters run riot for…