Taking its title from T.S. Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock, Attendant Lords: Bairam Khan and Abdur Rahim: Courtiers & Poets in Mughal India (2017), traces the stories of Bairam Khan (1501–1561) and his son Abdur Rahim (1556–1627), nobles of Persian ancestry who together served under the first four Mughal emperors and rose to high positions (both…
Book Review: What Are We Doing About Zoya/The Rules of Arrangement by Anisha Bhatia
My thanks to Headline and NetGalley for a review copy of this book. Before I start, just wanted to mention that this book appears as What Are We Doing About Zoya on NetGalley and The Rules of Arrangement elsewhere; not sure if this is because of different titles in different places of publication of whether…
Book Review: Mohini: The Enchantress by Anuja Chandramouli
My thanks to the author Anuja Chandramouli and Rupa Publishing Co Ltd for a review copy of this book. Anuja is a writer of both mythological and historical fiction; this work falls in the former category. Mohini, the goddess of enchantment is the female avatar of the god Vishnu, often seen as an enchantress, one…
Book Review: The Glory of Patan by K.M. Munshi
The Glory of Patan is the first of a historical fiction trilogy, set in Patan during the reign of Siddharaj Jaisingh, of the Chaulukya or Solanki dynasty in 11th–12th Century Gujarat. The series was written in Gujarati the 1910’s—this first one being published in 1916, and the translation I read is a recent one by…
Shelf Control #63: Coromandel by Charles Allen #History #Non-fiction
Wednesday the 31st of October--time again for Shelf Control, the last one this month. Shelf Control is a weekly feature hosted by Lisa at Bookshelf Fantasies, and celebrates the books waiting to be read on your TBR piles/mountains. To participate, simply pick a book from your TBR pile and write a post about it. Link…
Book Review: Ganga: The Constant Goddess by Anuja Chandramouli
My thanks to the author Anuja Chandramouli and Rupa Publishing Co Ltd for a review copy of this book. The river Ganges or Ganga is of course, the most sacred river in India, and in mythology she is also a goddess, who lived in the heavens but came to earth after a sage–king, Bhagirath, undertook…
Book Review: Prithvi Vallabh by K.M. Munshi
There’s this Hindi TV show called Prithvi Vallabh running currently, and when I saw the adverts initially (still haven’t seen the actual programme), it looked interesting and on looking it up further I found that there was a book by the same name in Gujarati, based on the same historical characters. What made me more…
Children’s Book of the Month: Band of Soldiers by Sardindu Bandhyopadhyay
The first of my ‘theme’ reads this month (my reading theme is here), and this ‘King’ in question in this one is the Maratha warrior–king Shivaji, who ruled in the latter part of the seventeenth century. More about him here. This book, originally Bengali was written by Sardindu Bandhyopadhyay, a screenwriter (for both Bollywood and…
Book Review: Yama’s Lieutenant and the Stone Witch by Anuja Chandramouli
My thanks to the author and Penguin Randomhouse India for a review copy of the book. This is the second book in the Yama’s Lieutenant series which sees our hero Agni Prakash still grappling with his demons and indeed the visions that haunt him, while having to tackle a new and far more dangerous enemy…
Book Review: Yama’s Lieutenant by Anuja Chandramouli
My thanks to the author for a review copy of the book. This fantasy–adventure with a basis in mythology is the story of a young man, Agni Prakash, who suffering intense grief from the loss of his twin sister Varu (Varuna), finds himself “recruited” by a mysterious yet charming silver goddess to be Yama’s Lieutenant.…
Literary Potpourri 