A.K. Kulshreshth's Blog: Book Reviews
December 25, 2022
Shamsur Rahman Faruqi's Kai Chand The Sar-e-Aasman
![कई चांद थे सरे-आसमां [Kai Chand The Sar-e-Aasman]](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1465896351l/30593906._SX98_.jpg)
कई चांद थे सरे-आसमां [Kai Chand The Sar-e-Aasman] by Shamsur Rahman FaruqiMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I added Kai Chaand The Sar-e -Aasman to my TBR after the journalist Ravish Kumar praised it. During the last few days, I often closed this book to postpone reaching the last page. Now that I am done, it will leave a void. This is what masterpieces do to readers.
When I try to place this classic among other great works, I am tempted to compare it to
The Radetsky March
, perhaps because both deal with sunsetting empires. Sadly, Kai Chaand The Sar-e -Aasman does not seem to have got the international acclaim it deserves (though the cover blurb is from Orhan Pamuk).
There isn’t even very much on Faruqi, considering his legendary contribution to Urdu, on the web. An exception that I liked is this interview in Hindi, conducted by the journalist Saurabh Dwivedi. Dwivedi asks Faruqi if there is “a long cut, a short cut, a process” for the many people who are brimming with ideas for novels and wondering how to go about writing. Faruqi says: “Son, if I knew the long cut and short cut, would I have taken so long to write my novel? I was seventy when wrote my novel… There was a time when I was a young boy. You probably won’t believe it…” And he goes on to describe his approach to writing and editing with great charm.
Faruqi himself wrote this piece on translating the book from Urdu to English, a project that must have been supremely challenging. He has this interesting take: “Take ‘love’, for instance. How many words can you think of in English, including Latinisms and archaisms, to convey the idea of love? Well, just one, or maybe another two or three if you stretch the matter. Urdu has at least 18 words to express the emotion of love.”
Faruqi has blurred history and historical fiction with his canvas a whole host of real characters: Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar, Nawab Shamsuddin Ahmad Khan of Loharu, William Fraser, Ghalib, Dagh, and many others. Towering above them all is the protagonist, Wazir Khanum, an unusual woman with strange anachronistic ideas of emancipation – a woman whom history might have consigned to a footnote if it wasn’t for this great novel.
Faruqi shines in the detail of his settings. Painters in Kishangarh, in Rajasthan, created organic colours with traditional methods; they rubbed dried leaves and insects between silken sheets gently. How gently? Well, the sound of rubbing couldn’t be heard, and the cloth couldn’t be allowed to tear. Where did thy get water to mix into the dry colours? It was from the western shore of the Kishangarh lake, where it took on some qualities from certain types of grass… and the urine of crocodiles. Faruqi expounds on a staggering range of settings – just for example, the science of carpet-weaving in Kashmir, the magical of a sufi recital in Lahore, the rites and rituals of thug bandits, and the layouts of the places that Wazir Khanum lives in on her chequered journey. Early on in the book, there is (view spoiler)[ a bit about an Arabic word for prostitute also being used to mean a cough, because prostitutes would could to please their clients. It took me a while to figure this out… (hide spoiler)]
He also covers a broad sweep of history, with its focus being mostly on Delhi in the times when the Mughal empire had crumbled, leaving the vestiges of an urbane and cosmopolitan culture without any military power to back it. He stops the narrative just short of 1857, the year of rebellion against the East India Company. Among the fascinating episodes in the story is (view spoiler)[ the assassination of William Fraser, and the following public hanging of Wazir Khanum’s lover. (hide spoiler)]
Faruqi’s love and knowledge of poetry thread the narrative. Detailed recitals of Farsi and Urdu poems adorn scenes of courtship, love, sex, and death. Wazir Khanum herself was an accomplished poet, and her son with the ill-fated Nawab Shamsuddin Khan, Dagh Dehlvi is a leading figure of Urdu poetry. The title of the book is taken from this couplet written by Ahmad Mushtaq:
Kai chaand they sare aasmaan ki chamak chamak ke palat gaye
Na lahu mere hi jigar mein thaa, na tumahri zulph syaah thi.
I am not equal to the task of translating these lines, but some day I will pick up the English translation of this novel just to see how Faruqi did it.
I read the Hindi translation by Naresh ‘Nadeem’, who has translated a staggering 150 books.
Faruqi has said, “A lot of women have accused me of being in love with Wazir Khanum, and why not?” His love has created a truly loveable work.
View all my reviews
December 1, 2022
Twenty books for a thirteen-year-old in Singapore
A month ago, a friend asked me to recommend twenty books that his 13-year-old son might consider reading. In the meantime, my friend's son finished his own list, which tells me he has a bright future. I still thought this was an interesting thought exercise... I would have liked to be more global, for sure. And perhaps more modern.
Summer Lightning
Just William
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Golden Fortress
The Man-Eater of Malgudi
Best Short Stories of Anton Chekov
Around the World in Eighty Days
The Housekeeper and the Professor
The Devotion of Suspect X
The Little Prince
The Shadow of the Wind
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
To Live
Aunty Lee's Delights
Shane
HMS Ulysses
Sudden Makes War
Emily of Emerald Hill
Pietr the Latvian
Summer Lightning
Just William
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Golden Fortress
The Man-Eater of Malgudi
Best Short Stories of Anton Chekov
Around the World in Eighty Days
The Housekeeper and the Professor
The Devotion of Suspect X
The Little Prince
The Shadow of the Wind
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
To Live
Aunty Lee's Delights
Shane
HMS Ulysses
Sudden Makes War
Emily of Emerald Hill
Pietr the Latvian
April 15, 2022
Bayly and Harper (2004), Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia, 1941-1945
I liked the word “magisterial”, as used to describe a book by Robert Gordon. Magisterial books are written by people who’ve written a lot of arcane stuff, have a certain vintage, and have then decided to write so that a larger number of people can understand them (as opposed to citing them without necessarily reading them). Bayly and Harper’s Forgotten Armies is a magisterial work, also meaning that it covers an important swathe of space and time and speaks to topics that other have left untouched. Well, the time span is four years, but these four years in what the authors call “the great crescent” (Calcutta to Singapore) affected the future of a large part of the world: China, India, the regions called South East Asia (which was treated as an entity for military reasons during the events described the book) and First World Asia (a term I suspect bankers or their paid economists invented; some countries in SE Asia are also in First World Asia).
This is not a people’s history, because it does end up deifying a few people – Mountbatten, Slim, and others – but it is a very well-rounded and complete history, and since its publication in 2004 (I got to it very late), it has surely had a lot to do with educating people about the great crescent in 1941-1945.
Some reviews that I saw were a bit disappointed by the lack of detail of major military actions. There are other books that cover those, and – more importantly – those military accounts underplay the effect of war on people who did not wear military uniforms. As the authors remind us, there was a silent army of women institutionally coerced into military brothels, euphemistically called comfort women, by the Japanese. And the Japanese was not the only army that needed services of prostitutes. The desperation of the famine of Bengal, triggered in part by the Raj’s scorched earth policy, reduced boys to pimping for women in their family. More women were forced by “the insidious operation of famine and the ‘free market’” into prostitution in the Raj-administered territories than by physical force in the Japanese occupied ones. (Note, for avoidance of doubt, that writing this is not condoning Japanese war crimes, which Japan has not properly atoned for.) The Japanese death railway project and the Allied Ledo Road project caused huge losses of lives of prisoners, soldiers (disproportionately Black Americans), and civilians. The Japanese project was founded on much harsher slave labour, of course. The exodus of Indians from Burma in 1942 was another horror created by the inept bunch of administrators that many Indians now fondly remember as “the steel frame” of what they think was a golden era but was actually quite shitty.
Bayly and Harper bring important characters – Aung San, Ba Maw, Chin Peng and Lai Teck, Subhash Chandra Bose – together with names probably better known to global readers such as Chiang Kai Shek, Joseph Stilwell, Louis Mountbatten and William Slim. Their cast of military armies includes the Burma Independence Army, the Indian National Army (INA), the communist guerrilla army in Malaya, and tribes including Chins, Nagas, and Shans apart from the Japanese army, British 14th Army, and the Chindits. Their brief acknowledgment of the INA’s gallant action at Mount Popa does more justice to the INA than Raghavan’s India’s War.
Though it ends in 1945, Forgotten Armies documents how the disastrous rout of the British Raj in the face of the Japanese invasion set the stage for the end of the Raj. The myth of the white man’s superiority was smashed as much by the lightning speed of the Japanese advance in 1941-42 as by the cretin-like behaviours of the white establishment in Asia.
There were a couple of jarring notes. At one point, there was this puzzling sentence: “British India seemed to have survived once again as it had survived every challenge since the Maratha invasions of the eighteenth century.” It made me wonder. A relatively minor point is that the last stand of the Malay Regiment in Singapore took place not at Bukit Panjang, as the text asserts, but at Pasir Panjang.
There are bigger issues. The more I read about history, even about a period as well documented as WWII, it seems that historians have made a Rashomon-like thing of it. If one just read this book, one would hold Mountbatten in a kind of awe, as a leader who let Slim do the fighting and provided steady political leadership, especially in the delicate stage when the Burma Independence Army switched sides en masse. General Slim appears to have been universally admired by his troops. His reputation survives by word-of-mouth among Indian Army officers that I have talked to. In Quartered Safe Out Here, a pretty straight-talking war memoir, Fraser is all praise for him.
Mountbatten is another story. My views of Mountbatten changed completely after reading a couple of magnificent Hindi novels, Kitne Pakistan (translated into English as Partitions) and Jhootha Sach (This is not that Dawn). In Indian Summer, von Tunzelman narrates how, earlier in Mountbatten’s career when he was in charge of a destroyer, the Kelly, he pulled off remarkable feats including ramming his ship into another. Worse, he had the blood on his hands after the fiasco at Dieppe. And there is Wolpert’s Shameful Flight, which the author starts with Mountbatten’s admission (decades later) that he "fucked it up”, and then spends considerable energy in showing how badly. The partition of India was one of the great horrors of the modern world. Of course these events happened before or after the 1941-45 period of this book, but Bayly and Harper could have alluded to them.
Another missing perspective is that, as Max Hastings put it, the land war in the great crescent “could have no significant influence at all on the Japanese surrender, because the Americans had already fought the decisive battles in the Pacific.” (I recall that Peter Ward Fay in his magisterial work, The Forgotten Army: India’s Armed Struggle for Independence 1942-945 also wrote something similar, but I couldn't trace the passage.) The war in the great crescent and all its forgotten and silent armies remain significant not because of their direct impact on the end of the war, but because of how they shaped history after WWII.
The horrors of WWII in the great crescent need to be understood. On the whole, this is a book that brings out the horrors, the plain facts, and the arch of history in a narrative that flows exceptionally well.
Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia, 1941-1945
The Forgotten Army: India's Armed Struggle for Independence 1942-1945
This is not a people’s history, because it does end up deifying a few people – Mountbatten, Slim, and others – but it is a very well-rounded and complete history, and since its publication in 2004 (I got to it very late), it has surely had a lot to do with educating people about the great crescent in 1941-1945.
Some reviews that I saw were a bit disappointed by the lack of detail of major military actions. There are other books that cover those, and – more importantly – those military accounts underplay the effect of war on people who did not wear military uniforms. As the authors remind us, there was a silent army of women institutionally coerced into military brothels, euphemistically called comfort women, by the Japanese. And the Japanese was not the only army that needed services of prostitutes. The desperation of the famine of Bengal, triggered in part by the Raj’s scorched earth policy, reduced boys to pimping for women in their family. More women were forced by “the insidious operation of famine and the ‘free market’” into prostitution in the Raj-administered territories than by physical force in the Japanese occupied ones. (Note, for avoidance of doubt, that writing this is not condoning Japanese war crimes, which Japan has not properly atoned for.) The Japanese death railway project and the Allied Ledo Road project caused huge losses of lives of prisoners, soldiers (disproportionately Black Americans), and civilians. The Japanese project was founded on much harsher slave labour, of course. The exodus of Indians from Burma in 1942 was another horror created by the inept bunch of administrators that many Indians now fondly remember as “the steel frame” of what they think was a golden era but was actually quite shitty.
Bayly and Harper bring important characters – Aung San, Ba Maw, Chin Peng and Lai Teck, Subhash Chandra Bose – together with names probably better known to global readers such as Chiang Kai Shek, Joseph Stilwell, Louis Mountbatten and William Slim. Their cast of military armies includes the Burma Independence Army, the Indian National Army (INA), the communist guerrilla army in Malaya, and tribes including Chins, Nagas, and Shans apart from the Japanese army, British 14th Army, and the Chindits. Their brief acknowledgment of the INA’s gallant action at Mount Popa does more justice to the INA than Raghavan’s India’s War.
Though it ends in 1945, Forgotten Armies documents how the disastrous rout of the British Raj in the face of the Japanese invasion set the stage for the end of the Raj. The myth of the white man’s superiority was smashed as much by the lightning speed of the Japanese advance in 1941-42 as by the cretin-like behaviours of the white establishment in Asia.
There were a couple of jarring notes. At one point, there was this puzzling sentence: “British India seemed to have survived once again as it had survived every challenge since the Maratha invasions of the eighteenth century.” It made me wonder. A relatively minor point is that the last stand of the Malay Regiment in Singapore took place not at Bukit Panjang, as the text asserts, but at Pasir Panjang.
There are bigger issues. The more I read about history, even about a period as well documented as WWII, it seems that historians have made a Rashomon-like thing of it. If one just read this book, one would hold Mountbatten in a kind of awe, as a leader who let Slim do the fighting and provided steady political leadership, especially in the delicate stage when the Burma Independence Army switched sides en masse. General Slim appears to have been universally admired by his troops. His reputation survives by word-of-mouth among Indian Army officers that I have talked to. In Quartered Safe Out Here, a pretty straight-talking war memoir, Fraser is all praise for him.
Mountbatten is another story. My views of Mountbatten changed completely after reading a couple of magnificent Hindi novels, Kitne Pakistan (translated into English as Partitions) and Jhootha Sach (This is not that Dawn). In Indian Summer, von Tunzelman narrates how, earlier in Mountbatten’s career when he was in charge of a destroyer, the Kelly, he pulled off remarkable feats including ramming his ship into another. Worse, he had the blood on his hands after the fiasco at Dieppe. And there is Wolpert’s Shameful Flight, which the author starts with Mountbatten’s admission (decades later) that he "fucked it up”, and then spends considerable energy in showing how badly. The partition of India was one of the great horrors of the modern world. Of course these events happened before or after the 1941-45 period of this book, but Bayly and Harper could have alluded to them.
Another missing perspective is that, as Max Hastings put it, the land war in the great crescent “could have no significant influence at all on the Japanese surrender, because the Americans had already fought the decisive battles in the Pacific.” (I recall that Peter Ward Fay in his magisterial work, The Forgotten Army: India’s Armed Struggle for Independence 1942-945 also wrote something similar, but I couldn't trace the passage.) The war in the great crescent and all its forgotten and silent armies remain significant not because of their direct impact on the end of the war, but because of how they shaped history after WWII.
The horrors of WWII in the great crescent need to be understood. On the whole, this is a book that brings out the horrors, the plain facts, and the arch of history in a narrative that flows exceptionally well.
Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia, 1941-1945
The Forgotten Army: India's Armed Struggle for Independence 1942-1945
January 10, 2022
John Sweeney's "Elephant Moon" (contains spoilers!)
Elephant Moon
John Sweeney’s book adds to the genre that I call war for grownups. These are books that look at the horrors of war without sepia-tinting and war-mongering. While Fires on the Plain and the film The Burmese Harp are dark and disturbing (for avoidance of doubt, I think those a great works), books like this one, Empire of the Sun and A Town Like Alice bring out the horrors of war while still telling engaging stories. Elephant Moon is not a classic, but it could easily have been one because of its story device and context.
This is one of the few books that has as context (not always with a lot of depth) the shameful flight of the representatives Raj from Burma in 1942, the formation of the Indian National Army (whose soldiers were called Japanese Indian Fighting Forces, JIFFs, by the British Indian Army and also treated badly by independent India), the racism of the Raj, and the horror of the forced migration of Indians from Burma. It also features a very sympathetic portrayal of elephants as well as a brief interlude about camels. It might be the only novel that brings all these elements together.
The story, for all its brilliant conception, has its flaws in execution. A big flaw – as other reviewers have pointed out – is the cardboard characters and the simplistic resolution.
A bigger one is historical accuracy. That the book is based on a true story is quite incredible, and I found some details – the theory being expounded by a British official that the Japanese couldn’t fly planes, for example – super interesting. On the other hand, there were some examples of history bloopers. The biggest of them is that the Indian National Army was not, as the book suggests, led by Subhash Chandra Bose at its inception. It was led by Mohan Singh, with Rash Behari Bose being the political leader. Bose came into the picture later, after a dramatic submarine journey. Also, someone who had seen the Jemadar join the INA in Singapore was unlikely to have been ahead of him in Burma. At one point, the Jemadar does wonder how this happened, which does him credit, but doesn’t make this less of a blooper. Bose wasn’t sending any letters to India from Germany as leader of the INA. The idea is ridiculous. Oh, and there was no big secret about where Bose was during this stage of the war. He was broadcasting from Germany.
The treatment of Bose compounds the injustice that history has done him, in my view. The first reference to Bose mentions his title of Netaji and likens it to Fuhrer, which is accurate, but would leave people with an impression of Bose that is wrong in my opinion. While this is a fraught topic, and Bose did fight with the Japanese and seek help from the Nazis, it has to be said at the very least that he did not share their views; he demonstrated a commitment to secularism and gender equality that was far ahead of his times. In particular, he was a staunch enforcer of Hindu-Muslim unity. His objections to Nazism were expressed in writing. As his daughter put it in a documentary (Between Gandhi and Hitler), who else was willing to help him in his vision of armed resistance? Not the Americans or French, for sure. It had to be his enemy’s enemies. The idea that Bose would send letters with swastikas on the letterhead is abhorrent. (Incidentally, the Swastika is a Hindu, Buddhist and Jain symbol that predates the Nazis by a couple thousand years, and I know a few stupid expats here in Singapore who don’t get that point, but that is not the point. The point is Bose wasn’t sending out letters with Swastika letterheads. He wasn’t sending out letters to India from Germany, period. They wouldn’t get anywhere). In the one argument that I recall for the INA in the book, there is mention of its fighting for Indian independence, which make sense. But what is left out is that the forces of the INA put on uniforms and swore loyalty to a Provisional Government of India, based in Singapore. This was also the argument used in the Red Fort Trials, and one that sounds that common sense to me. Why all this matters is that while Bose and the INA first got a raw deal for decades in independent India, they have now been half-hijacked by the Indian extreme right who stand for the exact opposite of everything that Bose stood for.
I liked the idea of the book immensely, and I would like to be able to recommend it just for that. Unfortunately, the problems on the story and history side of things weighed me down too much.
John Sweeney’s book adds to the genre that I call war for grownups. These are books that look at the horrors of war without sepia-tinting and war-mongering. While Fires on the Plain and the film The Burmese Harp are dark and disturbing (for avoidance of doubt, I think those a great works), books like this one, Empire of the Sun and A Town Like Alice bring out the horrors of war while still telling engaging stories. Elephant Moon is not a classic, but it could easily have been one because of its story device and context.
This is one of the few books that has as context (not always with a lot of depth) the shameful flight of the representatives Raj from Burma in 1942, the formation of the Indian National Army (whose soldiers were called Japanese Indian Fighting Forces, JIFFs, by the British Indian Army and also treated badly by independent India), the racism of the Raj, and the horror of the forced migration of Indians from Burma. It also features a very sympathetic portrayal of elephants as well as a brief interlude about camels. It might be the only novel that brings all these elements together.
The story, for all its brilliant conception, has its flaws in execution. A big flaw – as other reviewers have pointed out – is the cardboard characters and the simplistic resolution.
A bigger one is historical accuracy. That the book is based on a true story is quite incredible, and I found some details – the theory being expounded by a British official that the Japanese couldn’t fly planes, for example – super interesting. On the other hand, there were some examples of history bloopers. The biggest of them is that the Indian National Army was not, as the book suggests, led by Subhash Chandra Bose at its inception. It was led by Mohan Singh, with Rash Behari Bose being the political leader. Bose came into the picture later, after a dramatic submarine journey. Also, someone who had seen the Jemadar join the INA in Singapore was unlikely to have been ahead of him in Burma. At one point, the Jemadar does wonder how this happened, which does him credit, but doesn’t make this less of a blooper. Bose wasn’t sending any letters to India from Germany as leader of the INA. The idea is ridiculous. Oh, and there was no big secret about where Bose was during this stage of the war. He was broadcasting from Germany.
The treatment of Bose compounds the injustice that history has done him, in my view. The first reference to Bose mentions his title of Netaji and likens it to Fuhrer, which is accurate, but would leave people with an impression of Bose that is wrong in my opinion. While this is a fraught topic, and Bose did fight with the Japanese and seek help from the Nazis, it has to be said at the very least that he did not share their views; he demonstrated a commitment to secularism and gender equality that was far ahead of his times. In particular, he was a staunch enforcer of Hindu-Muslim unity. His objections to Nazism were expressed in writing. As his daughter put it in a documentary (Between Gandhi and Hitler), who else was willing to help him in his vision of armed resistance? Not the Americans or French, for sure. It had to be his enemy’s enemies. The idea that Bose would send letters with swastikas on the letterhead is abhorrent. (Incidentally, the Swastika is a Hindu, Buddhist and Jain symbol that predates the Nazis by a couple thousand years, and I know a few stupid expats here in Singapore who don’t get that point, but that is not the point. The point is Bose wasn’t sending out letters with Swastika letterheads. He wasn’t sending out letters to India from Germany, period. They wouldn’t get anywhere). In the one argument that I recall for the INA in the book, there is mention of its fighting for Indian independence, which make sense. But what is left out is that the forces of the INA put on uniforms and swore loyalty to a Provisional Government of India, based in Singapore. This was also the argument used in the Red Fort Trials, and one that sounds that common sense to me. Why all this matters is that while Bose and the INA first got a raw deal for decades in independent India, they have now been half-hijacked by the Indian extreme right who stand for the exact opposite of everything that Bose stood for.
I liked the idea of the book immensely, and I would like to be able to recommend it just for that. Unfortunately, the problems on the story and history side of things weighed me down too much.
December 3, 2021
Noel Barber's "Sinister Twilight"
Sinister Twilight: The Fall of Singapore
The fall of Singapore in 1942, and what happened before and after it, is a fascinating story. The Japanese invasion of Malaya changed the history of this part of the world; its link to the creation of the Indian National Army meant that it also had a huge impact on the Indian subcontinent.
Noel Barber’s account of the follies that led to the surrender of addresses a slice of this history, focusing on the actions of the civil and military leaders of Singapore in the run up to the surrender.
Mr. Barber re-constructs many aspects of the ineptitude that led to the debacle of 1942: the refusal to fortify the northern shore of Singapore on the grounds that it would affect morale, the bickering among the services and individuals, the petty-mindedness of some of senior officials, the inability of the military leadership to figure out where the Japanese would land, their inability to respond to the landing after it had happened, and so on. Of course this list ignores the mistakes that led to the Japanese reaching Johor.
Unfortunately, this is a work that has one big defect that overshadows the good things about it. I definitely don’t mean to belittle the horrors that the white population of Singapore went through, or the heroism of individuals – both men and women – during the short war and the horrific internment that followed. But I do think this work is too much of an ang moh (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ang_mo; ang moh is not a pejorative term) view of what transpired. The Asians who feature have bit roles – a beautiful wife of a British journalist, a boy in the Air Raid Precautions (ARP) department, and a few others. This is history written as if some people did not matter.
When the Japanese raced down the Malay peninsula and people fled Penang, places on ships were reserved for whites and Asians were held off at bayonet point. This was part of the flow of events that led to the end of empire. Surely this was well known in 1968, when Sinister Twilight was published. You won’t find any mention of that in the book.
One of the hypotheses that is advanced, though not in as many words, is that Percival was a retard and all the blame was his. It goes something like this: his good subordinate Simmons told him there should be fortifications along the Northern shore. Percival rebuffed the idea. Next his superior, Wavell, told him the same thing. Percival still didn’t get it. Churchill told Wavell the same thing. Nothing happened. So: blame it on Percival. Really? Clearly, J.G. Farrell told the story vastly better here in The Singapore Grip. The people running the show – officials, businessmen, and the like – included many retards. It’s not true that Percival was the only one to fault and the others were great specimens of fair play and honour, those two pillars of empire, and smartness.
Since there is a reference to the rape of Hong Kong, one wonders why there isn’t one to the rape of Singapore and the genocide here. Surely even the slightest effort at being more inclusive would have unearthed some details about the Sook Ching operation (https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infoped...)
It seems peculiar that the desertion of Singapore by the head of the Australian armed forces is treated as something that is complex, and that can’t be judged easily. One wonders why that should be the case. Is it because, as Peter Ward Fay wrote in his book The Forgotten Army, some Generals who lost wars on battlefields were good at winning them in bookshops? In any case, Sinister Twilight does justice to the shameful episode, and that redeemed the book for me. Its other strength is that it does take a very human view of the events.
NUS Press has brought out (much later, of course) many books that help understand the WWII era in this region from multiple perspectives, and NI Low’s haunting account, When Singapore was Syonan-To provides the Singapore Chinese view, which matters because the Japanese regime selectively meted out the worst treatment to the Chinese community. Sinister Twilight is a part of the whole, written well and worth reading – but flawed because of its filter.
When Singapore Was Syonan-to
The fall of Singapore in 1942, and what happened before and after it, is a fascinating story. The Japanese invasion of Malaya changed the history of this part of the world; its link to the creation of the Indian National Army meant that it also had a huge impact on the Indian subcontinent.
Noel Barber’s account of the follies that led to the surrender of addresses a slice of this history, focusing on the actions of the civil and military leaders of Singapore in the run up to the surrender.
Mr. Barber re-constructs many aspects of the ineptitude that led to the debacle of 1942: the refusal to fortify the northern shore of Singapore on the grounds that it would affect morale, the bickering among the services and individuals, the petty-mindedness of some of senior officials, the inability of the military leadership to figure out where the Japanese would land, their inability to respond to the landing after it had happened, and so on. Of course this list ignores the mistakes that led to the Japanese reaching Johor.
Unfortunately, this is a work that has one big defect that overshadows the good things about it. I definitely don’t mean to belittle the horrors that the white population of Singapore went through, or the heroism of individuals – both men and women – during the short war and the horrific internment that followed. But I do think this work is too much of an ang moh (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ang_mo; ang moh is not a pejorative term) view of what transpired. The Asians who feature have bit roles – a beautiful wife of a British journalist, a boy in the Air Raid Precautions (ARP) department, and a few others. This is history written as if some people did not matter.
When the Japanese raced down the Malay peninsula and people fled Penang, places on ships were reserved for whites and Asians were held off at bayonet point. This was part of the flow of events that led to the end of empire. Surely this was well known in 1968, when Sinister Twilight was published. You won’t find any mention of that in the book.
One of the hypotheses that is advanced, though not in as many words, is that Percival was a retard and all the blame was his. It goes something like this: his good subordinate Simmons told him there should be fortifications along the Northern shore. Percival rebuffed the idea. Next his superior, Wavell, told him the same thing. Percival still didn’t get it. Churchill told Wavell the same thing. Nothing happened. So: blame it on Percival. Really? Clearly, J.G. Farrell told the story vastly better here in The Singapore Grip. The people running the show – officials, businessmen, and the like – included many retards. It’s not true that Percival was the only one to fault and the others were great specimens of fair play and honour, those two pillars of empire, and smartness.
Since there is a reference to the rape of Hong Kong, one wonders why there isn’t one to the rape of Singapore and the genocide here. Surely even the slightest effort at being more inclusive would have unearthed some details about the Sook Ching operation (https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infoped...)
It seems peculiar that the desertion of Singapore by the head of the Australian armed forces is treated as something that is complex, and that can’t be judged easily. One wonders why that should be the case. Is it because, as Peter Ward Fay wrote in his book The Forgotten Army, some Generals who lost wars on battlefields were good at winning them in bookshops? In any case, Sinister Twilight does justice to the shameful episode, and that redeemed the book for me. Its other strength is that it does take a very human view of the events.
NUS Press has brought out (much later, of course) many books that help understand the WWII era in this region from multiple perspectives, and NI Low’s haunting account, When Singapore was Syonan-To provides the Singapore Chinese view, which matters because the Japanese regime selectively meted out the worst treatment to the Chinese community. Sinister Twilight is a part of the whole, written well and worth reading – but flawed because of its filter.
When Singapore Was Syonan-to
August 15, 2021
Singapore books - a list of lists, and one more
Just when I finished my list of great Singapore novels that I have read, I found that there are already a few such lists:
Sharlene Teo
Rachel Heng
Akshita Nanda
Nur Asyiqin Mohamad Salleh
Gary Lim
In any case, here's mine, focused more on Singapore historical fiction. I've looked around for good articles about each of them. They are in random order.
#1 The Singapore Grip
A great review piece by J.G. Farrell's biographer. Farrell mocked the Empire's men and women who let Singapore down in 1942. I'm proud to say I guessed what the title refers to. One of my all-time favourite novels.
#2 A Different Sky
See Meira Chand's piece in Biblio Asia on the writing of this book. The story spans characters of different races and backgrounds, from the 1920s to 1950s.
#3 If We Dream Too Long
I found very few reviews of this gem of a book. This one on Goodreads works. Unique for its sophisticated treatment of discontent.
#4 Unrest
A review in the Asian Review of Books. It's interesting that it deals with people who left a then-third-world Singapore for China, among other things. Be prepared for a very unconventional narrative style.
#5 Ministry of Moral Panic
There's good insight in this interview with the author.
#6 Sacred Waters
The only novel I know of that deals with the creation of an all-women's regiment in the Indian National Army (it has a two-track narrative). Here's a review in the Straits Times. There's a great non-fiction work on this topic, Women at War.
#7 Rawa
There's very little that this book covers that I even faintly knew of, after living fifteen years in Singapore, in spite of being quite curious. This is an interview in the The Star. I loved this recitation by the writer.
#8 A Leap of Love
Strangely, I couldn't find a review that I liked of this novella that I liked a lot. This is an interesting feature about the author.
#9 Spider Boys
Tells of forgotten tales of petty crime and of growing up. There's some interesting sports detail that you won't find in any other book. See this short review.
#10 Moonrise, Sunset
A great thriller told in a brash voice. This review notes that the star of the story is Singapore itself.
#11 How We Disappeared
My other favourite. A work that proves that fiction has the power to do justice to
a history that people would rather leave forgotten.
Sharlene Teo
Rachel Heng
Akshita Nanda
Nur Asyiqin Mohamad Salleh
Gary Lim
In any case, here's mine, focused more on Singapore historical fiction. I've looked around for good articles about each of them. They are in random order.
#1 The Singapore Grip
A great review piece by J.G. Farrell's biographer. Farrell mocked the Empire's men and women who let Singapore down in 1942. I'm proud to say I guessed what the title refers to. One of my all-time favourite novels.
#2 A Different Sky
See Meira Chand's piece in Biblio Asia on the writing of this book. The story spans characters of different races and backgrounds, from the 1920s to 1950s.
#3 If We Dream Too Long
I found very few reviews of this gem of a book. This one on Goodreads works. Unique for its sophisticated treatment of discontent.
#4 Unrest
A review in the Asian Review of Books. It's interesting that it deals with people who left a then-third-world Singapore for China, among other things. Be prepared for a very unconventional narrative style.
#5 Ministry of Moral Panic
There's good insight in this interview with the author.
#6 Sacred Waters
The only novel I know of that deals with the creation of an all-women's regiment in the Indian National Army (it has a two-track narrative). Here's a review in the Straits Times. There's a great non-fiction work on this topic, Women at War.
#7 Rawa
There's very little that this book covers that I even faintly knew of, after living fifteen years in Singapore, in spite of being quite curious. This is an interview in the The Star. I loved this recitation by the writer.
#8 A Leap of Love
Strangely, I couldn't find a review that I liked of this novella that I liked a lot. This is an interesting feature about the author.
#9 Spider Boys
Tells of forgotten tales of petty crime and of growing up. There's some interesting sports detail that you won't find in any other book. See this short review.
#10 Moonrise, Sunset
A great thriller told in a brash voice. This review notes that the star of the story is Singapore itself.
#11 How We Disappeared
My other favourite. A work that proves that fiction has the power to do justice to
a history that people would rather leave forgotten.
December 20, 2019
Confessions of a Mystery Lover: A Top Eleven List of Cerebral International Mystery
I grew up a bookworm, and I still read or listen to about a book a week. Like many of us, I grew up reading mysteries. In my rather unique world (a “township” in the Eastern part of India) the stories were from two distant lands separated by an ocean. Enid Blyton’s Five Find-Outers to start with; then a jumble of numbers of investigators – the famous five, secret seven, three investigators and so on.
Here’s the thing: at fifty, I remain a mystery fan. This, of course, means that I must bear condescension from more intellectual types, though I suspect some of them mainly read email. I have written about the intellectual heritage of the mystery genre elsewhere. Dickens is said to have created the first detective in Bleak House; Chekov wrote The Shooting Party. I do not get into arguments these days. We all have our preferences. I like books with voice, character and social commentary. I like the feeling of understanding a society from the lens of a person who breathes its air and likes it. And I like my books without goriness.
International mystery has become a big name in recent years, with Scandic noir leading the charge. There is much more to it, though. A couple of years ago, I discovered Philip Kerr’s superb Bernie Gunther series set over the 1930s and 1950s in a range of countries, with Germany being the centre. Andrea Camilleri has created the Inspector Montalbano series set in Sicily, with characters and setting so likeable that I happily overlooked the flimsiness of some plots. Wherever in the world you live, writers such as Boris Akunin, Colin Cotteril, Fred Vargas, Jean Claude Manchette, John Burdett, Keigo Higashino, Michael Stanley, Kwei Quartey, Qiu Xiolong, Seljuc Atun, Shamini Flint, Tarquin Hall, Tony Hillerman and Yasmina Khadra will take you distances might subject you to serious jet lag in the physical world. TV shows have become incredibly sophisticated. Spiral, Foyle’s War and The Wire are my favourites.
I mention all this as a background to this list of favourite “cerebral international thrillers”. All lists are flawed. I had to leave out some authors I love, including Amara Lakhous, Friedrich Glauser, Gopal Baratham, Massimo Carlotto and Paco Ignacio Taibo II. And you’ll have guessed that I started with a target of ten books.
If I ranked this list tomorrow, I may do it differently.
#11, I’m Off and One Year, Jean Echenoz, France, 1999. In I’m Off, an art dealer tells his wife he’s leaving her. “I’m Off” is the first line. The narrative moves back and forth and involves the theft of an art stash. In One year, a girl Ferrer met wakes up to find her husband dead and takes off for a year. She becomes a homeless person. Both protagonists have surprises waiting for them, mildly speaking. Echenoz’s writing is atmospheric.I'm Off / One Year
#10, The Inspector Barlach Mysteries: The Judge and His Hangman and Suspicion, Friedrich Durenmatt, Switzerland, 1948. Inspector Barlach lives alone, does not lock his house, doesn’t talk too much, is close to retirement – and has been diagnosed with cancer. He has one year left to live. In the first novella, one of his subordinates is murdered. In the second, he unearths a Nazi doctor who operated without anaesthesia in concentration camps. In the edition I read (University of Chicago Press), the back-cover text nails it by saying that Durenmatt brings “existential philosophy and the detective genre into dazzling convergence”. Unfortunately, the undoubtedly astute writer of this text also put in two huge spoilers into the short text. See if you can read the book without reading the back-cover. The Inspector Barlach Mysteries: The Judge and His Hangman and Suspicion
#9, The Mournful Demeanour of Lieutenant Boruvka, Joseph Skvorecky, Prague. Published 1961. Lieutenant Boruvka is an elderly, rotund police chief who goes around cracking cases without talking much – but conveying a lot when he does. I couldn’t decide whether the author was making fun of cosy thrillers or writing one. In any case, I loved everything about it, starting with the title. I also liked the technical bits of physics and music woven into the stories.The Mournful Demeanour of Lieutenant Boruvka: Detective Tales
#8, Adios Hemingway, Leonardo Padura Fuentes, Cuba, 2005. Mario Conde is a cop-turned-writer in Havana. His successor in the police tells him that a corpse has been discovered buried in Finca Vigia, Hemingway’s residence near Havana. The man was buried with his FBI badge. Mario is asked to investigate and figure out whose body it might be. Mario’s investigation proceeds as the real events from Hemingway’s POV are revealed. Hemingway was an idol to Conde when he was small, later Conde started to dislike him as a person. Through his investigation, Conde gets a better understanding of the man. An outstanding study in character development. Adios Hemingway
#7, To Each His Own, Leonardo Sciascia, Sicily, 1966. The town pharmacist receives an anonymous letter with some trepidation. It turns out to be a death threat. He dismisses it as a joke and goes on a hunt with his friend. Both are killed. A literature teacher plays sleuth. He does solve the crime with his analytical skills, but only up to a point. Gore Vidal has praised Sciascia’s insight into Mafia thinking. This work is several levels above the commercial bestsellers that glorify the Mafia with their portraits of honourable families. It exposes the culture for what it is: petty, close-minded and savage. The amateur sleuth’s character is sketched out to make you feel for him.To Each His Own
#6, The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Spain, 2001. A story within a story. When he is a child after World War II, Daniel Sempere’s father takes him to a “book cemetery” from where he can select one book for keeps. He takes a book called The Shadow of the Wind by a Julian Clarax. He loves it and starts searching for more books by Clarax, but apparently a ghostly man has been searching out and burning all of Clarax’s books. He gets to know about the ill-fated affair between the poor Julian and the rich Penelope, daughter of Julian’s benefactor… and his own life follows some parallels. A classic-style adventure told with a modern voice and touch of magic.The Shadow of the Wind
#5, The Death of the Little Match Girl, Zoran Feric, 1990s Yugoslavia, 2002. Fero, a pathologist, is called into the investigation of the death of the little match girl, who is actually a ladyboy. On this one, I noted when I read many years ago that this is the definitive book of black humour and social commentary. Enough said.The Death of the Little Match Girl
#4, Death and the Penguin, Andrey Kurkov, Ukraine, 1996. Viktor is a writer who has adopted a penguin. The penguin became his when the zoo gave away animals to those who could keep them (this actually happened). Viktor gets a break when a guy gets him to write obituaries of people who are still alive – but… er… about to die. This is an outstanding work for atmospherics, device, characters and social commentary. And its last line.Death and the Penguin
#3, Smilla’s Sense of Snow, Peter Hoeg, Denmark/ Greenland, 1992. Smilla is a spunky 37-year-old single woman. Isiah is a small boy with a single alcoholic mother. Isiah gets close to Smilla and into her life. One day he jumps off the roof of their block, to his death. The police treat it as an accident, but Smilla knows that he had a fear of heights. She starts an investigation into the death. The investigation is not welcomed by some powerful people, but Smilla is not deterred. Superb stuff. For once, the comparisons to Greene and Le Carre in the “praise for” pages are valid. The writing has a hypnotic quality; the details are solid. Password cracking is based on watching someone type, not some genius hacking into system at free will. Smilla's Sense of Snow
#2, The She-Devil in the Mirror, Horacio Castellanos Moya, El Salvador, 2000. Laura Rivera narrates the events that follow her friend Olga Maria’s murder. Magical stuff right from the opening line. Moya’s style is unique. The narrative is paragraph-less. Small, telling details make this novella a great book. Laura’s descent into insanity is done very well. “The truth” is impossible to find; there are too many motives and possibilities.The She-Devil in the Mirror
#1, Borges and the Eternal Orang-utans, Luis Fernando Verissimo, Buenos Aires, 2000. A homage to both Poe and Borges, laced with history and occult insight. The title contains a reference to a hypothesis put forward by one John Dee, who said that an orang-utan with unlimited time could churn out all the known texts in the cosmos. They don’t come any more original than this. Borges and The Eternal Orangutans
Here’s the thing: at fifty, I remain a mystery fan. This, of course, means that I must bear condescension from more intellectual types, though I suspect some of them mainly read email. I have written about the intellectual heritage of the mystery genre elsewhere. Dickens is said to have created the first detective in Bleak House; Chekov wrote The Shooting Party. I do not get into arguments these days. We all have our preferences. I like books with voice, character and social commentary. I like the feeling of understanding a society from the lens of a person who breathes its air and likes it. And I like my books without goriness.
International mystery has become a big name in recent years, with Scandic noir leading the charge. There is much more to it, though. A couple of years ago, I discovered Philip Kerr’s superb Bernie Gunther series set over the 1930s and 1950s in a range of countries, with Germany being the centre. Andrea Camilleri has created the Inspector Montalbano series set in Sicily, with characters and setting so likeable that I happily overlooked the flimsiness of some plots. Wherever in the world you live, writers such as Boris Akunin, Colin Cotteril, Fred Vargas, Jean Claude Manchette, John Burdett, Keigo Higashino, Michael Stanley, Kwei Quartey, Qiu Xiolong, Seljuc Atun, Shamini Flint, Tarquin Hall, Tony Hillerman and Yasmina Khadra will take you distances might subject you to serious jet lag in the physical world. TV shows have become incredibly sophisticated. Spiral, Foyle’s War and The Wire are my favourites.
I mention all this as a background to this list of favourite “cerebral international thrillers”. All lists are flawed. I had to leave out some authors I love, including Amara Lakhous, Friedrich Glauser, Gopal Baratham, Massimo Carlotto and Paco Ignacio Taibo II. And you’ll have guessed that I started with a target of ten books.
If I ranked this list tomorrow, I may do it differently.
#11, I’m Off and One Year, Jean Echenoz, France, 1999. In I’m Off, an art dealer tells his wife he’s leaving her. “I’m Off” is the first line. The narrative moves back and forth and involves the theft of an art stash. In One year, a girl Ferrer met wakes up to find her husband dead and takes off for a year. She becomes a homeless person. Both protagonists have surprises waiting for them, mildly speaking. Echenoz’s writing is atmospheric.I'm Off / One Year
#10, The Inspector Barlach Mysteries: The Judge and His Hangman and Suspicion, Friedrich Durenmatt, Switzerland, 1948. Inspector Barlach lives alone, does not lock his house, doesn’t talk too much, is close to retirement – and has been diagnosed with cancer. He has one year left to live. In the first novella, one of his subordinates is murdered. In the second, he unearths a Nazi doctor who operated without anaesthesia in concentration camps. In the edition I read (University of Chicago Press), the back-cover text nails it by saying that Durenmatt brings “existential philosophy and the detective genre into dazzling convergence”. Unfortunately, the undoubtedly astute writer of this text also put in two huge spoilers into the short text. See if you can read the book without reading the back-cover. The Inspector Barlach Mysteries: The Judge and His Hangman and Suspicion
#9, The Mournful Demeanour of Lieutenant Boruvka, Joseph Skvorecky, Prague. Published 1961. Lieutenant Boruvka is an elderly, rotund police chief who goes around cracking cases without talking much – but conveying a lot when he does. I couldn’t decide whether the author was making fun of cosy thrillers or writing one. In any case, I loved everything about it, starting with the title. I also liked the technical bits of physics and music woven into the stories.The Mournful Demeanour of Lieutenant Boruvka: Detective Tales
#8, Adios Hemingway, Leonardo Padura Fuentes, Cuba, 2005. Mario Conde is a cop-turned-writer in Havana. His successor in the police tells him that a corpse has been discovered buried in Finca Vigia, Hemingway’s residence near Havana. The man was buried with his FBI badge. Mario is asked to investigate and figure out whose body it might be. Mario’s investigation proceeds as the real events from Hemingway’s POV are revealed. Hemingway was an idol to Conde when he was small, later Conde started to dislike him as a person. Through his investigation, Conde gets a better understanding of the man. An outstanding study in character development. Adios Hemingway
#7, To Each His Own, Leonardo Sciascia, Sicily, 1966. The town pharmacist receives an anonymous letter with some trepidation. It turns out to be a death threat. He dismisses it as a joke and goes on a hunt with his friend. Both are killed. A literature teacher plays sleuth. He does solve the crime with his analytical skills, but only up to a point. Gore Vidal has praised Sciascia’s insight into Mafia thinking. This work is several levels above the commercial bestsellers that glorify the Mafia with their portraits of honourable families. It exposes the culture for what it is: petty, close-minded and savage. The amateur sleuth’s character is sketched out to make you feel for him.To Each His Own
#6, The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Spain, 2001. A story within a story. When he is a child after World War II, Daniel Sempere’s father takes him to a “book cemetery” from where he can select one book for keeps. He takes a book called The Shadow of the Wind by a Julian Clarax. He loves it and starts searching for more books by Clarax, but apparently a ghostly man has been searching out and burning all of Clarax’s books. He gets to know about the ill-fated affair between the poor Julian and the rich Penelope, daughter of Julian’s benefactor… and his own life follows some parallels. A classic-style adventure told with a modern voice and touch of magic.The Shadow of the Wind
#5, The Death of the Little Match Girl, Zoran Feric, 1990s Yugoslavia, 2002. Fero, a pathologist, is called into the investigation of the death of the little match girl, who is actually a ladyboy. On this one, I noted when I read many years ago that this is the definitive book of black humour and social commentary. Enough said.The Death of the Little Match Girl
#4, Death and the Penguin, Andrey Kurkov, Ukraine, 1996. Viktor is a writer who has adopted a penguin. The penguin became his when the zoo gave away animals to those who could keep them (this actually happened). Viktor gets a break when a guy gets him to write obituaries of people who are still alive – but… er… about to die. This is an outstanding work for atmospherics, device, characters and social commentary. And its last line.Death and the Penguin
#3, Smilla’s Sense of Snow, Peter Hoeg, Denmark/ Greenland, 1992. Smilla is a spunky 37-year-old single woman. Isiah is a small boy with a single alcoholic mother. Isiah gets close to Smilla and into her life. One day he jumps off the roof of their block, to his death. The police treat it as an accident, but Smilla knows that he had a fear of heights. She starts an investigation into the death. The investigation is not welcomed by some powerful people, but Smilla is not deterred. Superb stuff. For once, the comparisons to Greene and Le Carre in the “praise for” pages are valid. The writing has a hypnotic quality; the details are solid. Password cracking is based on watching someone type, not some genius hacking into system at free will. Smilla's Sense of Snow
#2, The She-Devil in the Mirror, Horacio Castellanos Moya, El Salvador, 2000. Laura Rivera narrates the events that follow her friend Olga Maria’s murder. Magical stuff right from the opening line. Moya’s style is unique. The narrative is paragraph-less. Small, telling details make this novella a great book. Laura’s descent into insanity is done very well. “The truth” is impossible to find; there are too many motives and possibilities.The She-Devil in the Mirror
#1, Borges and the Eternal Orang-utans, Luis Fernando Verissimo, Buenos Aires, 2000. A homage to both Poe and Borges, laced with history and occult insight. The title contains a reference to a hypothesis put forward by one John Dee, who said that an orang-utan with unlimited time could churn out all the known texts in the cosmos. They don’t come any more original than this. Borges and The Eternal Orangutans
June 15, 2019
Two (more) untranslated Hindi Books
I don't get sentimental about great works being left untranslated any more. As it happens, there are too many of them.
शह और मात
I did not find any reviews of this book on the web. That is a shame, because there were some pieces of it that I would have liked to understand better. More importantly, it is a pity, because surely this is a work that deserved more attention.
The title could perhaps translate into "Sujata's Diary - the Checkmate". Perhaps, because it has not been translated. Written in 1959 and set in Mumbai, the book covers its setting in a perfunctory kind of way, though it does touch upon the characters' thoughts on their "cowbelt" origins. The narrative device is that the author has held on to a lady friend's diary, and made a manuscript out of it after her death. Largely because of this device, the work is centred around the thoughts of a college girl who is an emerging writer and actress, and her interactions with an established male writer who is an known to be a ladies man and a "Princess" who gives her an award for her acting in a play. That the narrator, Sujata, and the established writer, Uday, are both recovering from unrequited love makes things more interesting.
I found two things especially inspiring. First, the author's ability to "get into to mind" of a girl writing a diary. Second, his skill in keeping the reader engaged in this slow-burning story with a couple of twists in the end. The minutiae of the diary's entries - for example, passages about Sujata's love playing with her fingers and making them snap, or the play of shadows when two characters walk under street lamps - give the book a unique voice.
नाच्यौ बहुत गोपाल
One of the great books of all time. It is a pity that like many others, this one will not get the audience it deserves because it does not seem to have been translated into English, or any other language, from the original Hindi. I did come across this academic article that discusses some aspects of translating the book, but I don't see any translations available.
Written in 1978, and providing some commentary on the "emergency" period of modern India, the main narrative of the book is set in the 1930s. The protagonist is a foul-mouthed saintly woman whose circumstances led her to marry into the caste of mahtars, people who carry human excrement away from city homes. The woman, Nirguniya, is an truly outstanding fictional character.
Amritlal Nagar obviously spent much time researching his subject, and he has created a masterpiece that speaks for the the underdogs in a cruel society. What makes this a classic is Nagar's voice - never dramatising, while cataloging evil and cruelty with the eye of an observer with a conscience.
शह और मात
I did not find any reviews of this book on the web. That is a shame, because there were some pieces of it that I would have liked to understand better. More importantly, it is a pity, because surely this is a work that deserved more attention.
The title could perhaps translate into "Sujata's Diary - the Checkmate". Perhaps, because it has not been translated. Written in 1959 and set in Mumbai, the book covers its setting in a perfunctory kind of way, though it does touch upon the characters' thoughts on their "cowbelt" origins. The narrative device is that the author has held on to a lady friend's diary, and made a manuscript out of it after her death. Largely because of this device, the work is centred around the thoughts of a college girl who is an emerging writer and actress, and her interactions with an established male writer who is an known to be a ladies man and a "Princess" who gives her an award for her acting in a play. That the narrator, Sujata, and the established writer, Uday, are both recovering from unrequited love makes things more interesting.
I found two things especially inspiring. First, the author's ability to "get into to mind" of a girl writing a diary. Second, his skill in keeping the reader engaged in this slow-burning story with a couple of twists in the end. The minutiae of the diary's entries - for example, passages about Sujata's love playing with her fingers and making them snap, or the play of shadows when two characters walk under street lamps - give the book a unique voice.
नाच्यौ बहुत गोपाल
One of the great books of all time. It is a pity that like many others, this one will not get the audience it deserves because it does not seem to have been translated into English, or any other language, from the original Hindi. I did come across this academic article that discusses some aspects of translating the book, but I don't see any translations available.
Written in 1978, and providing some commentary on the "emergency" period of modern India, the main narrative of the book is set in the 1930s. The protagonist is a foul-mouthed saintly woman whose circumstances led her to marry into the caste of mahtars, people who carry human excrement away from city homes. The woman, Nirguniya, is an truly outstanding fictional character.
Amritlal Nagar obviously spent much time researching his subject, and he has created a masterpiece that speaks for the the underdogs in a cruel society. What makes this a classic is Nagar's voice - never dramatising, while cataloging evil and cruelty with the eye of an observer with a conscience.
June 1, 2018
Meira Chand's "Sacred Waters"
Sacred Waters
The setting of an all-woman combat regiment, the Rani of Jhansi Regiment (RJR), in the Indian National Army during World War II is an episode that has not got the attention it deserves from writers. I was happy to read a historical account Vera Hildebrand’s historical account of the RJR, and delighted to see Sacred Waters in a local bookshop.
This is a two-track story, with one track set in modern Singapore and the other in the life of one of the “Ranis” (queens) of the RJR. Sita is the veteran Rani who has turned into a recluse as she brings up her daughter Amita, a professor of gender studies, who does not know much about what her mother went through in the way years.
Sacred Waters stands out for bringing together a lot of history and social commentary together. While the stories of Sita and Amita unfold, and Amita begins to understand what her mother has been through, there is a lot of ground this novel covers - the ideals that RJR stood for, the contrasting and terrible suppression of women in India then and now (there are some pointers to female foeticide in modern times), and some (I think) lesser but still complex challenges still facing women in Singapore. It is impressive that all this comes through without any pedantic writing.
As this Straits Times review points out, the novel really “sings” in the RJR parts – but that is because of the events of the times. There are some truly touching descriptions of the changes Sita has to go through as she trains with the RJR.
The retreat from Bangkok, when Subhash Bose risked his life several times to make sure the Ranis were returned to their homes, is a story that needed to feature in a novel, and I am glad it finally did.
I thought the one action military action that Sita participates in – which is clearly a case of the writer using artistic license – was less than convincing. I also thought some of the sequences did not make complete sense, for example, the Ranis watching POWs building the “death railway” from their train (I would imagine the railway was built where there no tracks). I also believe that Bose spoke his famous words, “Give me blood, and I will give you freedom,” later than portrayed in the novel. All these are minor nit-picks; this is a book that deserves much more fame than it seems to be getting.
The setting of an all-woman combat regiment, the Rani of Jhansi Regiment (RJR), in the Indian National Army during World War II is an episode that has not got the attention it deserves from writers. I was happy to read a historical account Vera Hildebrand’s historical account of the RJR, and delighted to see Sacred Waters in a local bookshop.
This is a two-track story, with one track set in modern Singapore and the other in the life of one of the “Ranis” (queens) of the RJR. Sita is the veteran Rani who has turned into a recluse as she brings up her daughter Amita, a professor of gender studies, who does not know much about what her mother went through in the way years.
Sacred Waters stands out for bringing together a lot of history and social commentary together. While the stories of Sita and Amita unfold, and Amita begins to understand what her mother has been through, there is a lot of ground this novel covers - the ideals that RJR stood for, the contrasting and terrible suppression of women in India then and now (there are some pointers to female foeticide in modern times), and some (I think) lesser but still complex challenges still facing women in Singapore. It is impressive that all this comes through without any pedantic writing.
As this Straits Times review points out, the novel really “sings” in the RJR parts – but that is because of the events of the times. There are some truly touching descriptions of the changes Sita has to go through as she trains with the RJR.
The retreat from Bangkok, when Subhash Bose risked his life several times to make sure the Ranis were returned to their homes, is a story that needed to feature in a novel, and I am glad it finally did.
I thought the one action military action that Sita participates in – which is clearly a case of the writer using artistic license – was less than convincing. I also thought some of the sequences did not make complete sense, for example, the Ranis watching POWs building the “death railway” from their train (I would imagine the railway was built where there no tracks). I also believe that Bose spoke his famous words, “Give me blood, and I will give you freedom,” later than portrayed in the novel. All these are minor nit-picks; this is a book that deserves much more fame than it seems to be getting.
November 24, 2017
India's War, by Srinath Raghavan
India's War: World War II and the Making of Modern South Asia
India’s war is a great work that took too long to come out – an account of the Indian army’s effort during World War II, from North Africa to Myanmar, written by a former officer of the Indian Army. This is a work that mostly does justice to the very impressive blurbs from Ramchandra Guha, John Keay and Sunil Khilnani.
Its span, depth and detail make this an outstanding book. Raghavan goes into the strategy, economics and politics of the context, before describing the military aspects in some detail. He does all this keeping the reading very easy. That is a great achievement.
It helps that the author zooms in and out very fluently. The very first line has an interesting detail – the Viceroy of India announced India’s entry into WWII without consulting a single governing body. As a result, the Indian Army would increase in strength from 200,000 to 2.5 million. Many such details follow – including that India was a member of the League of Nations, reflecting its importance even as a colony, and that there was a run on the Post Office savings bank in India following the German Blitzkrieg.
As I expected, the accounts of military action are very detailed. For the first time, I got a sense of the huge spread of theatres that the Indian Army saw action in, from Italy to Hong Kong. There are a few places where the maps don’t really support the detailed narrative, though.
On the other hand, there are aspects that I liked a bit less about the work. First, the sense that the “Indian” armed forces were the foundation of the British Raj, and that the Raj crumbled mainly because of mutinies in it – the Royal Indian Navy in particular – is not quite strong enough. The book does describe the naval mutiny briefly. It is interesting that the great leaders of Indian independence were super-quick to supress disorder in the Indian Navy, but not that effective in keeping murder and mayhem in check outside.
I did like it that Raghavan quickly dismisses Mountbatten, who has been subjected to an incredible amount of hero-worship elsewhere, as a “train-wreck of a general” and implies that his main achievement was to leave the fighting to Slim. However, that brings up what I see as a second shortcoming: the lost opportunity to re-examine General Slim and the glow of his Caesar-like conquest of Burma, versus the “military losers” reputation of the Indian National Army.
The investment in re-training, logistics, fighting spirit, medical infrastructure etc. and the turnaround of the 14th Army to a winning force make a very interesting case study. However, I am inclined to believe Pater Ward Fay came closer to the truth when remarked that some British Generals were better at winning battles in the bookshops than in the battlefield. As Bayly and Harper put it, right on the first page of the preface to Forgotten Armies , “the ultimate victors forged heroic legends around the later successes of British Arms in the Eastern War.”
I am no historian, but it is clear to me that Slim lied in print in Defeat to Victory when he wrote that the main contribution of the Indian National Army was to smilingly lay down arms at the point of crossing of the Irawady River. Equally, one doesn’t have to be a genius or historian to figure that the Japanese were preparing for an assault on Iwo Jima when the British Indian Army launched its offensive in Burma (Fay points this out). I would have liked more detail in Raghavan’s work on what happened when the British Indian Army and the Indian National Army came face to face. Too often, Bose and the INA are still treated with either crazy veneration or Raj-initiated contempt.
Yashpal, in his classic Jhhootha Sach, notes that the Indian Army did not overturn the “British” Indian Army’s attitude towards the INA after indepence. As a result, the INA “found itself to be the ghost at the feast in Prime Minister Nehru’s independent and non-aligned India” (Bayly and Harper).
A revised edition of India’s War with a more in-depth and balanced treatment of this sub-plot will be a great addition to the telling of Indian WWII history. The author is quite dismissive in this work – “ the Indian National Army was no match for the Indian Army” – which, of course, is the common narrative. It would not hurt to dwell more on the establishment of the Indian National Army, its dismantling of religious divisions and its few credible military actions. There are authors like Fay, Toye and Lebra who seem to suggest that the INA was a military disaster on the whole, but did have some moments of success and did demonstrate courage.
I was shocked to read in Hajari’s Midnight’s Furies that Mohan Singh, who led the INA before becoming disillusioned with the Japanese, was leading a Sikh militia unit and in the thick of the genocide of partition a few years later. Raghavan clearly notes that the demobilization of trained soldiers was a factor in the large-scale butchery that prevailed during the partition. The 2.5 million strong army could have been demobilized at a slower rate, and could have been used as a peace-keeping force, if Indian independence was not also badly botched up by the Great Leaders who ruled over it.
An even wider coverage of India’s war would include the Indian Legion that served in trained in Konigsbruck and served in Normandy under the Germans, and the POWs sent to Rabaul.
All of this doesn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy India’s War. It’s one of those books I set aside for a second cover-to-cover reading later, and I will also look forward to Raghavan’s next book.
India’s war is a great work that took too long to come out – an account of the Indian army’s effort during World War II, from North Africa to Myanmar, written by a former officer of the Indian Army. This is a work that mostly does justice to the very impressive blurbs from Ramchandra Guha, John Keay and Sunil Khilnani.
Its span, depth and detail make this an outstanding book. Raghavan goes into the strategy, economics and politics of the context, before describing the military aspects in some detail. He does all this keeping the reading very easy. That is a great achievement.
It helps that the author zooms in and out very fluently. The very first line has an interesting detail – the Viceroy of India announced India’s entry into WWII without consulting a single governing body. As a result, the Indian Army would increase in strength from 200,000 to 2.5 million. Many such details follow – including that India was a member of the League of Nations, reflecting its importance even as a colony, and that there was a run on the Post Office savings bank in India following the German Blitzkrieg.
As I expected, the accounts of military action are very detailed. For the first time, I got a sense of the huge spread of theatres that the Indian Army saw action in, from Italy to Hong Kong. There are a few places where the maps don’t really support the detailed narrative, though.
On the other hand, there are aspects that I liked a bit less about the work. First, the sense that the “Indian” armed forces were the foundation of the British Raj, and that the Raj crumbled mainly because of mutinies in it – the Royal Indian Navy in particular – is not quite strong enough. The book does describe the naval mutiny briefly. It is interesting that the great leaders of Indian independence were super-quick to supress disorder in the Indian Navy, but not that effective in keeping murder and mayhem in check outside.
I did like it that Raghavan quickly dismisses Mountbatten, who has been subjected to an incredible amount of hero-worship elsewhere, as a “train-wreck of a general” and implies that his main achievement was to leave the fighting to Slim. However, that brings up what I see as a second shortcoming: the lost opportunity to re-examine General Slim and the glow of his Caesar-like conquest of Burma, versus the “military losers” reputation of the Indian National Army.
The investment in re-training, logistics, fighting spirit, medical infrastructure etc. and the turnaround of the 14th Army to a winning force make a very interesting case study. However, I am inclined to believe Pater Ward Fay came closer to the truth when remarked that some British Generals were better at winning battles in the bookshops than in the battlefield. As Bayly and Harper put it, right on the first page of the preface to Forgotten Armies , “the ultimate victors forged heroic legends around the later successes of British Arms in the Eastern War.”
I am no historian, but it is clear to me that Slim lied in print in Defeat to Victory when he wrote that the main contribution of the Indian National Army was to smilingly lay down arms at the point of crossing of the Irawady River. Equally, one doesn’t have to be a genius or historian to figure that the Japanese were preparing for an assault on Iwo Jima when the British Indian Army launched its offensive in Burma (Fay points this out). I would have liked more detail in Raghavan’s work on what happened when the British Indian Army and the Indian National Army came face to face. Too often, Bose and the INA are still treated with either crazy veneration or Raj-initiated contempt.
Yashpal, in his classic Jhhootha Sach, notes that the Indian Army did not overturn the “British” Indian Army’s attitude towards the INA after indepence. As a result, the INA “found itself to be the ghost at the feast in Prime Minister Nehru’s independent and non-aligned India” (Bayly and Harper).
A revised edition of India’s War with a more in-depth and balanced treatment of this sub-plot will be a great addition to the telling of Indian WWII history. The author is quite dismissive in this work – “ the Indian National Army was no match for the Indian Army” – which, of course, is the common narrative. It would not hurt to dwell more on the establishment of the Indian National Army, its dismantling of religious divisions and its few credible military actions. There are authors like Fay, Toye and Lebra who seem to suggest that the INA was a military disaster on the whole, but did have some moments of success and did demonstrate courage.
I was shocked to read in Hajari’s Midnight’s Furies that Mohan Singh, who led the INA before becoming disillusioned with the Japanese, was leading a Sikh militia unit and in the thick of the genocide of partition a few years later. Raghavan clearly notes that the demobilization of trained soldiers was a factor in the large-scale butchery that prevailed during the partition. The 2.5 million strong army could have been demobilized at a slower rate, and could have been used as a peace-keeping force, if Indian independence was not also badly botched up by the Great Leaders who ruled over it.
An even wider coverage of India’s war would include the Indian Legion that served in trained in Konigsbruck and served in Normandy under the Germans, and the POWs sent to Rabaul.
All of this doesn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy India’s War. It’s one of those books I set aside for a second cover-to-cover reading later, and I will also look forward to Raghavan’s next book.
