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    Bookless in Baghdad: Reflections on Writing and Writers
    Unavailable
    Bookless in Baghdad: Reflections on Writing and Writers
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    Bookless in Baghdad: Reflections on Writing and Writers
    Ebook267 pages5 hours

    Bookless in Baghdad: Reflections on Writing and Writers

    By Shashi Tharoor

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    “This amalgam of essay, literary criticism, and memoir blends into a tribute to the world of books,” from the acclaimed Indian writer (Chicago Tribune).
     
    Born in London, and raised in Bombay and Calcutta, Shashi Tharoor was eleven years old when “an otherwise detestable teacher” dictated a passage from P. G. Wodehouse as a spelling test. It launched his first great passion: reading. In this illuminating collection of essays, the award-winning author, columnist, and former international diplomat, explores the many books that informed his life and literary identity.
     
    Tharoor tells of a childhood juggling Lamb’s Tales of Shakespeare with Archie comics. He delivers a poignant homage to Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, explains his desire to rewrite Rudyard Kipling’s “overpraised” Kim as an act of postcolonial revenge, and discusses the influence of the Mahabharata, the two-thousand-year-old Indian epic poem, on his own Great Indian Novel.
     
    His astute views on Salman Rushdie, Aesop’s Fables, Aleksandr Pushkin, John le Carré, V. S. Naipaul, and Winston S. Churchill make for fascinating reading, as does his criticisms of American illiteracy and the steep price Iraqis pay just to obtain a book. In addition, his insightful takes on Hollywood and Bollywood will enlighten even the most knowledgeable cinephile. Together, these forty pieces reveal the inner workings of one of today’s most eclectic writers.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateOct 11, 2011
    ISBN9781628721911
    Unavailable
    Bookless in Baghdad: Reflections on Writing and Writers
    Author

    Shashi Tharoor

    Shashi Tharoor served for twenty-nine years at the UN, culminating as Under-Secretary-General. He is a Congress MP in India, the author of fourteen previous books, and has won numerous literary awards, including a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Tharoor has a PhD from the Fletcher School, and was named by the World Economic Forum in Davos in 1998 as a Global Leader of Tomorrow.

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    Reviews for Bookless in Baghdad

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      A Frabjous read edifying myself in the nuances and idiosyncrasies of the English language, and indeed, of Tharoor himself. Being the first of his writings which I have the pleasure of reading, I am certainly glad it has been my first as it has given me the necessary insight and background with which to think joyfully of his incisive intellect. A book I’ll likely remember perennially (I also highly appreciate the auto dictionary feature on Scribd with which I now have a long list of words which I used to write this hastily penned and ridiculously hoity toity sounding review - yet another wonder on Tharoor’s part that he is able to craft and weave the sentences between his fingers without sounding absurd).
    • 4/5
      I've enjoyed reading this book even if some of the essays have not been all that interesting. Of some poingancy are the feelings that Tharoor brought forth regarding the colonial British, always a complex topic. Tharoor is something of a polymath, and has spent considerable time in three great large cities of India, Mumbai, Delhi and Calcutta, as well as his more rural birth state of Kerala. Of particular interst to me are his development of the "[Great Indian Novel]", the revelation that P.G. Wodehouse is far more popular in India than in Briatin at this point, his particpation with various literary projects involving other Indian writers.

      1 person found this helpful