Date:12/05/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/05/12/stories/2008051258240200.htm

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

It’s India shining at bookstores

J. Malarvizhi

CHENNAI: The hype over India refuses to die. Across the fiction and non-fiction categories on the new arrivals shelves at bookstores, authors continue to grapple with the post-liberalisation ‘new’ India.

Shobha De’s ‘The Superstar India: From Incredible to Unstoppable’ has attracted the amount of limelight that a superstar writer can bring. The author has welcomed several changes while mourning the fragmentation of the family, reviewers say.

Implications of power

‘Think India: The Rise of the World’s Next Superpower and What It Means for Every American’ by Vinay Rai, co-authored by William L. Simon, explains the implications of rapid development to the current superpower.

‘The White Tiger’ by Aravind Adiga tracks a fictional Balram Halwai on his dark journey to fulfilling the consumerist dream.

Conversations about power and justice and the need to take a stand fill ‘The Shape of the Beast’ by Arundhati Roy.

On a more personal note, P.M. Nair recalls the years of the ‘people’s president’ in ‘The Kalam Effect: My Years with the President’.

Political controversies

The political controversies of the period figure alongside reminiscences of Kalam’s personal quirks, which include being perpetually late.

Elsewhere, ‘The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century’ by Steve Coll, examines the background of the one of the most controversial figures of our times. ‘The Age of New Innovation’ by management gurus C.K. Prahlad and M.S. Krishnan has the Internet abuzz with discussions of the concepts it has presented.