Customer Reviews

Bookless in Baghdad: Reflections on Writing and Writers

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It's hard to easily categorize Bookless In Baghdad: Reflections On Writing And Writers: it's not a literary expose, it's not entirely a memoir/autobiography, and it's not entirely a cultural reflection on Iraq and India - yet, it's got elements of all the above. You'll receive more of an appreciation for literacy and reading learning what Iraqis go through just to get a book, and how selling their own books can make the difference between dinner or hunger. Tharoor examines his own childhood with books in India - and he reflects on the literary figures which that country reveres. Forty essays provide a range of insights on the literary world outside the West - and they're fascinating revelations.

Shukriya, Ashok, for a thoughtful review that is a whole lot more literate and well-considered than most of the annoying, self-absorbed nonsense that Tharoor pulled out of his files to pile up into this "book". Arguably the worst of these is his "The Spy Who Stayed Out in the Cold", his knock on John leCarre. Tharoor accuses leCarre of remaining trapped in a world view "that has moved beyond the sterile divisions of a global antagonism that threatened us", failing to realize/understand that he himself, in his UN position, fails to understand that global antagonism still threatens us all.

Characteristic of his snide, look-down-the-nose view of the literary aspirations of others is "The Great American Literary Illusion". In it he argues that any prospective author should ask whether the book "would add in some way to the sum of humanity's cultural heritage"; too bad he didn't ask himself that question. Does he really think that this book meets that test? Instead he has given the world something that conforms to his view that "there's an awful lot of awful books being published these days, some of which end up on the best-seller lists." QED

This book is a little like "Reading Lolita in Tehran" in that it offers a multitude of further reading ideas and insights into another culture, in this case mostly the culture of India, as influenced by its long history and British colonial period in particular. Numerous Indian writers are celebrated, especially Salman Rushdie, but so are the works of P. G. Wodehouse, Le Carre, Pushkin, Pablo Neruda, Hemingway, Orwell, and more. Don't miss the essays on illiteracy in America and the final essay celebrating the value of reading in a time of terrorism.

A great look inside the lives of India's elite leaders, as well as the literary life there, plus reflections on writing and writers from other countries ...

Sashi Tharoor is an interesting eclectic writer, and world traveler, with a fascinating background. Born in London, educated in India and the U.S, and currently Under Secretary General,Communications and Public Information, at The United Nations ...

His insightful essays, covering everything from growing up in India, world affairs, war, history, religion, globalization, death and destruction, to Hollywood and Bollywood....make a remarkable book that will interest readers of all nations.-- and it's an easy read.

Highly recommended.

Living in Mumbai, India, (which you may know by its erstwhile name of Bombay), that overpriced piece of real estate that exists as a loose extension of the local film industry, disparagingly nicknamed "Bollywood," you soon become familiar with the phenomenon of star rub-offs. A neighbour claims to know someone who is a cousin of a cousin of a cousin of... Shah Rukh Khan. Or Aamir Khan. Or, pick your local Indian film star. Everybody knows somebody who is somebody. Six degrees of presumed intimacy.

Arguably, a collection of essays on books and authors is something like that claim. By writing about literary greats, you can hope to capture some of their stardusty magic as well. Which can only enhance your own tawny sheen. Of course, by that measure, writing a book review of a book by a literary star does much the same thing. Rubbing shoulders with a star may only leave you with sore deltoids, but the human mind is a wonderful thing.

Shashi Tharoor probably doesn't need to elevate his own star status, such as it is, by collecting his own book reviews of other book reviewers, some of whom are actually authors. He's already regarded with warm admiration by a fair number, mostly for his modern-day Mahabharata-revisionist retelling, The Great Indian Novel, and to a lesser extent, for the novels Riot and Show Business, and, most recently, for the non-fiction book India: From Midnight to the Millennium. He hardly needs to rub shoulders with the likes of Rushdie, Naipaul, Kipling, and Wodehouse, to name just a few of the authors covered in this collection, in order to further his own literary reputation.

But what else is one to do with all those files full of yellowing clippings? Or, when one is a career diplomat-an Under-Secretary-General of The United Nations, no less, and unable to write more than a book every half-decade or so, how does one keep one's byline alive in the bookstores? So, Tharoor brings together a mixed bag of his own book reviews and columns on writers, books and literary musings from the past decade or so in this collection.

Like the neighbour with starry aspirations, there are some jewels of truth here: The essays on "Mining the Mahabharata", "Bharatiya Sanskriti in the Big Apple", "The Cultural Geography of Criticism", and various freewheeling essays on the unique geopolitical complexity of being an Indian English author adrift in a sea of western culture are enlightening, insightful and very rewarding.

While the critics-like this one-may wax critical about how genuinely Indian writers like Tharoor really are, or are not, the fact is that he is a practising author pursuing the most difficult of paths: that of the insider who chooses to live as an outsider, yet continues to report from within. In these essays, he strikes hardest and most passionately, raising sparks of valuable illumination into the inner mind of the literary exile.

Perhaps this is why his comments on Rushdie, the epitome of literary exile, ring so heartfelt and true. In these pieces, you see the "Tharoor of India: From Midnight to Millennium", and wish he would write more non-fiction like this, more essay-length insightful personalized self-commentary on the condition of being Indian abroad, and of being a quintessential babu-educated (a Stephanian no less) bhadralok in the international sharkpool.

In other, more general essays, Tharoor is readable at best, and completely vapid at worst. This is a slim book with only a few dozen pages really worth the price, but those pages are a glimpse into the larger, more ambitious book that Tharoor could write someday, something neither autobiography nor literary essay, a sustained literary rumination on the life and times of a career diplomat and author. Then perhaps at last, he will no longer need to spend his space rubbing shoulders with literary stars and become one himself.

The book has nothing to do with Baghdad and is simply a collection of essays that the author wrote over a period of time. While each essay is written skillfuly and with wit, I didn't appreciate that the title made me believe that I will read about the craft of writing inside Iraq. The book should have been titled "Bookish in India" instead.