Classics Club #A1: Dasa Kumara Charitam by Dandin

Sanskrit is one of the most ancient languages of the world. I am in awe of the power of its words as manifested in the innumerable mantrs, strotas, and raags. It is a matter of regret for me that in school I never tried to learn the language properly and now can only rely on …

Forgotten Book: The Fever Tree by Richard Mason

Richard Mason (1919-1997) was a British author who served in the RAF during the second world-war and fought on the Indo-Burmese front, later becoming an Intelligence officer. Best known for his 1957 novel, The World of Suzie Wong, Mason also wrote a handful of other novels, two of which, The Wind Cannot Read (1946) and The …

Forgotten Book: The King’s General by Daphne du Maurier

A middle-aged Honor Harris is visited by two young men of her acquaintance who appraise her of various happenings around the world even as the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell, rules over England. Then one of them asks about the mysterious disappearance of Dick Grenvile and this question sets Honor reminiscencing about the past.I had no …

FFB: The End of Her Honeymoon by Marie Belloc Lowndes

And then Dampier turned and caught her, this time unresisting, yielding joyfully, to his breast. "Nancy?" he murmured thickly. "Nancy? I'm afraid!""Afraid?" she repeated wonderingly."Yes, horribly afraid! Pray, my pure angel, pray that the gods may indulge their cruel sport elsewhere. I haven't always been happy, Nancy."And she clung to him, full of vague, unsubstantial fears. "Don't …

Dark Desires: Dickens’ Edwin Drood

'Edwin, Edwin, Edwin,' she repeats, trailing off into a drowsy repetition of the word; and then asks suddenly: Is the short of that name Eddy?''It is sometimes called so,'he replies, with the colour starting to his face.'Don't sweethearts call it so?' she asks, pondering.How should I know!'Haven't you a sweetheart, upon your soul?''None.'She is moving …

‘The Issue itself": Present Day Germany and the Nazi Past in The Reader

Sometime I think that dealing with the Nazi past was not the reason for the generational conflict that drove the student movement, but merely the form it took. Parental expectations, from which every generation must free itself, were nullified by the fact that these parents had failed to measure up during the Third Reich, or after it …

Gateway to India: Night in Bombay

And downstairs on the groundfloor there was a vast hall and a huge stairway which led up and into the heights of the big hotel. Through the hall and the bazaar which occupied half its area came and went a procession of Arab horse-dealers, British Governors and Civil Servants, Indian Princes, jewel merchants, Parsi millionaires, …

Gotterdammerung: The Twilight of the Gods in Death in Kashmir

And the night was so quiet that Sarah could hear, like a whisper in an empty room, the far, faint mutter of thunder from behind the distant mountains of the Nanga Parbat range on the opposite side of the valley. But she had not taken more than two steps towards the hut when she heard …