Stephen King, in On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (2000), has stated that “Books are a uniquely portable magic.” Therefore, if the authors reign as the sorcerers weaving their spells, the onus falls on the book reviewers to offer glimpses of that charm and guide the readers through the crowded literary landscape. Caesurae (Vol. 6:1) presents the inaugural section of Book Reviews. For this purpose, many books have been sent to us. But we have selected the ones which have been deemed to be significant for this particular issue.

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A book review is more than a body of critical paragraphs. Apart from increasing the visibility of the authors, it is the ideal testing ground for the readers before they embark on their cerebral journeys. In the words of Dr. Carolyn Eastman, “A good review illuminates larger insights about how a book intervenes in a broader field of study and tells readers something more than a casual reader might discover” (“In Defense of the Beleaguered Academic Book Review”). Book reviews, therefore, strive to make substantiative commentary and engage with the readers, so that reading never becomes a passive affair.

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In this volume, four books have been chosen for review: a) Krishna Kumar Mishra’s Always in Transit: Poems; b) Kala Pani Crossings, Gender and Diaspora: Indian Perspective, edited by Judith Misrahi-Barak, Ritu Tyagi and H. Kalpana Rao; c) Himadri Lahiri’s Asia Travels: Pan- Asian Cultural Discourses and Diasporic Asian Literature/s in English, and d) Time, History and Cultural Spaces: Narrative Explorations, edited by Jayita Sengupta.

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The selected texts cover critical essays, poems, interviews and a short fiction. Mishra’s work brims with resonances between the poems and the poet’s personal experiences, attaining a universal character. Physical and metaphorical ‘travels’ find particular focus in this section. While Kala Pani Crossings explores gendered aspect of ‘travels’ from Indian point of view, Asia Travels moves to the formation of Pan-Asian identity. The facets of narrativity, in western and non-western cultures, are engaged with in Time, History and Cultural Spaces. In this sense, this section of Book Reviews presents a global taste to the curious readers. Eastman, in her
article, has been concerned with the decline in the contribution of book reviews. This section, therefore, is a formative step in the judicious literary assessment. Its reviews have been noteworthy in their remarkable attempts to provide insights upon the discursive terrain of thought, as presented in the chosen texts.

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Tathagata Sagar Pal (Editor, Book Reviews)

 

 

CONTENTS

1. Always in Transit: Poems by Krishna Kumar Mishra (Reviewed by K. V. Raghupathi) (pg. 1-5)
2. Kala Pani Crossings, Gender and Diaspora: Indian Perspective, edited by Judith Misrahi-Barak, Ritu Tyagi and H. Kalpana Rao (Reviewed by Oly Roy) (pg. 6-11)
3. Asia Travels: Pan-Asian Cultural Discourses and Diasporic Asian Literature/s in English by Himadri Lahiri (Reviewed by Tathagata Sagar Pal) (pg. 12-17)

4. Time, History and Cultural Spaces: Narrative Explorations, edited by Jayita Sengupta (Reviewed by Tathagata Sagar Pal) (pg. 18-23)​