Dramatist C.D. Sidhu, a word portrait
Edited by Ravi Taneja
This book was gifted to my daughter, Enya, by my uncle, Dr. C.D. Sidhu. I read through it very slowly, taking in its essence, tasting its exotic flavour. From this book, I learnt more about a man who fought all his life for what he loved: drama.
Dr. Sidhu has written thirty six [...]
What’s all this about word count?
Put A Love Story by Eric Segal beside War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy and the argument does not stand. But I am not thinking about selling, for a change; I am thinking about determining the volume of your book accurately.
I read somewhere an easy way to do it. If you divide your book into [...]
Tropes and Schemes
I composed this e-book to help myself and others get acquainted with the nuances of writing. I’ve included as many as 69 tropes and schemes with explanations and examples, so you won’t need to bother to make a list.
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Dangers for Fiction Writers
Dangers for Fiction Writers is a free ebook that warns you against possible flaws that might scar your fiction. From boring beginnings, slow pace, unconvincing characters, faulty jumps in time to bad structure, scale, complexity, narration and action; Dangers for Fiction Writers will help you glide through the potholes.
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Begin Writing Fiction
How many times have you thought of writing a book? Many, you will say. But you never got down to the actual writing. Begin Writing Fiction is a concise e-book that helps you with building characters, POV, setting, plot, narration, dialogue, style and avoiding clichés so that you can begin writing your book today.
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Beat Generation
Beat Generation refers to a small group of writers in 1950s who believed in spontaneity, intense experimentation and freedom of expression, both in their writing and their lives. The Beat movement rejected capitalism, militarism and materialism.
The bohemian lifestyle and beliefs of the Beats made them notorious in the eyes of many. They indulged in sexual [...]
Augustan Age
It was in the Augustan age that Roman literature reached its zenith with the works of writers like Horace, Ovid and Virgil being published. It is referred as the Augustan age because Rome was ruled by Emperor Augustus during the period starting from 27 BC until his death in AD 14.
In British literature, Augustan age [...]
Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence
I wrote this book review for a website on 26th May, 2004. Yesterday I retrieved the copy of it from underneath the earth It still has my views intact so I thought I would share it here with you. Here is the review of one of the most loved books by Lawrence: [...]
Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
I wrote this book review for a website on 26th May, 2004. Yesterday I retrieved the copy of it from underneath the earth It still has my views intact so I thought I would share it here with you.
The novel disturbed my sense of synchronization when I first started reading it. Having mostly [...]
American Renaissance (literature)
Francis Otto Matthiessen coined this name for the major literary works that were coming out from the north-eastern United States in the middle of the 19th century. Herman Melville, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau. Mattiessen discussed their works in his book: American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age [...]
Lorna Goodison
Born on August 1, 1947 in Kingston, Jamaica, Lorna Goodison is primarily a poet along with a short story writer and a painter. Her poems focus on mixing of cultures, women’s concerns and effects of colonization. When she was a teenager, she began to publish her poetry anonymously in Jamaica Gleaner.
Her first collection of poems, [...]
Wilson Harris
Born into a middle class family on March 24, 1921 in Guyana (then under the British rule), Wilson Harris first became friends with poetry and moved on to become a world famous novelist and essayist. After studying at Queen’s College in Georgetown from 1934 to 1939, he became a government surveyor (1942-58). It was as [...]
Nayantara Sahgal
Born in British India on May 10, 1927 in Allahabad, Nayantara Sahgal is an Indian writer in English whose fiction has received worldwide recognition. She is the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru’s sister Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit. During the emergency imposed by her first cousin, Indira Gandhi, she stood up against the totalitarian government, giving evidence of [...]
V.S. Naipaul
Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul was born on August 17, 1932 in Chaguanas, Trinidad. He was educated at Queen’s Royal College, Trinidad and University College, Oxford. He worked briefly for BBC as a writer and editor. He was knighted in 1989. In 2001, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. He lives in Wiltshire, England.
Celebrated [...]
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Life of Pi by Yann Martel is an exciting and highly adventurous tale of a young boy named Piscine Molitor Patel nicknamed Pi. The novel first deals with Pi’s childhood where we are introduced to his family, a mamaji (uncle) and his classmates. Pi’s father runs a zoo, his mother is a housewife and his [...]
