Nirad Chaudhuri was often unfairly dismissed in his lifetime as a 20th-century equivalent to the notorious mimic men evoked in Macaulay's infamous "Minute on Indian Education": he adopts the attitudes of the British ruling class during the Raj so thoroughly he might at a casual glance be dismissed as such. But Chaudhuri's fierce and iconoclastic intelligence makes him far much more: a singular and independent thinker, and in truth a true original. This book, his masterpiece, is a brilliant semi-autobiographical study of the political situation of the first half of the Indian twentieth century. It works best in the lovely and lyrical opening hundred pages, which give a very evocative sense of his Bengali childhood. Unfortunately later, when Chaudhuri surrenders reminiscence for political analysis, he becomes more tedious than illuminating (you get the suspicion that, were you to visit him as Ian Jack , who provided the book's fine introduction, you would have been compelled despite yourself to check your watch discreetly during one of Chaudhuri's lengthy and self-satisfied tirades).

This book will give you a perspective that was quite common amongst the "educated Indians" during the waning days of the Raj. The writing is somewhat turgid though quite colorful in parts. I read this book in small doses just to savor and reflect upon an era long gone. The descriptions of family life and personalities are delightful and vivid.

This however, is not a easy read. If you expect a fast-paced juicy narrative then you will be disappointed. If you enjoy a meaty jaunt through late 19th and early 20th century India then by all means get it. A word of caution. When reading the author's opinions please realize the times from whence they spring.

This is a must book for all those who've seen Rural Bengal/Bangladesh in its true form with its summers, rainy season and winters with the human face. Description is vivid and also the dreams about Foreign Land (Bilet). NCC with one of his best novels however, with his usual opinionated and often judgemental perception which is so typically Nirad-babu. The maestro puts his experience of yesteryears with the accuracy of present day. Insights and the minute details is what makes him one of the greatest prolific writers of all time. One needs to look at the world of Nirad-babu to fully appreciate his work without marring your thoughts without your prejudices. If anyone, wants to get lost in the laid-back life of Bengal, this is where your quest should end. I wish he could have more writings in English so that more people could appreciate the master.

Some of the readings in this issue are better than others, but overall, Granta #77 was a disappointment. The criticism that appears in this issue America is seldom critical enough--one pleasant exception, however, is in the short essay by Harold Pinter. Also very enjoyable was the short story--irrelavent to the theme--by Coatzee, "Youth." This story was a well-done analysis of, among other things, the human aspect of the corporate world. There are a couple dry but informative readings that are worthwhile, though, if you're not up on your goings on in the middle east.

I bought Granta 77 expecting a pointed analysis of US foreign policy since September 11- with particular emphasis placed opinions on muslim countries. I wanted to hear what people were thinking of the US pulling out of the Kyoto Treaty, not ratifying the Anti-Land Mine Treaty, maintaining support for Isreal during the current occupation of the Palestinean territories, and other provacative, liable-to-be-misconstrued, actions taken by the US in recent years which are obviously smearing the good name of the US - for reasons perhaps justified, perhaps not.

What I got instead was a series of 24 often affectionate ruminations on how the USA, and the "idea" of the USA, has affected the lives and imaginations of writers from around the globe. Some essays are simply mini-memoirs of how some small bit of americana (comic book superheros, in one instance) transformed a life.

Some readers may be disappointed to note that only passing mention is made of September 11 in a few of the essays. Taken as a whole, however, the 24 essay present an underlying sense that the current behaviour of the US is, in a way, disappointing to these writers- who, from movies, school lessons, and personal contact with the USA, have come to admire the ideals of the country and the people who live there. A common theme is a "dislike America but love Americans" sensibility.

Granta 77 is sucessful because the essays are more ambivilant and nuanced than one expects them to be. Also included is an interesting photo essay on Afghansitan.

Granta collections are always a surprise, and this one is no exception. I bought it expecting to grit my teeth while trying to come to terms with some of the frustration of the rest of the world with Americans. But instead I discovered a gathering of writers who, as much as I do, wonder at the ungraspable complexity of this nation whose belief in it itself and its ideals is as much to be praised as its uncritical and opportunistic practices are to be blamed. Both insiders and outsiders feel the right to insist that American values be upheld. This collection is not a serious critique but it is an amazing collection of meditations on America as uplifting as they are a reminder of how much and how long we Americans have lazily indulged in cynicism about our political process.

Setting aside that the authors take an unfair swipe at the Waldahudin from my Hugo Award-nominated STARPLEX as being too like Earthly fauna (getting their facts wrong while doing so, and not discussing the very alien Darmats [dark-matter aliens] and Ibs [gestalt organisms] from that novel), this is still a pretty good book, although the dogmatic tone gets tiresome awfully fast. In a way, Stewart and Cohen should be praised for using so many examples from science fiction, but, at the same time, they give very short shrift to the notion that some SF writers might be using aliens for literary/metaphoric purposes, rather than just as high-school-biology-class exercises in designing lifeforms. Stanley Schmidt's ALIENS AND ALIEN SOCIETIES is a better book (even if Stewart and Cohen's acknowledgement of its existence seems mostly limited to a petty critique of its cover art, incidentally -- although they don't mention this -- by Hugo Award-winner Bob Eggleton).

Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart are interesting thinkers and writers in the guise of Jack&Ian, and What Does A Martian Look Like? is a very good, thought provoking read. This book takes an optomistic view of the possibilities of life and intelligence elsewhere in the universe and proposes a broad xenoscience as an antidote to what Jack&Ian see as the narrow view of astrobiology. Rare Earth by Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee comes in for the most criticism [not for the writing, but for the opinions], being one of the most popular books on astrobiology in the last few years. Stewart and Cohen do their best when they discuss their ideas in the context of science fiction stories and hit bottom when their criticisms of mainstream astrobiology begin to sound petty. Fans of mainstream SF should be prepared for the dressing down of their favorite aliens. If it'll hurt your feelings to find out that aliens probably won't look humanoid, do not read this book. Although not a perfect book, What Does A Martin Look Like? [especially if paired with the book Rare Earth] will take the reader's thinking to the far corners of the universe.

Apart from being mis-titled for North American readers, this is a mind-expanding view of "what's out there" - or might be. Released as "Evolving the Alien" in the UK, this book examines numerous and too often poorly considered suggestions about how life might evolve in other places.

Note "places," since Cohen and Stewart don't limit their conjectures to planets alone. Noting the impact of H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds" as a starting point for how we think about life elsewhere, Cohen and Stewart divide the book between evidence from hard science and the conjectures of "SF" [speculative fiction] authors. Including themselves. In their view, both exobiologists and novelists have been remiss in considering how alien life might evolve. They do a comprehensive job, presented with the kind of wit expected of collaborators of Terry Pratchett of Discworld fame.

Recognizing they are entering a relatively unexplored area, they abandon old terms like "astrobiology" or "extraterrestrial life" to suggest a new, all encompassing term - xenobiology. They condemn outright the narrow views expressed by some scientists, notably Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee in "Rare Earth." Cohen and Stewart argue that limiting life to DNA-based forms is far too restrictive. Different environments are capable of producing life in ways "we can't even imagine." Magnetic fields in suns or neutron stars, silicon-based chemistry, unusual energy uses are all part of the panorama nature has in its recipes in making life start. Our localized experience is too limited, they argue, and we should look further with more open minds.

Those who have attempted a more open view have traditionally been limited to writers of speculative fiction. Cohen and Stewart sprinkle the text with examples of this genre, accompanied by an analysis of what is right or wrong with the ET life presented. "Science fiction" might just as easily be labelled "fictional science" in the eyes of these authors. Too little attention has been given to environmental complexity by the legions of writers seeking to entertain readers with simple plots and much action. Among that phalanx, however, there are some writers who strive to bring reality to the fictional worlds they create. Jack Cohen has been called into the story-building process as a consultant by several authors. The result, once the dust had settled, was SF with a reality check. The authors give accounts of some of
these efforts and the resulting books should be sought out and compared to those less favoured by the authors of this book.

Jack&Ian [as they style themselves] have provided a rich trove of ideas for nearly everyone. Scientists can gain fresh areas of research to consider, while fiction readers may find a whole new list of interesting readings. The book isn't footnoted, but there is a divided bibliography of "Popular Xenoscience Reading" and "Technical Xenoscience Reading" at the end. If you fail to find new concepts to consider here, you haven't tried.

There are two Australias: there's the sanitized Australia of myth encompassing Crocodile Dundee, koalas and kangaroos, Nicholas Roeg's WALKABOUT, Peter Weir's early films, and Bruce Chatwin's THE SONGLINES. Then there's the gritty, no-hope, hardscrabble world of the stories in this GRANTA anthology.

Good writing is alive and well Down Under. Some of the pieces were haunting, especially Ben Rice's "Pobby and Dingan," about a child's invisible friends who take on a whole new reality; Paul Toohey's "The Road to Ginger Riley," about the last days of a drunken journalist who wants to "find" Australia before he dies; and Thomas Keneally's "My Father's Australia," about life in a small town before World War I.

The Aborigines are a ghostly presence in this anthology, except for Robyn Davidson's eerie "Marrying Eddie" and Polly Borland's haunting photos and interviews of Aborigine men and women spiralling down into oblivion. There's no COOPER'S CREEK heroism here: You have to find your own way, Mate!

However dark the vision of most of these selections, this volume is a worthy addition to GRANTA's growing library of stories and essays. When you pack your bags to go on vacation, you could do worse than take ANY volume of GRANTA with you. Each one is a window into a different world -- maybe not a pleasant one, but always a fascinating one.

As I read this issue travelling from LA to New York and back, I saw there was a secret thread that held most of the pieces in it together: Ghosts of one sort or another. Henk van Woerden's excellent "The Assassin" is about a man who had no sense of identity, and whose attempt to find one led to the assassination of South African premier Hendrik Verwoerd in September 1966. His Demetrios Tsafendas is a man without a country, without a religion, and without the human affiliations that seem to make life worth living.

Other pieces in this thread are Hanif Kureishi's arresting "Goodbye, Mother" about a son's inability to deal with his aging mother; Graham Swift's "Our Nicky's Heart," about a boy's death in a motorcycle accident and its strange aftermath; and especially Richard Williams's haunting "Gifted," about his search for jazz trumpeter Dupree Bolton, one of the best written pieces I have ever read on the subject of jazz. Also, I must add Kent Klich's sad "Born in Romania," about HIV-positive Romanian children whom he photographed, many of whom died before the article went to press.

I enjoyed Diana Athill's "Editing Vidia," a contribution in the emerging subgenre of why V.S. Naipaul is not likeable (adding to Paul Theroux's article last year in the NEW YORKER). The question I ask is, what does that have to do with Naipaul's work? Niceness is not a trait common to all great artists, so why belabor the point?

There are also short pieces by Paul Theroux and Keith Ridgway that struck me more as fillers for an otherwise excellent issue of this indispensable publication.

This is both a good book because it is very well-written book and a worrisome book for exactly the same reason. I wouldn't bring this up but for the fact that it has already been brought up by several of the pieces contained in this anthology. The concern of several (perhaps all) of these pieces is about the control of information, and especially about the potential of what is called "transparent" language to conceal abuses of power. Two of the pieces are centered on Britain, and the potential problem is brought into high relief in those pieces. Of course, a great many people these days are familiar with the arguments of the radical continental tradition, especially Adorno's work. The difficulty has been to practice these arguments while still holding down a decent job, but perhaps these pieces, particularly Marilynne Robinson's piece on the Sellafield nuclear power plant, offer a way out of that difficulty. Perhaps what could be done is to attack the means of information production, like the legal machinery that enables Britain at least to keep power hidden. It appears to me that such an idea might have some hope, and maybe young leftists reading this could go out, read this book, and cut out a career attacking this end of the problem. For those reading this sort of book purely for the enjoyment of it, as well, the book has a great deal of interest, since it is filled with vivid, if sometimes uncomfortable, description. It certainly adds to our store of knowledge of some strange, and some not-so-strange, lands.

Don't let the title and the cover put you off! The only story in this anthology that I didn't like was the covering story, because I thought it was pompous and overly wordy. The remainder, both fiction and non-fiction, are thoughtful and well-written stories and have left me wanting to find out more about these talented writers. And, I will definitely be seeking out other Granta anthologies to read in the near future.

Granta declares at the very beginning that the reader must brace himself for invigorating new Indian fiction, and then goes on to serve up stories by American and British journalists positively swooning with nostalgia:- there is one story by an American journalist that is full of such useful everyday hints as running in a zig-zag when chased by an elephant. Still, it is well worth it for the two beautiful stories: one by R.K. Narayan, all opaque and glimmering in twilight, and an excerpt from arundhati roy's novel, which is just superb

As Ian Rankin's series progresses, Detective Inspector John Rebus is becoming more and more likable. This time he's trying to solve the murder of a local MP's wife. He comes up against the usual brick walls put up by superior officers on the way to solving the case, but in this book for the first time, he seems to have made a friend in the force in young DS Brian Holmes.

I'm finding the Insector John Rebus books even more enjoyable since the newer, mellow John Rebus has been developed.

A wonderful British police procedural full of wit and glint-in-the-eye humour.

I highly recommend this fine Inspector Rebus novel by Rankin. Excellent crime/detective novel based in Scotland, providing a worthwhile alternative to the plethora of US novels. Read it if you like crime novels with a twist!

Ian Rankin once again proves that he is amongst the best, if not the best writer of Crime Fiction in the world. Strip Jack has all the twists and turns that make Ian Rankin's books unputdownable. The plot, MP wife's suspicious disappearance and subsequent murder, moves along really well. The numerous sub-plots, unlike in some stories, actually help the book to move along rather than detract from the main story. As usual all the plot lines are integral to the story. All in all an excellent addition to the Rebus series, if you like good British Detective fiction (and who doesn't, it is the best after all) this is a must for your library.