Articles by Chintan Girish Modi
Interview: Huma Abedin, author, Both/And: A Life in Many Worlds – “My faith has helped me find my inner strength”
A memoir about being an American Muslim, and her relationships with mentor Hillary Clinton and ex-husband Anthony Weiner
Published on Jul 29, 2022 09:27 PM IST
Chintan Girish Modi
Interview: Amit Chaudhuri, Author, Finding the Raga – “Which way you are going to turn is unknown to you”
The title of your book Finding the Raga signals a kind of quest
Updated on Jul 23, 2022 01:40 AM IST
Chintan Girish Modi
Interview, Karthika VK, Publisher, Westland Books – “There are lines I would never cross”
On joining Pratilipi after Amazon shut down its publishing business in India, and on being shortlisted for the 2022 IPA Prix Voltaire for publishers who “stand firm on freedom to publish”
Published on Jul 16, 2022 01:50 AM IST
Chintan Girish Modi
Peter Frankopan, author: ‘The world order led by the West is under pressure’
Author of The New Silk Roads on his abiding interest in the Silk Roads, China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and how India, China, Iran, the Middle East, and to an extent, Russia, are reaching back into the past to explain their present and future
Updated on Jul 13, 2022 03:15 PM IST
Chintan Girish Modi
Interview, Onir, author, I Am Onir, and I am Gay – “I am the suitable boy”
Director-producer-screenwriter Onir, who is best known for making path breaking feature films with gay protagonists, especially My Brother
Updated on Jul 08, 2022 06:26 PM IST
Chintan Girish Modi
Review: Parvati the Elephant’s Very Important Day by Shobha Tharoor Srinivasan
A picture book in rhyming verse meant for children and adults, this is a fictional account of a day in the life of a temple elephant in Kerala
Updated on Jun 28, 2022 04:44 PM IST
Chintan Girish Modi
Interview: Dolly Thakore - “My whole life has been project after project”
On her memoir, her friendship with Protima Bedi, discovering Vipassana, and staging the Vagina Monologues
Published on Jun 24, 2022 10:55 PM IST
Chintan Girish Modi
Interview: Abhinav Chandrachud, author, Soli Sorabjee; Life and Times
The advocate, who practises at the Bombay High Court, talks about his biography of India’s former Attorney General
Updated on Jun 18, 2022 02:27 PM IST
Chintan Girish Modi
Review: The Line of Mercy by Tarun Tejpal
Author and journalist Tarun Tejpal, who wrote The Alchemy of Desire (2006), The Story of My Assassins (2010) and The Valley of Masks (2011) is back with a new novel called The Line of Mercy (2022)
Updated on Jun 10, 2022 10:43 PM IST
Chintan Girish Modi
Daisy Rockwell, Tomb of Sand: “People with big egos rarely go into translation”
Daisy Rockwell, who won the 2022 International Booker Prize with Geetanjali Shree, author of Ret Samadhi, talks about translation and more
Updated on Jun 09, 2022 08:58 PM IST
Chintan Girish Modi
Interview: Geetanjali Shree - “I just have to be myself”
Author Geetanjali Shree on staying grounded in the wake of winning the International Booker Prize for Tomb of Sand
Published on Jun 04, 2022 01:04 AM IST
Chintan Girish Modi
Review: The Other Man by Farhad J Dadyburjor
While the novel holds up a mirror to Indian society where gay men marry straight women to fulfill their patriarchal duty, it is also refreshing in that the queer characters are not condemned to persecution
Updated on Jun 01, 2022 05:00 PM IST
Chintan Girish Modi
Interview: Arunava Sinha, Translator, winner of the 6th Vani Foundation Distinguished Translator Award 2022 – “I’m very hopeful for the future of translations”
On translating from Bangla into English and vice versa, and on choosing to translate writers who are closer to the margins than to the mainstream
Published on May 27, 2022 10:55 PM IST
Chintan Girish Modi
Interview: Andre Aciman, author, Call Me by Your Name - ‘The personal doesn’t have to be autobiographical’
On writing as an exploration of identity, anti-Semitism, and the corona virus as an excuse, among other things
Published on May 20, 2022 10:09 PM IST
Chintan Girish Modi
Interview: Balaji Vittal, author, Pure Evil; The Bad Men of Bollywood – “Film villains turned out to be exceptionally nice!”
Pure Evil: The Bad Men of Bollywood is your fourth book about Hindi films
Published on May 13, 2022 09:19 PM IST
Chintan Girish Modi
Essay: Thich Nhat Hanh on love and sex
Revisiting the wisdom in the books and reflections of the Vietnamese monk who died in January this year
Updated on May 11, 2022 03:28 PM IST
Interview: Ishan Khosla, winner, Oxford Bookstore Book Cover Prize 2022 – “The cover plays a big role in attracting readers”
Ishan Khosla, who won the award for his cover forKintsugi by Anukrti Upadhyay, is interested in branding, typography, and craft projects that involve collaborating with rural communities
Updated on May 06, 2022 11:35 PM IST
Chintan Girish Modi
Interview: Vikram Sampath - ‘I have been at the receiving end of such calumny’
Vikram Sampath talks about his books, Savarkar; Echoes from a Forgotten Past (1883-1924) and Savarkar; A Contested Legacy (1924-1966), the allegations of plagiarism levelled against him, and about gate keeping in academia
Updated on May 02, 2022 07:07 PM IST
Chintan Girish Modi
Interview with author Mihir Vatsa: It’s humans who help other humans in the end
On riverwalking, writing about his home town, his connection to Delhi, and about wanting to show Ruskin Bond the Bokaro Falls
Updated on Apr 25, 2022 06:02 PM IST
Chintan Girish Modi
Review: Doolally Sahib and the Black Zamindar by MJ Akbar
MJ Akbar, who has written books on Nehru, Gandhi, Jinnah, Kashmir, jihad and Pakistan in the past, turns his attention to race relations between Indians and their British colonisers with his new volume
Updated on Apr 22, 2022 07:38 PM IST
Chintan Girish Modi
Saikat Majumdar, author, The Middle Finger – ‘Novels never feel completed’
The author talks about his new novel where the protagonist is caught between twin identities – brown in the US, savarna in India – that complicate her academic life and her loves and friendships
Updated on Apr 15, 2022 07:19 PM IST
Chintan Girish Modi
Essay: Food writing in India during the pandemic
Cookbooks that feature the cuisines of specific religious and ethnic communities, others that present healthy traditional recipes, and those that look at the science behind cooking have all provided much food for thought in the last two years. A look at some of the interesting ones
Updated on Apr 14, 2022 05:15 PM IST
Chintan Girish Modi
Report: The Kolkata Literary Meet 2022
With interesting sessions featuring a range of authors including Ghazala Wahab, Cyrus Broacha, Sandip Roy, Amish Tripathi and Javed Akhtar, and personalities like Simi Garewal, Jim Sarbh and Mallika Sarabhai, the Kolkata Literary Meet 2022 stood out especially for the rare intimacy it engendered between writers and readers
Updated on Apr 08, 2022 04:34 PM IST
Chintan Girish Modi
Interview: Nicolas Wild, author, Kabul Disco - ‘Being French and White gave me many privileges in Afghanistan’
A graphic novelist from France, best known for Kabul Disco Vols 1 and 2, was at the recent Kolkata Literary Meet. Here, he talks about his books, Afghanistan, and about representation
Published on Apr 02, 2022 06:43 AM IST
Chintan Girish Modi
JLF 2022: Like walking through a food court for the mind
At this year’s edition of the Jaipur Literature Festival, our intrepid correspondent often found entertainment when he was least expecting it
Updated on Mar 25, 2022 06:17 PM IST
Chintan Girish Modi
Interview: Rashmi Dhanwani, coauthor, The India Literature and Publishing Sector Study commissioned by British Council – ‘Resources for translators are scant.’
On the challenges of making literature written in Indian languages more widely available to international English-speaking readership
Published on Mar 12, 2022 01:03 AM IST
Chintan Girish Modi
Review: The Spiritual Path by Gregory David Roberts
Gregory David Roberts’s new book tells you what led him to trust his guru, and why he, a man committed to science, logic and reason, turned to faith, devotion and worship
Published on Mar 04, 2022 11:27 PM IST
Chintan Girish Modi
Interview: Pramod Kapoor, author, 1946 Royal Indian Navy Mutiny; Last War of Independence - ‘Histories are written by those who rule’
The story of an uprising by sailors of the Royal Indian Navy who took on the British but were let down by India’s most prominent nationalist leaders
Published on Feb 25, 2022 08:47 PM IST
Chintan Girish Modi
Interview: Ali Khan Mahmudabad, translator, The Break of Dawn – ‘This project was a very personal one for me’
On the work of historical fiction set in 1857, the year Indians first rose up in rebellion against British colonial rule and fought for freedom.
Published on Feb 11, 2022 05:59 PM IST
Chintan Girish Modi
Review: Encounters with Kiran; Fragments from a Relationship by Nayantara Sahgal
This collection of the email correspondence between Kiran Nagarkar and Nayantara Sahgal touches on their views on issues like demonetization, the rise of religious extremism, violence against minorities, threats to freedom of speech, and protests led by artists and intellectuals, and the Me Too movement
Published on Jan 28, 2022 03:35 PM IST
Chintan Girish Modi