Saturday, 3 August 2013

Talking books in an industrial Coimbatore

COIMBATORE: Perceptions often hide more than they reveal about a place. Take the case of our city. The dominant image of Coimbatore is that of an industrial town with a grey skyline spotted with chimneys and all.          Yes, textiles, small and big machines run the wheels of the city's economy, but there is much more to the city than just machines except that those activities rarely grab the headlines.  ...

Memories haunt in Shyam Selvadurai's 'The Hungry Ghosts'

Past and present collide in Giller Prize-winner's new novel       Regardless of how hard one tries, it is impossible to shed the past. This is a realization that Shivan Rassiah, the protagonist of Shyam Selvadurai's latest novel, The Hungry Ghosts, must grapple with. As the novel opens, Shivan — who emigrated from war-torn Sri Lanka to Canada as a young man — is preparing to travel back to the country of his birth to bring his...