Prema Joshi is a “prematurely aged” instructor of English literature at a girls’ college, “a tired woman going home from work with nothing to look forward to, nothing to smile about,” who sees a way out of her malaise when she unexpectedly gets a chance to translate into English a set of short stories written in one of India’s many regional languages. The focus here is the hierarchy that separates writer and translator, with the latter clearly in an inferior position and frustrated by it, and what happens when a translator violates that order. But Ms. Desai also uses the novella for satiric purposes, perhaps to exact vengeance on some literary nationalists in India; at one point Prema and her publisher attend a conference where they are hectored by “a pudgy man in a sweat-stained suit,” who imperiously demands to know, “What made you decide to translate these stories into a colonial language that was responsible for destroying the original language?” ... "Translator Transla...
As pitches go it can't have been an easy one: "So our new show, House of Lies, is about a bunch of cut-throat management consultants and the way in which they con corporate clients out of money each week. As the strapline has it: Meet the One Per Cent sticking it to the One Per Cent. Yes, that's right, it's a half-hour comedy about wealthy slicksters screening right in the middle of one of the biggest economic depressions America has experienced. Good joke, huh?" The answer is er, no, not really. House of Lies, which will air on Sky Atlantic later this year, has many things going for it: an outstanding cast, including the charismatic Don Cheadle as the company's fast-talking boss, Marty Kaan, a devious expert at the art of the soft-sell; some genuinely funny one-liners; slick cinematography and a willingness to take risks with the format (Marty often breaks the fourth wall to explain to the television audience what certain terminology means, or how his ...
A crisis reconnects four young firebrands from college who have grown apart as adults, in a story dense with sensitive scrutiny. Straddling India and the United States, this tale of friends reunited in disparate maturity is heavy on internal reflection, lighter on events. The highpoint of Armaiti, Nishta, Laleh and Kavita’s student years in late-1970s’ Bombay was their involvement in political activity, in particular a demonstration that saw two of them arrested. Now, three decades later, Nishta, renamed Zoha, has spent years in an oppressive marriage to Iqbal, a Muslim who has grown very devout. Impulsive Laleh is comfortably settled with her influential husband Adish and children; architect Kavita has finally come to terms with her lesbianism; and, in America, Armaiti has just been diagnosed with an incurable brain tumor, a catastrophe that pulls the four together again at Armaiti’s request. Laleh and Kavita are free to leave India immediately but Nishta has to be found, persuaded...
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