
'A Free Man' by Aman Sethi is smallish and compact, much like its protagonist Mohammed Ashraf. The book comes encased in an elegant white dust jacket that to me cried out to be picked up. And once I turned a few pages, I found I couldn't put it down easily, for 'A Free Man' is big, both on form and substance, and is easily among 2011's more rewarding reads. Mohammed...

08:11 PM, Dec 22, 2011

New Delhi: Jamil Ahmad's The Wandering Falcon has won the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2011. As the name suggests, the winner is always a first-time author, and what better start to a literary career than to win an award with your first book? Ahmad, a 78-year-old retired civil servant completed his manuscript of interconnected stories set on the border of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran back in 1974. But it...

06:29 PM, Nov 28, 2011

New Delhi: Amidst all the big ticket literary prizes on the Indian landscape, the one that still has the most hearts racing is the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize. After all, as the name suggests, the winner is always a first-time author, and what better start to a literary career than to win an award with your first book? The prize, set up in memory of the talented writer and...

06:40 PM, Sep 09, 2011