Inside Jacket

The Independent has Booker Prize-winner Aravind Adiga writing about Mumbai. Adiga has a new novel coming out, Last Man in Tower.

I first saw the city in 1985 with my mother. We were the guests of my grand-uncle Suresh, a lawyer who lived in Bandra. Many in my family had migrated from Mangalore to practise law in Bangalore or Madras. Suresh, a feisty, affectionate, beak-nosed man, was the only one who had chosen Mumbai – a far-away, Hindi-speaking place where south Indians were reportedly attacked by the right-wing movement Shiv Sena. He drove us up to see the Queen’s Necklace seafront; I had paani puris near the Gateway of India, and puked them into the ocean. And though 18 years passed before I came back, Mumbai always found ingenious ways to remind me of its existence.

My colleague Beth offers this video review of The Princess Bride by William Goldman. Apparently, a million copies of this book have been sold. In 1941 a young boy lies bedridden from pneumonia. His perpetually disheveled a father, an immigrant with broken English, shuffles into his bedroom carrying a book. The boy wants to know if it has any sports. His father says, “Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad men. Good men. Beautifulest ladies. Snakes. Spiders. Beasts of all natures and descriptions. Pain. Death. Brave men. Coward men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passions. Miracles.”

If you are a fan of Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger or Wally Lamb’s I Know This Much is True, then you might enjoy our latest selection of reading recommendations relating to twins.

It was actually surprisingly easy to find twin-themed fiction – Pat Conroy, Ken Follett, Arundhati Roy, V.C. Andrews and Madeleine L’Engle all appear on our list. Browsing through these books, you will see twins often get a bad rap and I’ve already had an email from a twin telling me that we missed off Edward Carey’s Alva & Irva or Linda Gillard’s A Lifetime Burning.

Here’s my review of At Work by photographer Annie Leibovitz. It’s half memoir, half photography book. She describes her career from a young snapper on Rolling Stone magazine to become one of the world’s most prestigious photographers. Lots of great photos of Hunter S. Thompson, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Demi Moore, Whoopi Goldberg, the Blues Brothers, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mikhail Baryshnikov, William S. Burroughs, Kate Moss and Queen Elizabeth II.

Here’s me talking about Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. I read this book earlier this year and thoroughly enjoyed learning about Louie Zamperini – the American middle distance runner who fought in World War II and endured the most horrifying experiences after being shot down and captured by the Japanese.