Just saw Vikram Chandra speak. Despite the fact that he used Microsoft Project (yes you read that correctly) to manage the story-line in his most recent book, I came away impressed.

While fiction, his most recent mystery book allows you experience Mumbai through the eyes of characters involved in the underworld, dance clubs, the police, politics, and bollywood.. It also presents the characters in a very unbiased way -- and it makes you realize that almost no one (even one of the worst gangsters in Bombay) is all evil.

Quoted: Co-presented with the SEATTLE ASIAN ART MUSEUM and the SOUTH ASIA CENTER at the UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON. Probably no new literary work in the English-speaking world is being read, reviewed, and discussed more than Vikram Chandra's breathtakingly wide-ranging new novel, Sacred Games (HarperCollins).

Recommended by a friend. Looks really good.

Quoted: "Shantaram is a novel of the first order, a work of extraordinary art, a thing of exceptional beauty. If someone asked me what the book was about, I would have to say everything, every thing in the world. Gregory David Roberts does for Bombay what Lawrence Durrell did for Alexandria, what Melville did for the South Seas, and what Thoreau did for Walden Pond: He makes it an eternal player in the literature of the world."

Cool! Good reviews, too!

Quoted: "Microwave Indian cooking is much the same as stove-top Indian cooking, only faster, neater, and healthier," the author argues, showing us how the microwave can conjure up some snack foods--puppadum, or toasted lentil wafers--and classics such as Bombay sweetish-soursic garlic lentils, scallops with cucumber in coconut sauce, tomato basmati pilaf and pistachio fudge, all of which can, without undue strain, become habit-forming.

I clicked on my tag for jhumpa lahiri and found this book recommended by someone in my friends list. awesome!

my sister is reading this as the first required reading in south asian studies. i'll write more once she is done...right now, she says it's "very dense".

Using this in my Hindi class. Don't know how it will be.

Quoted: Amazon.com: Books: Teach Yourself Hindi: Complete Audio Cd Program (Teach Yourself Language Complete Courses) by Rupert Snell,Simon Weightman