Books for the week

The Godfather from Kathmandu

By John Burdett

Rs 520

Sonchai--John Burdett’s inimitable Royal Thai Police detective--is summoned to the most shocking and intriguing crime scene of his career. Solving the murder could mean a promotion, but Sonchai, reeling from a personal tragedy, is more interested in Tietsin, an exiled Tibetan lama based in Kathmandu. There are, however, obstacles in Sonchai’s path to nirvana.

If Sonchai truly wants to be an initiate into Tietsin’s “apocalyptic Buddhism,” he has to pull off a deal that will bring Police Colonel Vikorn and Zinna. Further complicating the challenge is Tara: a Tantric practitioner who captivates Sonchai with her remarkable otherworldly techniques. Here is Sonchai put to the extreme test--as a cop, as a Buddhist, as an impossibly earthbound man--in Burdett’s most wildly inventive and wickedly entertaining novel yet.

Nepal: Strategy for Survival

By Leo E. Rose

Rs 675

The most formidable problem of Nepalese foreign policy has long been how to preserve national independence in the face of threats from abroad. Hence the interest of this book, which traces Nepalese foreign policy during the past two centuries, with particular reference to the influences exerted on this policy by China, Great Britain, Russia, and India.

The book merits attention for another reason as well. Social scientists have usually perceived contemporary international relations in terms of the major powers; such attention as they have directed toward the roles of the smaller polities in world politics has generally been confined to collective units such as the ‘third world’.

Accordingly, considerable interest attaches to the present study of the processes with which a small state in a precarious geographical situation confronts and confounds the intrusionist and directive policies of major powers.

Varieties of Activist Experience: Civil Society in South Asia

Edited by David N. Gellner

Rs 1,200

This book examines in rich detail the lives, struggles and strategies of South Asian activists seeking to advance various political, social and environmental causes.

Through a series of case studies from Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka on activists’ efforts, it elucidates how they mediate between different spheres that are often (and sometimes legally) kept apart-the political and the legal, the economic and the political, the local and the international.

The uniqueness of this book lies in its treatment of ‘civil society’ as a process brought into being by the actions of specific individuals whose struggles and experiences can profitably be examined for understanding everyday politics.