There’s something uplifting about this jewel-like little book. It’s brightly coloured and glossy, the author’s name is striking, it’s printed in a nice large font, it feels like it belongs in your hands. But the best thing on the cover is the title.
Nose Uncle is the brother of Nisha and Ram’s father. The children are spending a vacation with him in his eccentric and book-stacked home in the middle of a mango grove near the sea south of Chennai. His name comes from his nose, a magnificent organ that helps him in his dual pursuits: for Nose Uncle is a professional archaeologist and amateur detective. His nose helps him sniff out both kinds of clues.
From archaeology to intrigue to mortal danger to triumph, the plot moves as fast as Nose Uncle deduces and the children are eager to help. Too fast, perhaps. But the rush is soothed by the familiarity of the environment, even though the picture is slightly warped — Jaspar Utley is, after all, a British expat. The Indian edition could have done with a few Tamil words in it to limit the English quotient.
All the same, it’s marvellous to see archaeology and adventure in close proximity in a book for pre-teens. I’m looking forward to Nose Uncle’s next book.
NOSE UNCLE
Author: Jaspar Utley
Publisher: Puffin/ Penguin
Pages: vi + 202
Price: Rs 200
Merging waters, cultures
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The writer of London: The Biography adds another chapter to his prodigious output with Thames. This, in some ways, completes the picture Peter Ackroyd set out to create of the city of his birth and continuous fascination. If London was a meticulous study of land, Thames is its twin, a groundbreaking portrait of the waters that run beneath.
Much shorter than the other great rivers of the world, the Thames, at just over 250 miles from source to sea, is nevertheless one of the most written about and painted rivers in the world. Over a period of six months, Ackroyd reserved his weekends to walk by the river, starting from its source, near Cirencester in Gloucestershire, right up to the estuary, where the river meets the waters of the North Sea.
The most fascinating thing about the Thames, in Ackroyd’s view, is the varied nature of civilisation that has existed on its shores for thousands of years. Whether it is the quietude of the river in the country — memorialised in the pastoral idyll of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows — or the filth-ridden repository of Victorian London’s dark secrets — as brought out by Dickens — the Thames is the confluence of not just tributaries, but also diverse cultures.
THAMES—THE BIOGRAPHY
Author: Peter Ackroyd
Publisher: Nan A Talese
Pages: 512
Price: $ 40
Tripping tales
This is really a journey through a part of India that is seldom visited. The expansive landscape of Madhya Pradesh which often passes by in a blur as it happens to be — as its name suggests — in between north and south India.
The book is a simple travelogue from the author’s time spent in the region.
Vikramajit Ram’s earlier work is Elephant Kingdom: Sculptures From Indian Architecture.
Travel for that book would have invariably led to Madhya Pradesh, where you find everything from 9,000-year-old Stone Age paintings at Bhimbetka to the stunning fortress towns of Bundelkhand, built as late as the 1700s.
This is an easy, quick read as there is nothing that goes beyond the visual and simple conversational detail. There are also some parts where the traveller peeps into Uttar Pradesh — but such boundaries are a product of modern geographical lines. Thrown in are little tales and folklores to keep one engaged. One to look out for is the tale about finding India’s only white tiger in the wild.
DREAMING VISHNUS—A JOURNEY THROUGH CENTRAL INDIA
Author: Vikramajit Ram
Publisher: Penguin
Pages: 285
Price: Rs 350
