It seems like an Alistair Maclean novel - an enemy general is kidnapped from near his headquarters, spirited through nearly two dozen checkpoints, kept hidden from search for nearly two weeks and is successfully taken out of the territory. But it really happened in World War II, and two junior, amateur British officers - who had conceived the pl...
Monotheism, which rose in the Middle East in the first century after Christ, was a "decisive moral and ethical" revolution that transformed the world and was almost an inevitable stage in human history. But, it did not represent a break with the classical era, say experts....
There are motels in America's south where you are likely to be greeted not with "How are you?" but "Kem Cho" or "Kya Haal hai?" and the owner is likely to be a Mr. Patel, says acclaimed American travel writer Paul Theroux while talking about his new work which takes the inveterate globetrotter to one part of the world he has so far not visit...
In mid-1990s, when renowned artist M.F. Husain became infatuated by Bollywood diva Madhuri Dixit, he decided to watch the blockbuster 'Hum Aapke Hain Koun' movie 50 times and then create some paintings on the actress....
Celebrated author Ruskin Bond Friday said children find their own ways to discover books and that he was not "too worried" about curbs on freedom of expression....
Indian authors have failed to create their own set of popular sleuths like Sherlock Holmes despite filmmaker Satyajit Ray giving us the iconic Bengali sleuth Feluda way back in 1965, said the bestselling thriller writer Ashwin Sanghi, who feels crime writing requires discipline and persistence to narrate a gripping tale....
She achieved notoriety as the French queen who suggested her starving subjects should eat cake if they had no bread. While this story is unlikely to be true, Marie Antoinette was dragged in a raging scandal - four years before the French Revolution - that irreparably tarnished the French royalty's image, earned them the label of tyrants and w...
Ruskin Bonds' stories on sports, a lover's desperate attempt to woo his lady love's "terror of a father", along with tales from Goa - the IANS bookshelf offers all this and more this weekend. Take a look....
Pakistan is not on the brink, and recent developments have led it to change its policy towards its western neighbour Afghanistan and the same may be possible on its eastern side provided India enters into a dialogue, experts say....
They were among the best known Urdu poets of their day, and though their life trajectories unfolded differently, both cultural activist Salima Hashmi's father Faiz Ahmed Faiz and actress Shabana Azmi's father Kaifi Azmi had some important things in common - belief in poetry as an instrument of social change, hope for the future an...
