The beauty of the past lies in finding the truth that is buried deep in some unknown corners of the memory. Reclaiming it is a tedious process, but this is what Urdu critic and novelist Shamsur Rahman Faruqi has done in the remarkable novel "The Mirror of Beauty" that recreates the era of the late 19th century, with Wazir Khanam as the protagonist....
India and Pakistan must hold talks at all costs, said Pakistan's former foreign minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri whose forthcoming book reveals how tantalisingly close the two countries came to a solution to the Kashmir issue in 2007....
Questions like whether India has a culture of "absolute freedom of speech" or is there a "thin line" that shouldn't be crossed while writing were debated and discussed here Wednesday at the Jaipur Literature Festival....
Nearly a century of tragedy and instability seen in the Middle East could have been avoided or at least mitigated if the promises made to the leaders of the Arab Revolt during World War I had been honoured instead of dividing the region into "artificial nations", said a biographer of Lawrence of Arabia....
China's Dowager Empress Cixi has been long reviled as a despotic ruler who rose to power by harem intrigue, but it was she who transformed a medieval country into a modern nation, gave rights to citizens especially women and opened and facilitated China's engagement with the world for its own benefit, says a Chinese author....
