Byline
by M J Akbar

(ISBN:81-8028-003-9 ~ Pub Year: 2003 ~ Pages:404 ~ Binding: Hardcover ~ Publisher: Chronicle Books)

Indiaclub.com Non-Fiction Store

Byline anthologizes MJ Akbar’s finest writing over the last decade, bringing together essays that reflect the author’s versatility and range. The book is divided into six seamless sections, each with its own identity, woven together by MJ Akbar’s delectably informal prose.

Travel is the first section in which the author shares his passion for history and the occasional fable, the obscure detail, the glorious and the ludicrous. This is followed by Politics and History in which the reader is provided a view of some events and people in the recent past with all the quirks and whimsy that characterize the great as well as the mundane. Cricket Chirping deals with the game that MJ Akbar loves to watch but only obliquely. How else could a piece on the 2001 Indian Cricket tour of South Africa close with a reference to Gandhi’s concern with sexual abstinence? As the author says in an essay in the next section Sidelines (those delightfully off centre pieces): That train of thought has moved…But that is the way with trains. They must travel.

Memories is the most personal and the most autobiographical part of the entire selection, mixing regret, nostalgia and deeply felt sorrow for the friends and times gone forever.

The book ends with a short section entitled On a Personal Note in which James Bond must live to die another day, The Telegraph has to learn to live beyond the age of 20 and Dev Anand remains forever young.

COMMENT

Journalism is the only profession that permits you to travel without making you a traveling salesman. You become, in a way, a traveling purchaser…Words are the currency of this transaction: you buy images with words, and then you pass them on with words as well.
-MJ Akbar


Visit our Indiaclub.com Non-Fiction Store