Dorit Rabinyan
Dorit Rabinyan published her first novel, Persian Brides, in 1995 at the age of 21. The book was translated into 15 languages, including English and earned her wide critical acclaim, apart from fetching her the Jewish Quarterly Wingate Literary Award in 1999. Laced by a touch of the surreal and spiced up with risque humour, the novel is set in a fictional village in Persia at the turn of century.
‘Our Weddings’, her second novel, is definitely more contemporary and filled with unique women characters. While the plot is centered around family life like in her debut novel, the narrative focuses more on bringing out the frustrations and conflicts of the women in a culture that is yet to cope with the idea of freedom. As Solly and Iran Azizyan raise their family of seven children with much love, the young women and the mother are also confronted by the ghosts of the past. There is also a story within a story where Matti, the family’s youngest daughter, is seen keeping up a constant dialogue with her dead twin.
Roderick Matthews
The most interesting fact about ‘Jinnah vs. Gandhi’ by Roderick Matthews is that it strips down the aura of sanctity around two of the most important personalities of the last century. The book presents them in an uncomplicated way, more as two intellectuals who had two entirely different perspectives about the world and who were destined to cross each other’s path. He calls the extended confrontation between Mohammed Ali Jinnah and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi as “one of the great dramas of the twentieth century”. Matthews takes into consideration the culture of the times while examining the differences between the two leaders. He analyses the episode as “commonplace outing in polite society” and says it would be manipulative to bring in the larger context of power politics and the destiny of two nations as the deciding factors of the equation. Mathews has also written book s like ‘Flaws in the Jewel - Challenging the Myths of British India Book Description’ which re-examines British rule in India
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