Kaiser Haq

This is no doubt one of the most enjoyable stories in Anderson's collection – brief, uncomplicated, hilarious. It's only recently that I began to have doubts about its purported significance. Let us begin by reminding ourselves of the salient features of the tale.

Every year around this time, I get a phone call from someone or the other of the loose fraternity of Sector 7 veterans to remind me that May 6 is Lieutenant Colonel Quazi Nooruzzaman's death anniversary; he passed away in 2011.

As Bird flocks take wing at the rattle of sten guns

Let us say you dream of a woman,

The Partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 has become indissolubly linked to horrific, haunting images of armed gangs or mobs attacking helpless groups of men, women and children trying to cross a border that had just been scratched on the map. Literature registers the shock in works that make harrowing reading.

been buggering around this goddamn city

“… they shall inherit the earth.”

No, I've never been to Santa Fe.

The azan goes

Were I a painter

We celebrate Michael Madhusudan Dutt's birthday on 25 January, but we cannot be certain that this is absolutely accurate, just as we

Bernard Bergonzi, poet, literary critic and novelist, died on 20 September at the age of 87. He was born in the Southeast London suburb

It's over half a century since France – its thinkers, writers, artists, film-makers – became an object of fascination with

The amount of poetry on the net is simply staggering. All the great and popular poems we have – or ought to have – read are a mouse click away.