OFF THE SHELF
Noon: A Novel
Author: Aatish Taseer | Pages: 256 | Price: Rs. 995 | Genre: Fiction
Synopsis: Rehan Tabassum has grown up in a world of privilege in Delhi. His mother is a successful lawyer and his new wife a wealthy industrialist, the embodiment of all that dazzles about the New India. But there is a marked absence in Rehan’s life: his father, Sahil Tabassum, telecommunications mogul, who remains a powerful shadow across the border in Pakistan. Noon follows Rehan’s attempts to negotiate this loss, as he travels, both emotionally and physically, through sudden wealth and hidden violence, towards the heart of his father’s world. Written with insight and with passion, this extraordinarily atmospheric novel confronts the nature of power in two changing landscapes. It is the deeply moving, often surprising story of a man who comes of age as his country does, in an atmosphere of political quicksand and moral danger.
Loyalty to Your Soul: The Heart of Spiritual Psychology Author: H. Ronald Hulnick | Pages: 264 | Price: Rs. 1,395 | Genre: Mind, body and soul
Synopsis: Loyalty to Your Soul establishes Spiritual Psychology as a paradigm-altering frontier. It initiates a radical shift at the core of contemporary psychological thought by unveiling a technology for using everyday life experiences as rungs on the ladder of spiritual evolution. This book is uniquely suited for anyone seeking to discover and cross the bridge that spans the waters between life referenced in material reality and life lived within the context of spiritual reality. Loyalty to Your Soul shows you how to first gain access to, and then gradually learn to live from, that sacred place inherent within everyone, referred to by the authors as the Authentic Self a place where emotional suffering ceases and profound peace and love are found.
The Hitler I Knew: Memoirs of the Third Reich’s Press Chief Author: Otto Dietrich | Pages: 256 | Price: Rs. 3,550 | Genre: Memoirs
Synopsis: When Otto Dietrich was invited in 1933 to become Adolf Hitler’s press chief, he accepted with the simple uncritical conviction that Adolf Hitler was a great man, dedicated to promoting peace and welfare for the German people. At the end of the war, imprisoned and disillusioned, Otto Dietrich sat down to write what he had seen and heard in twelve years of the closest association with Hitler, requesting that it be published after his death. Dietrich’s role placed him in a privileged position. He was hired by Hitler in 1933, was his confidant until 1945, and he worked—and clashed—with Joseph Goebbels. His direct, personal experience of life at the heart of the Reich makes for compelling reading. .
armour company. In his late forties, he is now a chiropractor. In almost mesmerising detail, Wasdin describes what it is to train to be a member of Seal Team Six (and a specialist sniper to boot) and then to fight, kill and be wounded while putting that training into practice and operating alongside the CIA. To the dismay of the Pentagon, the Obama administration has released so much detail about the bin Laden operation that it feels that there is little more to know. Born to a girl of 16, Wasdin was brought up in the school of hard knocks. Brutally beaten by his stepfather and starved of affection, he developed a mental and physical toughness and a single-minded determination to prevail that made him ideal raw material for the Seals. His account of how he qualified as a Seal (based on the premise of “train the best, discard the rest”), culminating in the notori-
ous “Hell Week”, is skilfully interspersed with episodes of Seal lore, history and philosophy. Seals, Wasdin explains, are “forever the optimists, even when we’re outnumbered and outgunned, we still tend to think we have a chance to make it out alive – and be home in time for dinner”. They strive to “steer the rudders of their own destinies” and believe “it’s better to burn out than fade away – and with our last breaths we’ll take as many of the enemy with us as possible”. But it is Wasdin’s account of events in Somalia that primarily marks this book out as an important addition to any military library. Along with comrades identified only as Casanova, Little Big Man and Sourpuss, Wasdin – codenamed Sierra Three – was one of four Seal Team Six members who fought in Mogadishu. With his .300 Winchester Magnum rifle, Wasdin hits a militiaman aiming an RPG at an American helicopter just beneath his nose, killing him instantly. A homing beacon placed
by the CIA inside an ivory-handled cane identifies a Somali warlord who is shot in the leg and captured. In an act of surprising tenderness, Wasdin and Casanova jeopardise their cover to storm a house so that a Somali boy, suffering from gangrene resulting from terrible leg injuries caused by a landmine, can be treated. Wasdin’s sense of almost supernatural immortality – he was the only one out of 100 in training to pass all tests – is finally punctured when he fires at “a booger-eater” (his chosen term of disdain) who raises an AK-47 and misses. He is shot in the right shin, shattering his lower leg. Seal Team Six is not for the faint-hearted or the politically correct. But it is a compelling portrayal of a remarkable breed of men capable of things that few of us can imagine – and most would prefer not to think about.
HHH August 14, 2011 SuNday Plus 59