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BOOKISH (4#) -

These are some squibs about books and book-related items that have caught my eye while surfing the Net this weekend:

# This must be the big breakout year for the writers of India. Spotlight on Indian writers at the Paris book fair. It runs for five days from March 23 to 27. [IT] and [NDTV]

# Last Days in Babylon by Marina Benjamin: She's a young Iraqi Jew who grew up in England and first visited Iraq in 2004 to explore her identity and search for her roots. [IND] and [LT]

# The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid: A novel that takes place in Lahore, Pakistan, where a bearded local accosts an American stranger. "Witnessing, vicariously on a television screen in a Third-World hotel, the fall of the twin towers... the event that tears a massive hole in the fabric of the 21st century's first decade." I get the impression that the story is suffused with a kind of ambiguous quality. [IND] and [LT]

# The Dead Beat by Marilyn Johnson "seeks to deconstruct the obituary, to name its elements, to pinpoint its peculiar allure... Her book is a wacky, weird, rollicking read."

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