03Books! Books! Books! There is no end to knowledge. All youneed to do is flip through the pages to get that extra dose ofinfotainment. So simply read on...

■ DEADLY BITES,ANIMAL PLANET,3.00 PM: Alongthe Katuma Riv-er, during thedry season, croc-odiles guard

their nests. When their young hatch,they take them into their mouthsand carry them to the water.

■ STEVE AUSTIN'S BROKEN SKULLCHALLENGE, DISCOVERY CHANNEL,5.00 PM: Former wrestling super-

1453: France defeated England at Castillon,France, which ended the 100 Years' War.

1489: Nizam Shah was crowned Sultan of Delhi.

1815: Napoleon Bonaparte surrendered tothe British at Rochefort.

1917: The British royal family adopt-ed the Windsor name.

1918: Nicholas II, last Tsar ofRussia (1894-1917), executed at 50.

1955: Disneyland opened in Anaheim,CA.

1975: An Apollo spaceship docked with a Soyuz

spacecraft in orbit. It was the first link upbetween the US and Soviet Union.

1996: Madras came to be known as Chennai.

2015: Scientists solved mystery of sleep-ing sickness in two villages in northern

Kazakhstan - uranium mining hadcaused increase in carbon monox-ide.

2016: 17 works by Swiss architectLe Corbusier were included in UNESCO

World Heritage sites list as "anOutstanding Contribution to the Modern

Movement".

star Steve Austin invites eight ath-letes to his ranch each week to com-pete in head-to-head battles untilonly one is left.

■ DEADLY SUMMER, NAT GEO WILD,7.00 PM: Experts explore the hostileAtacama desert where wildlife hasadapted to a life without water.

■ WILDLIFE: SECRETS OF WILD INDIA,NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CHANNEL, 8.00PM: The filmmaker explores the di-verse topography of India and thewide spectrum of wild species thatinhabit these distinct environmentsand landscapes.

■ IRON MAN 2, HBO, 2.59 PM: TonyStark is under pressure from var-ious sources, including the gov-ernment, to share his technologywith the world. He must find a wayto fight them while also tacklinghis other enemies.

■ GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, &FLIX,4.00 PM: Peter escapes from theplanet Morag with a valuable orbthat Ronan the Accuser wants. Heeventually forms a group with un-

MOVIES ON TVTELEVISION

THISDAY THAT

YEAR

MUST DOJULY17, 2019

willing heroes to stop Ronan.

■ THE MASK, SONY PIX SD, 6.52 PM:Stanley, an easy-going bank em-ployee, becomes a crazy green-skinned being who can bend real-ity after wearing a wooden mask,inhabited by Loki, a Norse god.

1. Sara Shepard’s ‘Flawless’2. James Rollins’ ‘The Judas Strain’3. Thomas Harris’ ‘Hannibal Lecter’4. Dan Brown’s ‘Digital Fortress’5. William Peter Blatty’s ‘The Exorcist’6. Scott Cherney’s ‘Red Asphalt’7. Michael Barnett’s ‘Eden Fading’

ANSWERS

Which book has thisquote? 1. “The sweetest smiles hold thedarkest secrets.”2. “It ain’t always rocket science,sometimes a door is just a door.”3. “I’m giving serious thoughtinto eating your wife.”4. “It is said that in death, allthings become clear.” 5. “What looked like morning wasthe beginning of endless night.” 6. “It doesn’t cost anything topay attention.” 7. “When dancing with a pit bull,it’s always best to let him lead.”

BOOKS

INDIAN COOKBOOKSSCORE BIG AT THEGOURMAND AWARDS:Cookbooks fromIndia bagged severalprizes at the 24thedition of theGourmand World

Cookbook Awards, with author SonalVed’s ‘Tiffin: 500 Authentic Recipes’ win-ning in three categories. NanditaHaksar’s ‘The Flavours of Nationalism:Recipes for Love, Hate and Friendship’won in two categories – cookbook forpeace and food writing. KiranmayiBhushi’s ‘Farm to Fingers’ and ‘Culture &Politics of Food in Contemporary India’also won awards while HarperCollins wasnamed food book publisher of the year. PTI

THE BOOKSHITTING

THE NEWS

1

NOVELIST DAVIDBALDACCI GIFTS $1M TO MARK TWAINHOME: The historichome in Hartford(Connecticut, US),where Mark Twain andhis family once lived

has received a $ 1 million gift from best-selling novelist David Baldacci and hiswife. Baldacci, who has published 38books, has served on the board oftrustees of the Twain House since 2012.In an interview, Baldacci said that he is ahuge fan of Mark Twain and has readeverything he ever wrote. AP

2

Robert A Caro, the PulitzerPrize-winning author of ‘ThePower Broker’ and ‘The Years

of Lyndon Johnson,’ is known forhis meticulously researched andthoroughly reported biographies.

Which is why Caro’s latest book,‘Working: Researching, Interview-ing, Writing’, is so particularly fas-cinating. In ‘Working,’ for the firsttime ever, Caro details the fasci-nating process behind hiswork.

The bookis tremen-dously use-ful if you areinterested in theprocess of research-ing and writing non-

fiction. There is one particularlyuseful piece of advice for anyone.In the chapter titled ‘Tricks of theTrade’ Caro writes, “Interviews: si-lence is the weapon, silence and peo-ple’s need to fill it – as long as theperson is not you, the interviewer.”Caro likens his own interviewingprocess to those of fictional inter-viewers like Inspector Maigret andGeorge Smiley, at least in one dis-

tinct way: Allthree ‘have little

devices they use tokeep themselves from

talking.’ In the case ofMaigret, Carosays, he cleans hispipe. And in thecase of Smiley, he

cleans his glasses. Caro does some-thing far more pedestrian: He writesreminders for himself to ‘shut up’.

Whether you are interviewinga subject or interviewing a job can-didate, the same logic applies: Shutup! How that person responds to si-lence could speak volumes. BI

SHUT UP!A Pulitzer prize winning biographer’s interviewtip: Stay quiet and let the interviewee talk

AUTHORS OF INDIA

Mrigendra Raj

This 12-year-old child prodigy fromUttar Pradesh has already written135 books on diverse genres, includ-

ing religion and biographies of famouspersonalities.

Raj began writing at the age of six, hisfirst being a compilation of poems. Now hewrites under the pseudonym ‘Aaaj KaAbhimanyu’ and has four world records tohis credit. IANS

By landing on the Moon in 1969, NeilArmstrong and Buzz Aldrin ar-rived at a place which, up untilthat point, had been the stuff offantasy. But even after they trans-

formed fantasy into fact, the moon continuesto capture the imagination of storytellers,just as it has for centuries. Literature, nov-

els, cinema... from time im-memorial, the moon has beenthe object of innumerableimaginary expeditions.

Celestial dreams As far back as the second cen-tury BC, the satirist Lucian ofSamosata, in ‘True Stories’,imagined a voyage to themoon that saw the author andhis fellow travellers find the

King of the Moon caught up in a war withthe King of the Sun.

In the 17th century, French writer Cyra-no de Bergerac wrote a tale titled ‘The OtherWorld: Comical History of the States and Em-pires of the Moon’.

Baron Munchausen, thefictional nobleman created byGerman writer Rudolf ErichRaspe, travelled to the moonin a flying boat in 1785 fanta-sy series, ‘The Surprising Ad-ventures of Baron Mun-chausen’. And the 17th-centu-ry astronomer Johannes Ke-pler imagined demons on themoon in his story titled ‘TheDream’.

Reaching for the moon In more modern times, science fiction pio-neer H G Wells imagined a sophisticated raceof insect-like creatures living below the satel-lite’s surface in ‘The First Men on the Moon’.Wells’s adventurers reached the moon using

a substance that negated theforces of gravity.

Jules Verne, in his 1865tale ‘From the Earth theMoon’, was a little less fanci-ful, shooting his travellersacross space in a giant cannon.A century or so later, Arm-strong, travelling back fromthe moon, referred to Verne’stale in one of his televisionbroadcasts. More recently still,one of Herge’s 1950s ‘Tintin’

adventures featured a visit to the moon — andeven Snowy, his loyal dog, got a spacesuit.

Verne-esque talesCinema versions of the moonhave been equally fanciful. InGeorge Melies’ extraordinary1902 work ‘A Trip to the Moon’,the travellers find giant mush-rooms and excitable natives.He follows Verne with a can-non-propelled space capsule –and a splashdown at sea ontheir return. As technology

brought the possibility of a lunar flight clos-er, that seemed to dampen the market for themore fanciful lunar tales.

Lunar livingClassic sci-fi writer RobertHeinlein still used the moon asthe setting for his 1966 novel‘The Moon Is a Harsh Mis-tress’. By this time, humans in-habit it, and Heinlein’s tale isabout the revolt of the lunarcolony against Earth’s rule.

And just a year before thereal moon landings, StanleyKubrick’s epic 1968 film ‘2001:A Space Odyssey’ has astro-nauts at an outpost on the moon finding a mys-terious obelisk there. Here, as in Arthur CClarke’s ‘Earthlight’, the moon has become lit-tle more than the stage for something far more

important. Perhaps what the1969 Apollo mission to theMoon did was not so much endthe telling of tales about thesatellite as change the kind ofstories being told. After theApollo landings, the moon be-came a focus for pop culture.

In pop cultureThe heroes of the achinglykitsch 1970s science fiction tel-

evision series ‘Space 1999’ are based on the moon– and have to cope with a nuclear accident thatknocks it out of orbit and sends them hurtlinginto space. The moon also featured in any num-ber of comic-book adventures and cartoon se-ries from the 1970s onwards.David Bowie released hisKubrick-inspired classic 1969single ‘Space Oddity’ the samemonth as the moon landings. Ageneration later, in the 2013 ver-sion, Canadian astronaut ChrisHadfield played his cover ver-sion of the song from the In-ternational Space Station. AFP

How the moon hasinspired storytellersHere’s how the celestial body has been the subject of artistic intrigue

1This science fiction novel setin late 2080s takes place onArtemis, the firstcity on the Moon.

It follows the life ofporter and smugglerJasmine as she getscaught up in a con-spiracy for control of the city.

ARTEMISby ANDY WEIR (2017)

2After NASA picks up a trans-mission from the moon, itchooses threeteenagers to go

to a top-secret moonbase with a team ofastronauts. Turns outthere is much more thanmeets the eye!

172 HOURS ON THE MOONby JOHAN HARSTAD

3Fifteen-year-old Aurora hasgrand plansfor life. Butthey go kaput

when her parentsannounce that theyare moving to themoon for an experiment.

THIS PLACE HAS NOATMOSPHERE

by PAULA DANZIGER

R E A D M O R E : M O O N I N F I C T I O NPh

oto:

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Award-winning Indi-an author Jeet Thay-il will be part of afive-member judging

panel for the 2020 Interna-tional Booker Prize. The£50,000 prize, which runs

alongside the main Book-er Prize for works of fic-tion in the English lan-

guage, is split equallybetween author and

translator. Thayil, the

author of ‘Nar-copolis’ and

winner of the Sahitya AkademiAward, will join his fellow judgesto look for the best works of trans-lated fiction from entries publishedin the UK and Ireland between May2019 and April 2020.

The Kerala-born author beganwriting fiction in 2006 after havingworked as a journalist for 23 years.

His debut novel ‘Narcopolis’ wasshortlisted for the 2012 Man Book-er Prize. His poetry collections in-clude ‘These Errors Are Correct’,which won the Sahitya AkademiAward, and ‘English’, winner of aNew York Foundation for the Arts

award. Thayil will be joined on the In-

ternational Booker Prize judgingpanel by comparative literature andtranslation specialist Lucie Cam-pos, Man Booker International win-ning translator and writer JenniferCroft, and writer Valeria Luiselli.PTI

Jeet Thayil on InternationalBooker Prize judging panel

The 2019 InternationalBooker Prize was won byOmani author Jokha Alharthifor ‘Celestial Bodies’

photo: Facebook

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