Criss-crossing the World

From the New York review of books, Dalrymple tries to uncover the truth about the Islamic world. Incidentally, if you haven't read it, go and also read Dalrymple's review of two books about the murder of Daniel Pearl and the exchange with Bernard-Henri Levy that followed. Putu has read the first of the two books that Dalrymple reviews and found it just as "unbearably moving". Pearl was really the first Westerner to be beheaded in the way that so many have been since in Iraq and his wife's attempts to stop the video of his death from proliferating on the internet and so on, are both shocking (in terms of how voyeuristic people can be) and provide an insight into why terrorists do what they do.

Travelling a little eastwards, one of Putu's favourite men, Amartya Sen, with whom incidentally Putu shares a birthday, writes about India and China, and the intellectual links the two countries share. Inclined more for the academic, but given it's Amartya-da after all, Putu would certainly recommend it.