Archives: Press Reviews

The book fills an important gap in the history of Himalayan exploration… [it is] a breathless tale of heroic endurance and indomitable courage.

This is a comprehensive and dispassionate description of the life and times of Ram Vilas Paswan.

Ram Vilas Paswan was one of the most colourful of India’s political personalities. For over four decades he was an influential voice on behalf of social justice. Sobhana Nair has now produced a very racy account of the many twists and turns that had been the hallmark of Paswan’s career. Her narrative is not only of one man’s ups and downs but also of the

A definitive work on the life and career of Ram Vilas Paswan is essential to fully understand politics in Bihar as well as contemporary India. Sobhana Nair’s book addresses this gap. Her book is an engaging and careful biographical record that allows the reader enough space to assess Paswan’s legacy against crucial social and political contexts. Accessibly written, this book needs to be read widely.

This brilliantly researched and clinically written biography of Ram Vilas Paswan fills an important gap in future generations’ understanding of India’s coalition era: 1996–2014. You couldn’t form a government in New Delhi then without Paswan. Sobhana, a close watcher of national politics, has the detail and the insights to bring this fine understanding of one of the most accessible, yet intriguing characters of our politics.

‘The book gives a wake-up call for urgent and deep structural reforms in the financial sector. Not piecemeal but comprehensive.’

‘The inside story behind a spate of banking scandals.’

‘Pandemonium gives an interesting peek into the institutional history of banks and what’s ailing them…’

‘…a compelling story on the rot in India’s banking system.’

‘It combines the micro and macro stories underlying the crisis facing banks.’