INDIAN OCEAN STRATEGY – REVIEW OF ROBERT D KAPLAN’S “MONSOON”

Foreign policy experts have paid a lot of attention to Russia, China and the Arab states in recent times. In his book Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power (2010), Robert D Kaplan, a security expert at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, argues that these people are sniffing up the wrong tree. The next big area that is poised to capture American geopolitical attention is the Indian Ocean.

OF AFRICAN BELIEFS: REVIEW OF V S NAIPAUL’S “THE MASQUE OF AFRICA”

V. S. Naipaul came from a remote corner of the earth, a literary abyss, and captured the attention of the world. He wrote a couple of novels – The Mystic Masseur (1957) and Miguel Street (1959) – focusing on his early years in Trinidad. If he had carried on in that vein, he could have become an exemplary tragic-comic storyteller like R K Narayan. Instead he resolved to make the world his stage and strode on it like a colossus, culminating in his Nobel Prize in 2001.