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Bibliofile

So the first kababs can be traced to Denmark when they started processing reindeer meat in kabab-like patties?

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Bibliofile
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Fever With Kababs

At Penguin's Spring Fever top writers read from their books and interacted with readers on cool and breezy evenings at the amphitheatre of Delhi's Habitat Centre. The evenings with Vikram Seth and Shobhaa De's chat with Mahesh Bhatt were packed with a knowledgeable audience. In the session with food writer Monish Gujral, who runs the Moti Mahal chain of restaurants and has now written On The Kebab Trail, said the first kababs can be traced to Denmark when they started processing reindeer meat in kabab-like patties. But a lady in the audience knew better and gave a detailed history of how the first kab­abs were actually made...in Sri Lanka. Gujral tipped his toque to her.

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Mario And Magicians

Faber and Faber has a treat for Indian readers. It has brought out a new collection—the Faber Moderns—of legendary authors from recent times, all at less than Rs 300. There is Mario Vargas Llosa's The Bad Girl; Paul Auster's classic take on the detective story, The New York Trilogy; Peter Carey's The History of Kelly Gang, on Australia's own Robin Hood; Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible; Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Sylvia Naser's A Beautiful Mind and many more. The books are brought out in classy paperbacks, though the print is too small in some. But at their price, they're a steal.

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A Jesting Pilate

The last work of wunderkind, the late David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest, can take years to read. Some gems from it are unforgettable. Here is a joke: ‘Mario, what do you get when you cross an insomniac, an unwilling agnostic and a dyslexic.'... ‘I give'. ‘You get somebody who stays up all night torturing himself mentally over the question of whether or not there's a dog.' We just saved you a few years.

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