A Hundred Encounters

This collection of a hundred book reviews, from Sham Lal's well-known literary column 'Life and Letters', gives a vivid idea of how leading social scientists diagnose the ills of modernity, while going into the reasons which led to the collapse of all communist regimes. The book discusses not only the pathologies of globalism, and consumerism but also of the network society which is creating a new class of pariah states. It also analyses the nature of the changes underway, which are infecting contemporary thought with a new virus of nihilism, which dismisses all notions of truth, justice and freedom as partial, provisional and highly unstable. The second part of the book deals with the work of over forty poets, playwrights and novelists. Their experience of the modern world is at a level much deeper than that of discursive thought, and they provide a necessary corrective to the ersatz cheer that is being spread by the proliferating networks of T.V. channels, and ever more efficient means of mass entertainment and instant communication.