“I am not sure whether the book was well-received in its day, but I am sure that had Sarat Chandra lived today, he would have seen the same Palli Samaj existing even now. An excellent sketch of a conservative people.”
“I read it first as a child, and loved it. Then, I happened to read "Alice in Wonderland", and realised that HJBRL is not so original after all.”
“An absolute classic. Memorise the 22 rules like you'd memorise the multiplication tables, and you'll never go wrong.”
“A sympathetic biography of a beheaded royal. Reading the book gives one the feeling that the queen was innocent of several of the crimes ascribed to her. But, can queens really be so consistently stupid? One can only wonder !”
“Looks at and records the attempts made by colonists to justify their Raj. An interesting insight into the workings of the colonist's mind.”
“Translations are, I guess, either hits or misses. This one is a bad translation - one can almost see the original Oriya sentences barely concealed by the English. I wish I'd known how to read Oriya, because the story is nice but the translation kills it.”
“A delightful combination of a travelogue, a cookbook and a historybook.”
“Hmm. Didn't much like it. The book makes assertions withou giving any basis thereof, and even gives chants and spells, which, I think is highly irresponsible of someone who claims to have been "trained" as a witch. ”
“A nice story, narrated well. Keeps you turning pages till the end and leaves you with the feeling of having read a good new story.”
“Well-researched and well-presented. I'd love to get my hands on the transcripts of the court proceedings.”
