I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
-Jorge Luis Borges
Imagine a life without books – it would be bleak and unimaginative. Yes, even in this day and age with all kinds of social media around us, there is nothing better than a good book. And it is organisations like The Book Review (TBR) which are helping keeping books alive by the proliferation and archiving of books in India.
TBR which is India’s pioneering journal of views and reviews was founded in 1976 by Chitra Narayanan, Uma Iyengar and Chandra Chari who collectively put in a capital of just Rs. 3000. Over 41 years, it has grown to become India’s premier book review journal and a rich resource for researchers and translators. It has now gone online and has attracted a wide leadership from all over the world.
Our principal focus has been to provide in-depth reviews of books published in India and abroad in English as well as those brought out in India in the regional languages.
Their archival work has been lauded across the world too, with many donors across the world contributing. TBR has been associated with literary & intellectual giants like Nikhil Chakravarty, Barbara Epstein, Amartya Sen and Romila Thapar to name a few.
TBR seeks to revive and maintain the habit of reading which has been conspicuous by its absence in the present generation. There is an urgent need to give TBR much greater visibility. With the advent of digital archiving we are attempting to tackle this challenge head-on.
But their efforts in digital archival work of TBR’s monthly journal have had a lot of challenges monetarily. Enjoyed by children and adults alike, they don’t have too many funds to carry on. Although all issues between 1976 to 1989 and from 2003 to 2017 have been completed, there are still a lot of issues left between 1990 to 2002 before the magazine went online. So take the small step towards preserving a treasure chest of book reviews for the future generations.