WHAT I HAVE BEEN READING LATELY

A Delhi Obsession by MG Vassanji, Doubleday, $29.95. What would you call a story about a westernized agnostic Muslim widower’s passionate affair with a married Hindu woman set against the backdrop of Hindutva politics in Delhi?

Love jihad! some would say. Others might say it’s a great opportunity for a novelist of MG Vassanji’s stature to extract every drop of narrative drama and human pathos – and they would be right. Two-time Giller prize winner Vassanji paints an image of modern India which, while sending satellites into space seems mired in the depths of misconceptions of what tradition means.

Munir Khan, a recent widower from Toronto, on a whim decides to visit Delhi, the city of his forbears. Born in Kenya, he has lost all family connections, and has never visited India before.

While sitting in the bar of the Delhi Recreational Club where he’s staying, an attractive woman named Mohini joins his table to await her husband. A sparring match ensues. Against her better judgment, Mohini agrees to show Munir around the city.

As they explore the thriving markets and historical buildings of Old Delhi, an inexplicable attraction begins.

India’s rising nationalism and pent-up violence against anyone perceived as the other provide the setting for the drama that plays out in small, deft strokes of story-telling. It’s with these fine threads of everyday events – a look, a smile, a stroll in the gardens surrounding ancient monuments – that Vassanji weaves his tale.

They came out of the gate and, not finding an auto, walked along Lodi Road. She felt awkward in her shoes; a cool breeze blew, though the sun was blinding. An auto soon came by and picked them up. He got off at the club and she headed home, refusing his offer to escort her back.

It’s a story that pits the myopia of tunnel-vision nationalism sweeping across the globe today against the civilized order of a liberal world.

The Dictionary Wars by Peter Martin, Princeton University Press, US $29.95. Google any word and Merriam-Webster shows up with its meaning.

The simple, taken for-granted action doesn’t reveal the drama behind how the world’s most popular dictionary came into existence. In The Dictionary Wars Peter Martin recounts the patriotic fervor (yes, not fervour!) in the early American republic to produce a definitive national dictionary that would rival Samuel Johnson’s dictionary that had until then held sway.

But what began as a cultural war of independence from Britain devolved into a battle among lexicographers, authors, scholars and publishers – with warring family members thrown in for good measure – all vying for dictionary supremacy. The overwhelming questions were which and whose English was truly American and whether a dictionary of English should attempt to be American at all. Martin gives a blow-by-blow account of the battle between America’s first lexicographers, Noah Webster and Joseph Worcester which extended beyond Webster’s death, when the Merriam brothers acquired the publishing rights to his dictionary.

While several of Webster’s reforms were ridiculed, others caught on. His push for the phonetic spelling of greev (grieve) and relm (realm), etc., didn’t make it, but he was the man behind the dropping of the double consonants in words like jeweller and traveller, the u in colour, the k in words like frolick and changing the re to er in words like calibre.

We tend to think of the two – British English and American English – as interchangeable except for the occasional spelling idiosyncrasies. But the establishing of a new language was not without its birthing pains. Thomas Jefferson, who wanted to see America rise to” linguistic and literary preeminence” came in for criticism for his use of an “Americanism” like belittle in 1787. The use of nouns as verbs (yes, Google/google!) such as beat, dump, scalp, etc., also caused a furore (furor in American English, thanks to Webster). While British scholars deplored the development of racy provincialisms, some Americans were celebrating the “brash vitality” of the new additions to an old language. Words and expressions such as down-and-out, down-town, to lynch, under-the-weather, so familiar to us today, were introduced and embraced during this period.

The Dictionary Wars is a fascinating unveiling of how American English became what it is today.

The Clothesline Swing by Ahmad Danny Ramadan, Night-wood Editions, $21.95. The story of two lovers anchored to the memory of a dying Syria, set against the backdrop of the Arab Spring.

Taking inspiration from Arabian Tales of One Thousand and One Nights, Ahmad Danny Ramadan writes about Hawakati who relays remembered fables to keep life going for his dying partner. Each night he weaves stories of his childhood in Damascus, of the cruelty he endured for his sexuality, of leaving home, of war, of his fated meeting with his lover.

Whose Body? by Dorothy L Sayers, Vintage, $13.50. A big fan of her mystery novels featuring Lord Peter Wimsey when I was in school, I eagerly grabbed this reprint of the first novel in which he made an appearance.

A famous London financier vanishes from his bedroom. Across town, a corpse is found in an architect’s bathtub. The body is not that of the missing financier, so whose body is it?

Fans will learn a few new facts about Dorothy Sayers and new readers will discover an intelligent and witty book.

Proverbs From Around the World, compiled by Gerd de Ley, Hatherleigh Press, $20. Every language and every culture has its own unique proverbs – old sayings that convey ancient wisdom in a few pithy words.

Gerd de Ley presents a rich collection – fun, thought-provoking or just plain weird! Such as this one from Canada: You cannot catch skunks with mice. Or the one from Quebec: You can’t kill a dog just to save a cat’s tail.

There are sayings that remind one of what a grandparent might have intoned.

A small house will hold a hundred friends (Africa).

Interestingly, one finds similarities in sayings from unconnected, far-flung corners of the world.

He who is unable to dance blames it on the stony yard from Kenya is very much like one from India.

It includes several that desis will find familiar: He who has a true friend, has no need of a mirror (Malabar).

And those with a few simple words that embody a philosophy. Like the Buddhist proverb, Enough is a feast.

And this Bantu proverb: The earth is a beehive; we all enter by the same door but live in different cells.

She Will Build Him a City by Raj Kamal Jha, Bloomsbury, $32. A woman hopes to make her daughter whole again through her love and her stories. A young man dreams of murder and a newborn is abandoned by his mother. Violence, sex, poverty, love, longing, new money... The stories of a man, woman and child in Delhi, a city of 20 million, weave in and out, creating kaleidoscopic images.

As Warm As the Sun by Kate and Jim McMullan, Neal Porter Books, $24.99. A story of friendship that is sure to give you the warm fuzzies.

The Tree That’s Meant To Be by Yuval Zommer, Doubleday, $23.99. A sweet little Christmas tale about love and the spirit of the season. Enough said!

Yamna Asim’s Teen Review of Sadia by Colleen Nelson, Dundurn, $12.22. Sadia by Colleen Nelson talks about the struggles that many teenage Muslim girls face in high schools when popularity clashes with religion and beliefs.

Sadia Ahmadi, a freshman at Laura Secord Secondary School is passionate about only one thing in her life: basketball.

When the tryouts for the junior co-ed basketball team are announced, Sadia is thrilled.

Her talent speaks for her, but her hijab, on the other hand, is a problem; especially when a discriminatory rule means she either has to take her scarf off or not play.

Mariam, her best friend, believes that she should start de-jabbing (removing her scarf) and start acting like every other normal teenager.

Her parents advise her to follow her religion and be modest.

My hijab was part of me; turning away from it meant denying who I was.

What would she do: leave the team or drift away from her religion?

In the novel, Nelson takes the reader on the challenging journey of Syrian immigrants who are adjusting to the Canadian lifestyle as well as trying to figure out the balance between a girl’s passion and expectations from her religion.

• Yamna Asim is a grade 10 student and a member of Brampton Library’s Teen Library Council.