RAG Demo

Tag: 1970s

  • The Selfish Gene

    The Selfish Gene, published in 1976, popularised a gene-centred view of evolution developed by biologists such as W. D. Hamilton, George Williams and Robert Trivers. Dawkins argues that genes are the fundamental units of natural selection, and that organisms can be seen as survival machines built by genes to propagate copies of themselves.

    The selfishness is metaphorical: genes have no intentions, but those that happen to build bodies and behaviours favouring their own replication become more common. From this starting point Dawkins explains puzzles such as why animals help relatives, how cooperation can evolve through reciprocity, why parents and offspring or males and females may have conflicting interests, and how game theory helps model aggression.

    In a final chapter he coins the word meme for units of cultural transmission, such as tunes, ideas or fashions, which spread by imitation. The book's clarity and vivid metaphors made it one of the most influential science books of the century, though its title has often been misread as a claim that people are inherently selfish. Later editions add notes and new chapters responding to critics.

    Book details

    AuthorRichard Dawkins
    First published1976
    Original languageEnglish
    GenrePopular science
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)360

    Themes

    • Natural selection
    • Gene-centred evolution
    • Altruism and kin selection
    • Game theory
    • Memes and culture

    Who should read it

    Readers who want a clear, rigorous understanding of how evolution shapes behaviour.

  • Freedom at Midnight

    Freedom at Midnight, published in 1975, recounts the months from Lord Mountbatten's appointment as the last Viceroy of India in early 1947 to Gandhi's assassination in January 1948. The authors, an American and a French journalist, spent years interviewing surviving participants, including Mountbatten himself, and reading official papers, and they tell the story with the momentum of a thriller.

    The cast includes Mountbatten and Edwina, Nehru, Gandhi, Jinnah, Patel and the maharajas whose princely states had to be absorbed, as well as ordinary people caught in the upheaval. Set pieces include the drawing of the boundary line by a British lawyer who had never visited India, the midnight transfer of power, the massacres in Punjab, the vast refugee columns and the plot that ended in Gandhi's death.

    The book was an international bestseller and introduced many readers to the scale of Partition's violence. Historians have criticised it for its generous portrait of Mountbatten, its relatively harsh treatment of Jinnah and its fondness for anecdote over analysis. Read alongside more scholarly accounts, it remains a vivid and gripping entry point to the end of the Raj.

    Book details

    AuthorLarry Collins and Dominique Lapierre
    First published1975
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreHistory
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)570
    SettingBritish India, Pakistan and London, March 1947 to January 1948

    Themes

    • End of empire
    • Partition
    • Political negotiation
    • Communal violence
    • Gandhi's assassination

    Who should read it

    General readers who want a dramatic, page-turning account of 1947, ideally balanced with a scholarly history.

  • Tamas

    Tamas, meaning darkness, opens in a town in the Rawalpindi district in the months before Partition. Nathu, a poor tanner, is paid to kill a pig for what he is told is a veterinary purpose. The carcass is left at a mosque, and within days the district is consumed by fear, rumour and killing between Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims.

    Sahni moves among many characters rather than following one hero: Congress volunteers trying to keep peace, young men trained for militancy by communal organisations, a British deputy commissioner who could intervene but prefers administrative caution, Sikh villagers preparing to defend a gurdwara, and refugees in camps. Nathu's guilt and bewilderment give the book its moral centre.

    Drawing on his own memories of riots in Rawalpindi, Sahni wrote in plain, restrained prose that makes the violence more disturbing. The novel won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1975, and Govind Nihalani's 1988 television adaptation provoked national debate. Sahni's own English translation is the best known, and the book remains essential reading on how communal hatred is manufactured.

    Book details

    AuthorBhisham Sahni
    First published1974
    Original languageHindi
    Translated byBhisham Sahni
    GenreHistorical fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)350
    SettingA town and villages in Rawalpindi district, Punjab, early 1947
    AwardsSahitya Akademi Award 1975

    Themes

    • Communal violence
    • Partition
    • Manipulation by elites
    • Colonial indifference
    • Guilt

    Who should read it

    Readers who want to understand how Partition riots were provoked and spread, told without sensationalism.

  • Parva

    Parva, published in Kannada in 1979, re-imagines the Mahabharata as a story of a real Bronze Age society. Bhyrappa travelled through the regions named in the epic to picture how its people might actually have lived, fought, married and eaten. There are no divine weapons or miracles; the gods are titles, the births are explained through customs such as niyoga, and Krishna is a shrewd political leader.

    The narrative is built from long interior monologues. Kunti, Draupadi, Bhima, Arjuna, Karna, Bhishma, Drona and others look back over their lives as armies gather, so the same events are seen repeatedly from conflicting angles. Old age, failing bodies, sexual politics, polyandry, food and drink, and the brutal arithmetic of war are given weight the epic usually skips.

    The book runs to well over eight hundred pages and is demanding, but it rewards readers with a sense of the epic as a tragedy of ordinary human limitation. It has been translated into many Indian languages and into English by K. Raghavendra Rao, and it is widely considered Bhyrappa's masterpiece and a defining work of the realist approach to Indian myth.

    Book details

    AuthorS. L. Bhyrappa
    First published1979
    Original languageKannada
    Translated byK. Raghavendra Rao
    GenreMythology
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)870
    SettingNorthern and central India in the age of the Mahabharata, on the eve of the Kurukshetra war

    Themes

    • Demythologised epic
    • Ageing and memory
    • War
    • Dharma questioned
    • Gender and polyandry

    Who should read it

    Serious readers of the Mahabharata who want an unsparing, rationalist version of its world.

  • Fire on the Mountain

    After a lifetime as the dutiful wife of a university vice-chancellor and mother of many children, Nanda Kaul has retreated to Carignano, an isolated house on a ridge in Kasauli. She wants nothing more than to be left alone with the pines and the view, and she resents any letter or visitor that might pull her back into obligation.

    Then her great-granddaughter Raka is sent to recover from typhoid and a troubled home. To Nanda's surprise, the child wants no attention at all and spends her days roaming ravines and burnt hillsides. Nanda finds herself trying to win the girl over with invented stories, while Ila Das, a childhood friend reduced to poverty, brings news of the dangers of the world below.

    Short and intense, the novel is a study of solitude, female lives and the pretences people build to survive them. It won the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize and the Sahitya Akademi Award, and its quiet build-up gives way to a powerful, unsettling conclusion best discovered without warning.

    Book details

    AuthorAnita Desai
    First published1977
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreLiterary fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)145
    SettingCarignano, a house in Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh, 1970s
    AwardsWinifred Holtby Memorial Prize 1978, Sahitya Akademi Award 1978

    Themes

    • Solitude
    • Women's lives
    • Old age and childhood
    • Illusion
    • Loneliness

    Who should read it

    Readers who enjoy short, psychologically intense novels about women and solitude.

  • The Shining

    Jack Torrance, a former teacher and aspiring playwright, is a recovering alcoholic with a violent temper that has already cost him his job. He accepts a post as winter caretaker of the Overlook Hotel, a grand old resort high in the Colorado Rockies that is cut off by snow for months. His wife Wendy and five-year-old son Danny come with him.

    Danny has a psychic gift the hotel's cook, Dick Hallorann, calls the shining, which lets him sense thoughts and glimpse the future. Before leaving for the season, Hallorann warns Danny that the Overlook has a dark history. As the snow closes in, Danny sees things in certain rooms and in the topiary garden, and Jack becomes increasingly absorbed in the hotel's past.

    King uses the haunted-house tradition to explore addiction, domestic violence and a family under pressure, drawing on his own struggles with alcohol. The isolation and slow psychological unravelling make it one of the most frightening novels in popular fiction. Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film, which King famously disliked, became a horror landmark in its own right.

    Book details

    AuthorStephen King
    First published1977
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreHorror
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)447
    SettingThe Overlook Hotel in the Colorado Rockies, during winter

    Themes

    • Addiction
    • Isolation
    • Domestic violence
    • Madness
    • Family

    Who should read it

    Horror fans and anyone curious about the novel behind one of cinema's scariest films.

  • The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

    Arthur Dent wakes up to find bulldozers ready to knock down his house for a new bypass. Things get worse when his friend Ford Prefect reveals he is an alien researcher for a travel guide, and that a fleet of bureaucratic Vogon ships is about to demolish the entire Earth to make way for a hyperspace express route. Ford hitches them both a ride off the planet just in time.

    Arthur, still in his dressing gown, is flung into a universe of absurdity. He meets Zaphod Beeblebrox, the two-headed, self-obsessed President of the Galaxy, who has stolen a ship powered by an Infinite Improbability Drive; Trillian, the only other human survivor; and Marvin, a chronically depressed robot. Their travels lead to the legendary planet Magrathea and the question of life, the universe and everything.

    Adams began the story as a BBC radio series in 1978 before turning it into the first of five novels. His humour skewers bureaucracy, philosophy, technology and human self-importance, with entries from the Guide itself breaking up the plot. Phrases like the number 42 and the advice to carry a towel have passed into popular culture.

    Book details

    AuthorDouglas Adams
    First published1979
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreHumour
    TypeFiction
    SettingEarth, a Vogon spaceship, the Heart of Gold and the planet Magrathea

    Themes

    • Absurdity
    • Meaning of life
    • Bureaucracy
    • Chance
    • Human insignificance

    Who should read it

    Anyone who wants science fiction that is laugh-out-loud funny rather than solemn.