The Financial Express (New Delhi), February 6, 2005

Shashi Tharoor's new book Bookless In Baghdad brings together pieces written by him over the past decade. It is a series of tongue-in-cheek essays. For example, he analyses the Indianness of Salman Rushdie and also PG Wodehouse's enduring popularity in India.

Tharoor, under-secretary general of the United Nations, wanders the 'book souk' in a Baghdad under sanctions where the middle-classes are selling their volumes to earn a livelihood.

Bookless in Baghdad; Shashi Tharoor; Penguin; Pp 236; Rs 325