by Prashant Keshavmurthy If there is a literary history of the modern warrior then Matthew Murphy's A Beckoning War should be its latest chapter and, surely, its finest. Told in the third-person, the novel narrates “the Allied advance through the Gothic Line in Northern Italy in September 1944” almost wholly through the perspective of Captain…

Prashant Keshavmurthy Abdul Qadir Khan Bedil Dehlavi was among the most famous representatives of the so-called sabk-e hindi or “Indian style” of the Persian ghazal. Born in Patna or Azimabad in Bihar in eastern India in 1642, he spent much of his professional life in Mughal Delhi and died there in 1720. His style and…