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Yesterday in Paradise – A Goan journalist remembers days of sunshine and sorrow in Kenya Posted: 27 December, 2019 | Category:  Book Reviews Yesterday in Paradise 1950-1974 by Cyprian Fernandes (Balboa Press, Australia 2017) Review by TREVOR GRUNDY “History,” says a character in Louis de Bernieres’s novel  Captain Corellis’s Mandolin ,”ought to consist only of the anecdotes of the little people who are caught up in it.” Yesterday in Paradise  by Cyprian Fernandes is an anecdote-driven non-fiction book that paints a moving picture of the rise of an impoverished Goan teenager from the backstreets of the Asian quarter of Nairobi to a position of  importance in the Kenyan media between the mid-1960s, through to the mid-1970s. As such, it is an important contribution to our understanding of the problems facing ethnic and religious communities in post-colonial countries. There are other books that tell you more about the Goans and their history. B...

Anti-Semitism and an author’s walk down memory lane Posted: 5 December, 2019 | Category:  My Books Memoir of a Fascist Childhood by Trevor Grundy (William Heinemann, 1998 and Arrow Books 1999) Literary agent in 1998/1999 was Giles Gordon, Curtis Brown, London Also available on Amazon Reviews of this 20 plus years old book were published in several magazines and newspapers in Britain. They included articles in The Jewish Chronicle, the Jewish Quarterly and one by the Jewish affairs correspondent of The Tablet. All the comments made by Jewish writers about the fascist phenomenon before and after the last world war were fair, balanced and constructive. After my book was published, I made a short tour of Israel in 2000 and spoke to rabbis, students and ordinary Jews about Mosley in the 1950s and 1960s. The following year, I completed a tour of colleges in different parts of the UK with large Jewish student intakes. Trevor Grundy (right) with Sir Malcolm Rifki...

Obituary DENIS NORMAN 1931-2019 Denis Norman, Zimbabwe’s first minister of agriculture after Independence in 1980, has died (December 21) in Oxfordshire, England, after a long battle against cancer of the oesophagus. His appointment to Prime Minister Robert Mugabe’s cabinet (at the suggestion of the late Lord Soames) after a long and bitter racial war that cost in the region of 35,000 lives came as a huge surprise. At the time, it was seen as a strong and meaningful appointment that underscored Mugabe’s determination to cement racial and political reconciliation in a war-torn country. Sadly, that policy did not last long and after serving Zimbabwe in various portfolios, Denis Norman and his wife, June, returned to England. He told part of his, some would say amazing, story in a book called  Odd Man In  which was published last year by Weaver Press in Harare. His death will be mourned by all those who knew him, worked with him and admired his honesty, integrit...

This isn't the India they taught us about in school  Aliya Abreu The Goan Everyday  on 19/12/2019,     The morning of the protest at Azad Maidan, I woke up completely disoriented. I could not place where I was, and as I opened my eyes, I was conscious of waking up with a fear, which I couldn't place. In a minute I had registered what was happening : I was in my country, in India, and I was afraid because the fascist government has put the burden of "proving" my identity as an Indian on me. I went through the day, gathering my thoughts for the protest to be : would people show up? Having attended "protests" as a journalist before, I have experienced that people don't spontaneously show up for anything that is not given a push for by opposition political parties. While approaching the Azad Maidan at 4:30, I was taken aback by the large police force deployed all around the garden, fully armed, and ready. Just doing their job I suppos...