Current fiction reading is Samskara: A Rite for a Dead Man by U.A. Ananthamurthy, translated from Kannada by A.K. Ramanujan. A brief but exceptionally powerful novel, it's the story of a brahminic community disrupted by the death of a rebel member, and of Praneshacharya, the wise man of the community, who finds himself in an impossible bind as he tries to figure out whether the rebel brahmin deserves funeral rites and who should perform them. Ananthamurthy is extraordinarily good at creating memorable characters with just a few verbal strokes, and he chooses just the right sensory details to evoke the tight-knit, almost claustrophobic nature of the community. Not only is this a fine read, but it's made me keenly aware of how little I really know, and how much I need to learn, about Hinduism.