Reviews of the different books I have read through the years- from the bestsellers to the ones that fell in between the cracks!
About the Blog
Get link
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps
This blog combines my two passions- reading and writing. I intend to read books and put my thoughts and opinions about them here. Anyway, that's the plan now. Where I end up is a whole different story!
With its subversive feminist thrust and persistent questioning of what constitutes religion, tradition and culture, Saswati Sengupta's debut novel The Song Seekers is sure to strike a chord. It is a poignant exploration of the lives of women in Indian society transcending time and space. Weaved around mystery and laced with beautiful poems throughout, this makes for a perfect unputdownable read. Set in the turbulent 1960s in Bengal, the novel revolves around the life of newly wed Uma, an English Literature graduate from Miranda House, as she steps into the threshold of her marital home Kailash, the ancestral mansion of the highly reputed Chattopadhyay family of Calcutta. Even as she tries to find her footing in a new, unfamiliar world, Uma is intrigued by the shadows that seem to linger in the sprawling mansion; her husband’s silence about his mother’s death, the presence of the enigmatic green-eyed Pishi, a few old letters kept safely in her father-in-law’s bedsi
RIOT, by Shashi Tharoor, is not a conventional novel. It is not a story that starts with a ‘once upon a time’ and ends in a ‘happily ever after’. It has no linearity, no narrative, and neither a formal structure. It is an engrossing story in its own right; but which serves a much wider purpose in this ambitious and utterly fascinating novel. Yes, it is an experiment; but a pretty successful one at that! It speaks about a troubled time in India. It is about one of the most historic riots of the country, when extremism and provocation by Hindus and Muslims led to militancy. The author has admirable knowledge about the subcontinent’s history and current ills, including the increasing intolerance of religious diversity. The ensuing mayhem gave license to kill and avenge with little chance of accountability. Amidst all this, there is the ill-fated romance of Priscilla Hart, a young American working for an NGO in India, and Lakshman, an older, married Indian civil serva
Jasmine Days is a translated work of fiction. It was originally written by Benyamin in Malayalam in 2014 as Mullappoo Niramulla Pakalukal, and translated into English by Shahnaz Habib. It came under my radar after it won the inaugural JCB Prize for Literature in 2018, but I only got around to reading it very recently when I heard of its sequel, The Al Arabian Novel Factory. TL;DR- Jasmine Days was compelling enough to make me want to read the sequel, at the earliest. The Jasmine revolution started with the self-immolation of a street vendor in Tunisia. This soon turned into the Arab Spring and went on to spread to Egypt, Libya, and Morocco. Jasmine Days is set in the City ( the author deliberately never clarifies the name of the city or the country where the story is based out of) in the Middle East roughly around that time, and covers the riots that take place under the garb of politics, nationalism, religious conflicts, and the physical and mental trauma that ensues
Comments
Post a Comment