Gorgeously written, The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh was one of my top reads of 2024 and also my pick for non-choronlogical read for the 52Week Challenge. So much so that there were many moments when I couldn’t quite tell when things were happening. Its a novel without a central plot — told entirely through the fragmented nature of human memory . Evocative and layered, it’s a kind of memory-catcher, where our unreliable narrator pieces…
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Many, many years ago, in Maoist China, two teenage boys are sent to a village for ‘re-education’. The government wants to rid them of their western knowledge and the influence of their intellectual parents. On their arrival, the villagers come to inspect the boys’ belonging to ensure they bring no western or bourgeois objects. Our narrator and his friend Lou, whose story this novel is, find themselves in the odd position of defending their violin.…
When the Assad government fell on December 8, 2024, the political nerd in me finally gave in to my ‘What’s this all about?’ bug. A quick online search led me to read the very accessible, informative and eye-opening Burning Country; Syrians in Revolution and War by Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila Al-Shami. How I picked this book When picking up books about areas of conflict, who writes the narrative is extremely important. I try to avoid…
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Review: The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey
by VipulaNo other book fits Around The World for Argentina more than The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey, written by probably one of the most famous & influential Argentinians ever. The travelogue and memoir by Ernesto “Che” Guevara, was from a time many years before his revolutionary days. Ernesto and his friend, two young, privileged doctors, embark on a road trip on a bike across South America to find the soul of the…
“I am nothing but a corpse now, a body at the bottom of a well. ” ― Orhan Pamuk, My Name Is Red With that opening line, My Name Is Red pulls you straight into one of the most unique murder mysteries I’ve ever read. While multiple narrators pick up the thread of story telling, the first chapter is a banger, narrated by a body at the bottom of a well asking you to figuring…
When one thinks of World War II, there is a certain imagery that comes instantly to mind. Like the deathly concentration camps, Dunkirk, D-Day, Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima-Nagasaki, the skeletal remains of European cities, etc. Western cinema and Hollywood have done its bit to aggrandize the heroics of the allies and to create a list of top recall in the world’s mind. However, in the stories of grand battles or unimaginable horrors, it is easy to…
