Around the World

My pick for Bangladesh is going to be Lajja:Shame by Taslima Nasrin, a controversial but important novel. Nasrin’s Lajja outlines the religious anti-Hindu riots that follow in the wake of the notorious destruction of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1992. While national borders might separate Bangladesh and India, the events thousands of miles away find common ground in communal violence. The narration centers on Duttas, a Hindu Bangladeshi family that must decide if they have…

American writer Michael J. Arlen explores his Armenian identity by making a trip to his ancestral homeland. As he grew up in New York and built a profession as a writer, he sees himself as American first and feels disconnected from his Armenian identity. His relationship with Armenia is as mysterious and confusing as his relationship with his first-generation immigrant father. On his trip, he hopes to find some answers. Passage to Ararat is set…

As part of my Around the World in Books Reading Challenge, my pick for Albania was the Man Booker International Prize winning novel by Ismail Kadare.  The General of the Dead Army is a dark and depressing work of fiction. It chronicles the journey of an Italian general who goes to Albania with an important mission. He and a  priest travel across Albania exhuming bodies of dead Italian soldiers who died fighting in Albania during…

The Things they Carried is an astounding book that leaves no doubt in your mind on the true nature of war. There is no glory and it’s horror has endless depths. It can’t be an easy thing to write personal war stories – especially painful, gut-wrenching, embarrassing, shameful ones. But that’s what Tim O’Brien does in this semi-autobiographical collection of snippets from Vietnam War. He digs into his war wounds and slices them open and…

Only Wodehouse can make a story about the occupants of a stuffy English Country House and a silver cow creamer entertaining. PG Wodehouse’s novels brings all the charms of the English humor to your home and the adventures of young, spoilt Bertie Wooster and his butler, Jeeves form the icing on the proverbial cake in his collection. The Code of the Woosters takes Bertie and Jeeves to the residence of  is Sir Watkyn Basset in…

When I started reading From the Holy Mountain by William Dalrymple, I struggled to put things in context as it covered the history and the current existence of Christian monasteries in the countries of Turkey. I figured to make sense of it all, I needed to read the history of Turkey – Wikipedia wasn’t going to be enough. I chanced upon “A Traveller’s History of Turkey” in the library. This book is a cliff notes version…

Guest post by Kapil Sood, Writer-at-large, Shades of Words Often in our lives, we commit mistakes that leave us in overwhelming guilt. In the absence of a suiting redemption, we end up living our lives under the burden of this guilt. Khaled Hosseini’s debut novel The Kite Runner is about how this guilt and later a desperate attempt at redemption drives the life of Amir. With Afghanistan in turmoil as the background, it is a…

The Blind Assassin book is my pick for Canada for Around the World! I always have very high expectations from award-winning books and I am usually not disappointed. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood was an exception. The novel traces the story of Iris & Laura Chase, two sisters born into a rich but fading household in a small industrial town in Canada. Our narrator is Iris Chase, the elder sister who unravels her life…