World Literature

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…

No 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…

Genre: Books Can Heal “I don’t think it really matters whether you know a lot about books or not. That said, I don’t know that much myself. But I think what matters far more with a book is how it affects you.” ― Satoshi Yagisawa, Days at the Morisaki Bookshop To recover from this awful experience above, I needed something familiar and cozy, like a novel set in a bookstore. Days At the Morisaki Bookshop…

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…

I love historical fiction as a genre because it’s immediately transportive and provides my conscious a good excuse to not read an actual history book. Yes, it’s not the same thing but life is short, and can you blame me for finding a little joy in history-with-a-twist. An ambitious multi-generational saga, Pachinko starts off in an island village in 1903 in Korea where a Hoonie and his wife earn their livelihood by hosting lodgers. When…

What’s Palace of Illusions about? In the Palace of Illusions, Banerjee takes on Indian epic Mahabharata, and weaves an imaginative novel around it’s most maligned & suffering female character, Draupadi. A story so powerful that it has transcended thousands of years, the Mahabharata is a timeless epic. Relevant and revered, every Indian is as familiar with its broad construct as the western world is with the Bible. It takes courage to mess around with something…