Reading this book as an Indian who grew up in the nineteen eighties and who had been fed a version of Indian independence through text books and what was taught in school, it is interesting to look at this seemingly fresh take on that massive story. At first, I expected the book to start somewhere …
Author: rishadpatell
A Little Life: Hanya Yanagihara
Published by Random House and Picador This beautiful book was described to me as both the ‘gay novel of the decade’ and ‘a story of 4 men and their journey through life’, descriptions that I found both confusing and frustrating the deeper I got into the story. To me, the story of four men soon …
The Lowland: Jhumpa Lahiri
This new book by Jhumpa Lahiri is a powerful and riveting story. Set in Calcutta post independence, the book is the story of two brothers through the complex and tumultuous period of the birth of the Naxalite movement in West Bengal. The two brothers, Subhash and Udyaan take divergent paths, the former, being the obedient …
The Garden of Evening Mists: Tan Twan Eng
The Garden of Evening Mists is the story of Yun Ling Teoh, a survivor of a Japanese POW camp in Malaya during World War 2. Now a lawyer, Yun Ling returns to the hills of the Cameron Highlands to fulfil her dead sister’s dream of creating a Japanese garden. Her hatred for the Japanese makes …
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