Published by Picador / Penguin, 1992, 448 pages. “The door opened. A dozen cramped smells blew in their faces: lilac water, rot, things they didn’t recognize. Sam found a switch and a long, wide hallway suddenly jumped at them.” Meet the central character in this book—the old house at 1, Cloud Street, in Perth. The …
Category: Fiction
The Glass Palace: Amitav Ghosh
Published by Penguin India / The Borough Press, 2002, 560 pages.Review by Kamakshi Balasubramanian "The Glass Palace” is, for me, a beautiful title for a novel. I love the image it creates of fragility, beauty, brilliance, and utter vulnerability. For years I have reached for Amitav Ghosh’s The Glass Palace, and until a few days …
Tales of the Tikongs: Epeli Hau’ofa
Published by University of Hawaii Press, 1994, 93 pages. If this book were to be summed up in one sentence, it would be: “‘Development’ comes to a small Pacific island”. Tales of the Tikongs is a collection of vignettes of what happens when foreign development experts try to impose development on a happy-go-lucky people. And …
Civil War, again
American War published by Penguin Random House / Knopf, 2017, 352 pages. One comes to books through many routes. I've been fortunate to have been surrounded by fellow bibliophiles who often come bearing wonderful gifts of books I may not have run into otherwise. Some of my favorite titles have been introduced to me thus. …
The Dictator’s Last Night: Yasmina Khadra
Translated from French by Julian EvansPublished by Gallic Books, 2015, 160 pages. Original version published in 2015. On 20 October 2011, the news was full of the capture of the Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi, found hiding in a culvert in near Sirte. It was an unimaginable fall for the man who saw himself as the …
Everything I Never Told You: Celeste Ng
Published by Penguin, 2014, 304 pages. “Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.” So begins a book about a family with an absence at its heart—that of the oldest daughter who dies just before her 16th birthday. Although there is a mystery to her death, this is not a whodunit. It’s a story …
Leaves of the Banyan Tree: Albert Wendt
Published by University of Hawaii Press, 1994, 426 pages. I didn’t know much about Samoa when I started reading this. I had come across parts of Margaret Mead’s 1928 anthropological study a long time ago, a study that was later proven to be inaccurate and misleading. And Robert Louis Stevenson spent his last years there. …
The House of Sleep: Jonathan Coe
Published by Viking / Penguin, 1997, 352 pages. Jonathan Coe’s novel about obsession, love, sleep and dreams follows a group of students, moving between their lives as students and 12 years later. We are told in the beginning that the odd-numbered chapters are set in 1983-84 and the even-numbered ones in 1996. But although it …
“One Hundred Years of Solitude”: New Readings 50 Years After?
Translated from Spanish by Gregory Rabassa.Published by Penguin / Perennial, 1970, 432 pages. Original version published in 1967.Review by Sergio Sandoval Fonseca This year bibliophiles around the world celebrate 50 years of book life for “One Hundred Years of Solitude” (1967), a novel that pioneered a new genre, gave its author, García Márquez “Gabo”, the …
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The Ministry of Utmost Happiness: Arundhati Roy
Published by Penguin / Hamish Hamilton, 2017, 464 pages.Review by Usha Raman and Suroor Alikhan Below is a review in two voices—much as the book is a story told through several. Differentiated less by opinion than typeface. I opened my pre-ordered copy of "The Ministry..." with a bit of trepidation mixed with skepticism. Like many …
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