Published by Chatto & Windus / Vintage, 2014, 464 pages. A harrowing book about war, love, and the nature of good and evil. Set, for the most part, around the end of the Second World War, it is about a group of Australian soldiers taken prisoner by the Japanese and made to build a railway …
Continue reading The Narrow Road to the Deep North: Richard Flanagan
Translated from Russian by Anthony BriggsPublished by Penguin, 2007, 1440 pages. Original version published in its entirety in 1869. The first English translation by Clara Bell was published in 1886. Such a joy to have read Tolstoy's absolute, unparalleled, masterpiece now, without the spectre of deadlines and exams. This time around, I wonder what, if …
Translated from Telegu by the author.Published by Oxford University Press, 2013, 152 pages. Original version published in 1993.Review by Sadhana Ramchander Oxford Novellas are a unique series and present to the world, socially relevant themes from languages and genres not published in English earlier. They are translations of not only famous names but also of …
Continue reading Moogavani pillanagrovi (Ballad of Ontillu) – Kesava Reddy
Published by Vintage, 2014, 528 pages. Review by Usha Raman I picked up Neel Mukherjee's novel with much anticipation...well, perhaps it is wrong to use the term "picked up" because it was the first book I had downloaded on my Kindle Paperwhite and it may be more correct to say, "I swiped on to page …
How to be Both: Ali SmithPublished by Hamish Hamilton, 2014, 384 pages. Review by Usha Raman The cover is deceptively like a book for young adults, a simple coming of age tale—two teenage girls from some time in the 1970s, walking on a street somewhere (possibly) in Paris. Ali Smith's novel, shortlisted for last year's …
Continue reading How to be both…a creative not-quite conundrum
Published by Hachette Book Press, 2013, 456 pages. If you think of a book as words on a page, think again. S. is a novel with a difference, stretching the limits of what a book can be. You pull it out of a black slipcase with a paper seal that you have to break—a hardcover …
Published by Fourth Estate, 2006, 448 pages.Review by Imran Ali Khan It took me a while to get to this book but when I finally did it consumed me. It kept me up all night and haunted me well after I was done with it. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun …
Continue reading Half of a Yellow Sun: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Published by Abacus, 2013, 880 pages.Review by Karen Moir The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt is a captivating 800 page chronicle of the life of Theodore Decker. It begins when a young boy is rocked by suicide bomb in Metropolitan Museum of Art that takes his mother’s life and replaces her with a yearning for the …
Published by Simon & Schuster, 2012, 341 pages. How can anyone resist this title? I would have bought this book even if I hadn’t already known this series of detective novels set in Delhi. The book’s main character is Vish Puri, India’s Most Private Investigator, who is often helped—against his wishes—by his mother (the formidable …
Continue reading The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken: Tarquin Hall
The Last Wave—An Island Novel: Pankaj SekhsariaPublished by HarperCollins, 2014, 304 pages.Review by Usha Raman I had the pleasure this last week of engaging in conversation with Pankaj Sekhsaria, author of the new release, The Last Wave: An Island Novel (HarperCollins, 2014). The conversation was part of the Hyderabad launch of the book, a story …
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