Ignorance by Milan Kundera My Rating: 4 of 5 Stars “The more vast the amount of time we’ve left behind us, the more irresistible is the voice calling us to return to it.” In this poignant recount of two people, forced to bid goodbye to their native country, in the diminished, yet flickering hope of … More Book Review: Ignorance by Milan Kundera (2000)
Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman My Rating: 4 of 5 Stars [Originally appeared here] Of all the fiction in this world, I find the ones rooted in mythology the most enticing; not because there is an element of otherworldly magic in them but because somewhere deep down, a bewitching veil of truth hovers above them. … More Book Review: Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman (2017)
The Vegetarian by Han Kang My Rating: 4 of 5 Stars [Originally appeared here (with edits)] Many of us, if stretch a little, can recall the question that appeared in our science textbooks in primary schools: choose the living and non-living thing from the following options. While we conveniently tagged all humans, animals and plants to … More Book Review: The Vegetarian by Han Kang (2007)
A Heart So White by Javier Marías My Rating: 4 of 5 Stars What do I wish to hear? About the present? The past, may be? Or a little tune on the waiting future? Do I wish to eavesdrop on my best friend to find out what she thinks of me when I am not … More Book Review: A Heart So White by Javier Marías (1992)
A Personal Anthology by Jorge Luis Borges My Rating: 5 of 5 Stars Borges and I I: Borges: I: Borges: I: Do you like silence? Borges: What silence? I: The one you are filling up this space with right now? Borges: This, is my ground. Contemplation, not Silence, my weapon. Thought, my battle. I: A … More Book Review: A Personal Anthology by Jorge Luis Borges (1961)
Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin My Rating: 5 of 5 Stars ‘Those who love from a distance are not seduced by lust.’ Thus crooned a honeyed, longing voice I happened to hear two days back. Perhaps the essence was expressed before; in manifold arrangement of words, in wavy placement of multiple strings. But sometimes, something … More Book Review: Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin (1956)
Autumn by Ali Smith My Rating: 3.5 of 5 stars [Originally appeared here.] She has done it in the past; and she does it again here. Ali Smith’s fixation on, and a visible mastery of, story-telling across timeline, in no particular order, shines in this experimental, breezy novel as well. Centred around the 30-something Elisabeth … More Book Review: Autumn by Ali Smith (2016)
Nazi Literature in the Americas by Roberto Bolaño My Rating: 4 of 5 stars Somewhere in the midst of this book, Bolaño spells out in explicit words what I suspected to be the undercurrents from the word go: ….a novel about order and disorder, justice and injustice, God and the Void. So there I was … More Book Review: Nazi Literature in the Americas by Roberto Bolaño (1996)
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi My Rating: 5 of 5 Stars [Originally appeared here (with edits)] It has been a few days since I turned the last page of this book. But the numbness reappears the instant I allow the pages to unfold in my memory. The silence which suddenly parts to let … More Book Review: When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi (2016)
Blindness by José Saramago My Rating: 5 of 5 stars Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. What an irony that a book which holds, loss, filth, loot, stomp, cruelty, disorientation, putrefaction, injustice, helplessness, murder, rape, misery, nakedness, abandonment, death and unimaginable suffering in its bosom, left me with a climactic emotion of … More Book Review: Blindness by José Saramago (1995)
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