Bartleby, The Scrivener by Herman Melville My Rating: 5 of 5 Stars I could ask you to look beyond your desk if you are at work or peep down your balcony if you are at home and spot a Bartleby. But I would prefer not to. I could urge you to frame that calamitous Bartleby … More Book Review: Bartleby, The Scrivener by Herman Melville (1853)
Nutshell by Ian McEwan My Rating: 4 of 5 Stars [Originally appeared here (with edits): http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/li…] Pessimism is too easy, even delicious, the badge and plume of intellectuals everywhere. It absolves the thinking classes of solutions. This wonderfully sapient insight springs somewhere in the middle of this book and almost gives away the rationale behind McEwan’s … More Book Review: Nutshell by Ian McEwan (2016)
The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares My Rating: 4 of 5 Stars Insane. Insane. Again. Insane. “Then I resumed my efforts, moving to other parts of the wall. Chips fell, and, when large pieces of the wall began to come down, I kept on pounding, bleary-eyed, with an urgency that was far greater … More Book Review: The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares (1940)
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)
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)
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)
We Are All Completely Besides Ourselves by Karen Jay Fowler My Rating: 4 of 5 stars In everyone’s life, there are people who stay and people who go and people who are taken against their will. Who do you remember the most? I asked myself. Those who make part of my primary circle of existence … More Book Review: We Are All Completely Besides Ourselves by Karen Jay Fowler (2014)
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut My Rating: 4 of 5 stars Kurt Vonnegut. Four syllables, once pronounced, suspends in the air like a rock star swishing his name into the air for chanters to latch on and treble the echo. Slaughter-House Five, god knows how many syllables (depending on stress-points of your tongue), once sprinkled from … More Book Review: Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (1969)
Ulysses by James Joyce My Rating: 5 of 5 stars Some works are not written; they are lived. The authors write not with ink, but with breaths. Every breath that finds its way in, sucks in a piece of the world and releases it into the author’s being, letting it permeate, gauge, prod, absorb and … More Book Review: Ulysses by James Joyce (1920)
Faces in the Crowd by Valeria Luiselli My Rating: 3 of 5 stars Like Valeria, I stare at the faces in the crowd; the crowd of short paragraphs hurrying across the surface of this book, intermingling with the innate desire to escape the mound without any considerable collision. Like each paragraph, I anoint a … More Book Review: Faces in the Crowd by Valeria Luiselli (2011)
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