Opening Chapters

Anita Nair is one of the prominent authors in the Indian publishing scene today. The first Anita Nair book I picked up was Idris, published in 2014. Idris is a historical fiction novel. She is also known for Lessons in Forgetting, The Better Man and Mistress to name a few. Sometimes, a book comes along that devours you as much as you devour it. I started reading Eating Wasps as soon as I got it - how could you not, with a title and a cover like that?  EW begins with a first-person narrative of a woman called Sreelakshmi - a writer who had been awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award at only 30 years old - she is dead. Sreelakshmi’s character committed suicide - the locals who know about her and didn’t know about her begin to talk about why did that. “The speculation was as dense as the grief.” After the cremation of her body, Markose - Sreelakshmi’s secret lover - digs through the ashes, finds a piece of skeleton that once was Sreelakshmi and keeps it for himself,...

It has been a while since I have written. There was a sort of “Best Books I Read in 2017” post that I wanted to write. It was then put off because I am who I am, unfortunately. However, that has been on my mind and I have read some excellent books recently, specifically non-fiction. Now, non-fiction is a new thing for me. Whenever people ask whether I read, I would always point out that I read only fiction. In 2017, I decided to change that and I haven’t looked back. As such, this list I am compiling is of the best non-fiction I have read over the past six months. The books I recommend below are not put in any order. When it comes to non-fiction (as with fiction), it depends on the reader whether they like it or not. The feelings that reading a particular book brings to me might not be the same that comes to others. The books range from autobiographical to scientific to historical. Mostly, the books deal with history – which was one of my favourite subjects in school ever si...

I first heard of Mohsin Hamid when the adapted movie for The Reluctant Fundamentalist came out. I had wanted to get my hands on a copy of his book since then, and Exit West is my first go at his work.  You have probably heard of Exit West already. The book has garnered critical acclaim for portraying what really goes through a refugee’s mind. Everyone from The Guardian to Vox has covered it. Exit West begins, simply enough, as a love story between Nadia and Saeed. Hamid makes even a simple love story so profound: “Every time a couple moves they begin, if their attention is still drawn to one another, to see each other differently, for personalities are not a single immutable color, like white or blue, but rather illuminated screens, and the shades we reflect depend much on what is around us.” Nadia who appears to be an orthodox Muslim at first (due to her niqab), then reveals she wears it so men don’t mess with her (Pg-13 version of those words anyway).  Sae...

Responsible storytelling is a very important thing. When "historical" events are depicted, characters are usually caricatured - especially the "villains". Life is never that black and white. For example, there was a Bollywood movie that released recently which was "inspired" from real events. It was about submarines. By inspired, they meant they borrowed the names of the Indian and the opposing team's submarines and that was it. The story was entirely made up creating unnecessary enmity in an already fragile relationship, if you can call it that. Which is why I emphasize again, responsible storytelling is very, very important. Two very's to denote the importance. So when Take Off opened with the message "Based on true events, any resemblance or coincidence...", I was wary. And the first thing I did when I came back home was to research on the actual events and how faithful the story was to reality, and I will get to that soon enou...

This is the second review from the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction shortlist for 2017. You can find other reviews here .   I am not sure where to begin, so I will begin with the synopsis of the book from Goodreads: From “one of Britain’s most original young writers” (The Observer), a blistering account of a marriage in crisis and a portrait of a woman caught between withdrawal and self-assertion, depression and rage. Neve, the novel’s acutely intelligent narrator, is beset by financial anxiety and isolation, but can’t quite manage to extricate herself from her volatile partner, Edwyn. Told with emotional remove and bracing clarity, First Love is an account of the relationship between two catastrophically ill-suited people walking a precarious line between relative calm and explosive confrontation. I really wanted to like the book, and some parts I did. It's raw, so much so that you feel weirdly disturbed while you're reading the book - that was t...

  This is the first of the reviews I have done on the shortlisted books for the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction for the year 2017. The shortlist was announced on April 3rd, 2017. For more reviews, subscribe! Every day, there seems to be more reports coming out about the various injustices done to a woman – or rather someone who is not a man. There are the girls brutally defiled and violated on the streets in public. The child who has been repeatedly raped by her male relatives. The grandmother who was murdered in cold blood because she refused to fund her grandson’s various activities. And don’t you wish, if only things were different, if only you could do something about them. That is the premise of The Power by Naomi Alderman. Alderman’s latest has been gathering colourful reviews and has been shortlisted for the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction 2017. This is the first of the six shortlisted books I have read, and I decided to pen down my th...