Halfway through August and people are starting to trickle back into town. Just in time for the great new books that have just arrived in store...

New in Hardcover Fiction
1. From A to X A Story in Letters by John Berger
2. Man in the Dark by Paul Auster
3. The Private Patient by PD James
4. A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif
5. The Lazarus Project by Aleksander Hemon

New in Paperback Fiction
1. The Bad Girl by Mario Vargas Llosa
2.Right Livelihoods by Rick Moody
3. Good to be God by Tibor Fischer
4. By George by Wesley Stace
5. Skeletons at the Feast by Chris Bohjalian
6. Nina Todd has Gone by Lesley Glaister
7. Drive Time by James Meek

After having read the excellent Uwem Akpan’s debut novel, I turned my attentions to Aravind Adiga’s White Tiger. It is another first novel, this time from an Indian writer and like Akpan’s novel has been drawing a lot of attention. It is even in the Booker Longlist for this year. It is an impressive debut and I was curious to see what the fuss was all about.
The first lines immediately drew me in. It is in fact written as a series of letters over a period of seven days to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao. Through these letters, Balram Halwai wants to tell the story of how he rose from the position of lowly servant to respectable entrepreneur. And it is quite a tale. Be prepared to be hooked. From the beginning he is different from the rest of his family in his desire to be something else than what has been planned for him. And he is prepared to take the necessary steps to achieve his goals. So he eavesdrops on people, resorts to blackmail and finally, commits murder. As I said it’s quite a tale.
Balram is an amoral and deeply cynical character but despite this, he is an oddly charismatic one. One can’t help but be fascinated by him and his story. He commits murder yet still honors the memory of the man he killed. He saves his nephew yet ponders the thought that it might one day be necessary to do away with him. Perhaps the trait he possesses, which we can all identify with, is his enormous will to make something of himself despite all the odds against him. And the India described in this tale certainly stacks the odds against him. There is the caste system or in Balram’s words the Rooster Coop that prevents anyone from getting out. It is the kind that is self perpetuating and perpetual because the family conspires to keep its members in it in order to survive. How to get out? Only someone prepared to see his family destroyed will be able to fly the coop, as Balram points out. Then there is the immense poverty and pervasive corruption that eats away at everything and anyone. This India is brutal, corrupt and downright ugly. In Adiga’s hands, this India is fascinatingly drawn and more importantly his prose rings with the uncomfortable ring of truth. Given all of the above who is to say that Balram’s act was perhaps the only way to be free?

There is no shortage of African writers, some notable examples being J.M.Coetzee and Andre Brink. One of the newcomers on the literary scene worth watching is Uwem Akpan whose debut book Say You’re One of Them has been reaping rave reviews from critics everywhere. It is a collection of novellas which takes as its primary theme the different experiences of the children of Africa. However these are not gentle children’s tales but rather harrowing tales of poverty, abuse and racial conflict escalating into violent murder. Akpan doesn’t flinch at the gruesome details and instead relates them dispassionately and almost with a clinical detachment. Word to the wise, this book is not for the squeamish. But you’ll be drawn in immediately as I was. From the first story, I realized that this was not going to be an easy read yet the prose is compelling and I was almost unable to surface for air till the last word. There is a masterly grasp of first, the subject matter and second, of the language.
These stories take place all over Africa. From Kenya where a child’s sister turns to prostitution to send him to school and to put food on the table, to Rwanda where the tribal conflict forces parents to do the unimaginable and finally to Nigeria where to my mind, the best story of the collection is set. Luxurious Hearses is by far the longest story in the bunch and can pretty much stand on its own as a novella. What is interesting about this tale is the way it shows a microcosm, through the interaction of the characters , the different aspects of the country itself. All sorts of issues arise and the characters interact in myriad ways with each other. At times they are antagonistic against each other (two women battle for space) at times they band together to come against another (such as when they defend Jubril against the Chief who usurps his seat). When tragedy does befall the principal character, it comes so swiftly that you are left feeling bereft that it could not have been otherwise.
All these stories are heartbreaking in their own way and they bring the desperateness and brutality that are the everyday conditions of these countries in a way that cold hard news doesn’t. If news doesn’t move you, I’m pretty sure these stories will.

At long last, one of the year's most awaited books, if not THE most awaited book is finally available! After its stateside release on the 2nd of August, RWB is proud to announce that Breaking Dawn is now available at the store. The fourth and concluding volume in the ongoing Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer, this book promises to finally reveal the fates of Bella, Edward and Jacob.

Get a copy while you still can! Watch out for future reviews of Twilight, New Moon and Eclipse here in the blog.

Another wonderful pile of books for all faithful readers of RWB:

New in Fiction
1. Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo
2. Careful Use of Compliments by Alexander McCall Smith
3. Assassin's Song by M.G. Vassanji
4. Life Class by Pat Barker
5. The Deportees by Roddy Doyle
6. The Boat by Nam Le
7. The Case of the Imaginary Detective by Karen Joy Fowler
8. The Birthday Present by Ruth Rendell writing as Barbara Vine
9.All the Colors of Darkness by Peter Robinson
10. Molly Fox's Birthday by Deidre Madden

New in Non-Fiction
1. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
2. Vermeer's Hat by Timothy Brooks
3. The Necesary Revolution by Peter Senge
4. Ghost Train to the Eastern Sea by Paul Theroux
5. The Sharper your Knife, the Less you Cry by Kathleen Flynn
6. The Return of History and the End of Dreams by Robert Kagan
7. What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception by Scott McClellan
8. Children of the Revolution by Robert Gildea

RWB likewise has in stock the following titles which have been Longlisted for the Booker Prize of 2008:

The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie
The Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh

The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry

The Clothes on their Backs by Linda Grant

A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz

Child 44 by Tom Robb Smith

The Lost Dog by Michelle de Kretser

Others in the longlist will be available Mid-August.

The Great Perhaps

What happens when you go looking for something beyond the mundane and you find more than what you bargained for? This is by no means an easy topic to tackle but John Green does a magnificent job of doing just that in his book “Looking for Alaska”. It’s the story of Miles “Pudge” Halter, avid biography reader and fan of famous last words (his abiding motto is to go and find the great perhaps—as Rabelais) and his transfer to the Culver Creek Boarding School. It is at Culver Creek that he meets and befriends Chip “Colonel” Martin, Takumi and Alaska Young with whom he falls hopelessly in love with. Never mind that she is out of his league and as she puts it “totally in love with her boyfriend”. And since this is a book about teenagers, it is full of class room life and pranks (industrial blue colored dye in hair gel being involved in one) but it veers from such a simple direction once tragedy strikes.
This is an immensely likeable novel. It is one of those novels whose language just flows, is poetic and often beautiful. Add the fact that it captures perfectly the rhythm and cadence of teenage life without once resorting to cliché or is in any way condescending for their concerns. There are deeper things afoot in the novel and it is framed by Alaska herself when she poses that most existentialist of questions “how do we ever get out of this labyrinth of suffering?” As questions go, this has been the focus of countless minds and the subject of books far too numerous to recount. And author John Green is able to handle such a topic in a graceful and humorous way. If I had a quibble with this book, it would be to say that perhaps the characters are a little aware and philosophical for teenagers but at the same time, it cannot be denied that teenagers now are much more worldly and knowing than grown ups give them credit for. But that is just the tiniest quibble in this otherwise excellent novel that ends in the most satisfyingly positive way. “That part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.”

Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name

Sometimes its all in the title. This book has been sitting in my shelf for awhile now and every so often my eyes would light upon it and the title would resound in my head, progressively tugging at my mind till finally, I picked it up. The title is certainly arresting enough and the much of the story takes place in the exotic landscape of Lapland.
It begins with the death of Clarissa’s father and a discovery that changes her life. I realize that a statement like that doesn’t reveal much, and those who are wary of spoilers, should skip ahead to the review of the book. She learns that the father she’s just buried is in fact not her father. This discovery poisons her life and pushes her to find answers and her mother who had disappeared from their family 14 years earlier. And her search takes her to the little known lands of the Sami people, from whom she is descended.
Much of the novel’s strength lies in the control author Vendela Vida wields over her heavy subject matter. There are secrets built upon other secrets and she reveals them slowly while ensuring that we stay engrossed in Clarissa’s story. In a way the exoticness of the story’s locale underscores the psychological terrain that Clarissa’s character explores. There is an overlapping theme of searching for identity, making a new one at the same time creating multiple lives to fit these different identities. And it is extremely interesting to read a character that is able to do so completely without regard to the emotional cost to those who love her. I think one of the most brutal lines I’ve ever read comes about almost at the end of the book, where Olivia, Clarissa’s mother tells her “you poor thing…you always tried so hard to get a reaction from me. Can you put another log on the fire?” A cold character to say the least, but the story is so well told, that while I was horrified, there was a basis from which I could see how it could come about and even felt a sort of sympathy or empathy for her. Ultimately its ending is consistent with its theme of finding, renewing and creating identities that finally, allow one to live. Re-reading it now, as I write, I find that it is a gratifyingly hopeful one.

Aside from Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, RWB also carries Vida's well received debut novel And Now You Can Go.