Books I've been reading lately seem to be similarly preoccupied with certain themes though not necessarily of the same time frame. Loving Frank by Nancy Horan is not the usual historical fiction that I normally pick up to read but it sounded intriguing so I didn’t hesitate too long before starting it. The Frank in the title is Frank Lloyd Wright, the celebrated architect whose work revolutionized architecture and ushered in the field’s modern age. The book deals with a rather scandalous episode of his life when he and the wife of a client, Mamah (pronounced May-muh) Borthwick Cheney fall madly in love after he is commissioned to build their house. The lovers flee to Europe and leave their respective families. Needless to say, their affair wreaks havoc on their respective home lives, Wright’s career and virtually destroys Mamah Cheney’s reputation. The book details the trajectory of their relationship until its ultimately tragic ending.

Such a subject matter could have easily turned mawkish and overly sentimental if not for Horan’s careful portrait of Mamah. She doesn’t overly deal with sentimentality or emotion. Instead she paints a portrait of a woman who is constrained by the roles imposed on her by society. During the early years of the 20^th century, women were supposed to be wives and mothers but not much else. It was a time of great agitation for greater female emancipation and participation in society, lead by such stalwarts as Charlotte Perkins Gillman, Emma Goldman and the Swedish feminist Ellen Key. Mamah with her husband and children was an aberration of those times because she wasn’t content with her lot. Though as her sister Liz, later acidly points out, “she had the kind of life most feminists would dream of having.” And the price Mamah pays indeed for daring to break free of the mold and insist on a kind of self-realization was a high one. At the end of the book, Horan leaves it up to us to decide whether such her act was worth the price exerted on her.

Rebecca Miller’s new novel The Private Lives of Pippa Lee opens with Herb and Pippa Lee moving into Marigold Village a rich retirement community. At 80 years old, Herb is tired and wants to be free of the stresses of a rich and wealthy life, so the house in Sag Harbor and the apartment in Gramercy Park are sold along with the rest of their possessions. Pippa,at 50 is the youngest person in the community. However outwardly perfect, serene and put together she seems to be she’s not quite ready for the retired life and her life soon begins to unravel. How she comes to this point takes the rest of the story to tell. I don’t dare give more away as it is quite a tale and a good part of the pleasure of reading this book is seeing how it unfolds.

Miller’s novel focuses on the quest for personal identity and how this quest is shaped, opposed and nourished by family and circumstances. Pippa’s story is that of an outsider struggling to find her self and consequently her place in the sun and surely, this is one of the most universal of themes. Granted, a few of Pippa’s experiences seem to be more out of the ordinary than what most of us know but then again, who knows what lies beneath the most seemingly ordinary person’s façade. Miller’s great strength is her intelligent and sensitive prose that carries even the most extraordinary episodes. At times, the story seemed to push the limits of credibility but her ability to ground her prose in carefully chosen details saves the tale. Some details stay with you even after you’ve turned the last page. I don’t know why I should have been surprised, she is her father’s daughter after all.

Miller’s central concern for the search for identity becomes an even more poignant question when this search is coupled by an overwhelming desire, a need even, to belong. Pippa, as we all do, wants to belong. But at what point does the need for belonging overthrow your real self?

War and its aftermath

De Niro's Game is the tale of two childhood friends growing up during the turbulent years of Lebanon’s civil war. Bassam and George ( known also as De Niro for his love of Russian roulette like Robert De Niro’s character in Deer Hunter) have a precarious future before them. Many of their friends and family are dead or missing, and the city is in a perpetual state of war. The foremost question in their lives is how to survive. And if they do, at what cost?

This is an impressive debut novel from Rawi Hage, who himself fled Lebanon for the safe shores of Canada. The book received much critical praise and since its publication has won a heap of prizes. It is brilliant work and betrays none of the usual flaws of a novice writer. Hage infuses his writing with palpable passion and the pages practically crackle with tension as you tear through the narrative. This is by no means an easy book, dealing as it does with the war torn landscape of Lebanon and its aftermath. It is infused with savagery where scenes of people hunting down the street dogs and the even more harrowing scenes of the Sabra and Chantilla massacres have the power to haunt even after you turn the page. Even as he writes about the savageness and horrors of war, Hage is also able to write beautifully poetic passages. A reminder, I suppose that even in the midst of horror, glimpses of beauty remain.

Endless war

Nadeem Aslam received much critical praise for his two earlier works Maps for Lost Lovers was the winner of the Kiriyama Prize and was longlised for the Booker prize. Little wonder that there was great anticipation for his next novel. Unlike the eleven year wait between the first two books, the wait for this new one was a mere four years. I have to warn you that Wasted Vigil is by no means an easy read.

It’s the story of a Russian woman Lara who arrives in Afghanistan to look for her brother Benedikt, who was sent to fight during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The book’s tone is set when misfortune befalls her at the beginning of her trip. Fortunately for her she falls into the hands of Marcus, a kind Englishman who has been living in the country for the past 40 years as he was married to an Afghan woman. It turns out that Zameen, Marcus’ daughter who was captured by the Soviets might have knowledge of Benedikt's disappearance. From this beginning we slowly discover that their stories are more closely intertwined than we can imagine.

Aslam certainly takes his time to build his story and characters into place. And he spares the reader not one single grim detail of the travails and horrors (mutilations, rapes and landmines are just some of them) that have befallen Afghanistan and its people. If the author’s goal was to provide yet more reasons to fear and loathe the Taliban, he has succeeded admirably. One is left with the impression that there is no redemption for the people who are caught under the Taliban’s yoke. He is likewise unsparing of the US for their responsibility in creating the monstrous oppression that is now entrenched in Afghanistan. To read this book is to have your breath taken away by the horrors. This is not to say that Aslam has written a bad book. Far from it. He has a beautifully poetic way with words and there is a certain tenderness, lyricism even, in the way he writes passages of this difficult story. More importantly he is able to fully present the complexity that is the political history of the country. This is an important book to read if you want to make some sense of the hotbed that is now Afghanist and and Pakistan though I wish he had written it with a bit more hope. I'd like to think that the Afghan history is much more than death and horrors.

Where lost things are kept

Two things often attract me to a book at first glance—how the cover looks (one good example would be Chez Moi) or the title (how can you resist something called “The Atlas of Impossible Longing”). With Stella Duffy’s new book, it was the title that first grabbed my attention. The Room of Lost Things sent a nice shiver down my back in anticipation of the read ahead.

It’s the story of Robert Sutton who is retiring after 40 or so years of being in the business of dry cleaning. His advertisement attracts Akeel Khan, a young second generation east Londoner who wants to make his mark in the world. Robert trains Akeel in the business and introduces him to the room of lost things where Robert keeps all the secret odds and ends that people leave behind in their pockets. Robert himself is hiding his own big secret. And as they move tentatively towards understanding each other, a curiously moving friendship develops between them. This is only the barest description of a novel brimming in memorable characters and rich details. Ms. Duffy’s great strength lies in her skill at fleshing out characters that grip you till the last page without sacrificing a strong plot.

It's really nice the way the author interweaves Robert and Akeel’s friendship with snippets of other people’s lives. There is Helen who only wants to be loved but is stuck in a fast going nowhere relationship and Stefan who fears intimacy with a passion. And then there is the “Poet” who peeks into other people’s lives as he travels by bus. I shouldn’t forget to mention that one character which was as vivid if not more so than the others in the book, is the city of London, specifically the area of Loughborough Junction. Often, this area is described as a rather rough neighborhood but while reading this book one gets an altogether different view. True, it maybe rough and a little shabby but there is a sense of community and the mix of different people make it a lot more interesting than more fashionable or homogenous neighborhoods. At the end of the day these are ordinary people with ordinary stories but they are somehow imbued with a certain grace that makes reading about them as satisfying as a cup of tea on a cold day.

An unusual contest

Very often, a book will come in the store and just sell itself right off the table. When that happens I don't get the chance to talk about it here. Luckily though a second chance comes around when the book gets published in its paperback format. I was so glad today when I saw on our table of fiction new releases Nicholas Drayson's A Guide to the Birds of East Africa in its lovely paperback form. I'd read this book months ago and enjoyed it immensely. In fact thinking about it now makes me like it even more. Contrary to its title, it’s a novel set in Nairobi Kenya and its actually the story of an unusual contest.

Rose Mbikwa has long led the Tuesday morning bird walk of the East African Ornithological Society. One faithful attendee of the walk is Mr. Malik who has long nursed a secret love for the widowed Rose. Unfortunately he is much too shy to declare his feelings for the fetching Rose. As he attempts to figure out how to ask Rose to the annual Hunt Ball, an unexpected rival, in the shape of the much wealthier, flashier Harry Khan, arrives on the scene. And when Mr. Malik unwittingly blurts out his secret, a bet is set between the rivals. Whoever sees the most number of birds in the week, will ask Rose to the ball.

This is a good old fashioned romantic novel that is both heartwarming and funny. I'm always told that my choice of reading material is often grim or depressing or both, and its true that I'm often stumped when I'm asked for a book that's light but I've found a good one in this book! Drayson writes his characters with great feeling and you can’t help but root for the hapless Malik, who very much resembles David battling Goliath. What's nice as well is that the author is able to infuse his book with the color and sounds of Africa. He even manages without being preachy or heavy, to plausibly weave into the narrative the different problems that beset Kenya. But he does this in a very simple and artless way that keeps the book from being too gloomy or heavy. And unlike Q and A, which I enjoyed reading a lot a few weeks ago, the Guide to the Birds of East Africa doesn't require a suspension of belief. For all you realists out there who prefer their fiction a bit grounded in reality, this is one lite reading that you should be added to your books-to-read pile.

Who wants to be a millionaire?

Q and A, Vikas Swarup’s debut novel begins with its protagonist Ram Mohammad Thomas in jail. Reason? He has just won a billion rupees in India’s Who Will Win a Billion. Since he is a poor uneducated boy from the chawls (or slums), producers of the show reason out that he couldn’t have won on merit and instead cheated. They ask the police to “persuade” Ram to confess to cheating. He is saved from the tender ministrations of the police by a lawyer who demands to know how exactly he came to know the answers. Thus begins Ram’s Scheherazade like telling of his life, whose twists and turns fortuitously give him the answers to the various questions.
Reading the book, I could see how its plot could be taken to form the basis of a movie. And a hugely successful one too; last I heard, Slumdog Millionaire had 10 Oscar nominations and was being called the little film that could. The book though is one that could be enjoyed independently of the movie. Granted, Swarup’s plot requires a suspension of belief but it is a hugely enjoyable story nonetheless. He writes with a deft and engaging hand and the plot twists and turns make it a fast novel to read. He has given Ram a distinctive voice that carries along the tale. What Swarup has done really well with this book is to paint a portrait of modern India with all its squalor and filth but also the vibrancy and grit of its inhabitants. He has written this story with genuine humor and sympathy for those whose lot in life is most unfortunate. All the more reason to cheer for Ram’s one billion rupees. At the end of the day, don’t we all want a happy ever after?

A difficult question

Long before Hollywood set its sights on The Reader, it had already attracted much attention when it was first published in 1995. The Reader or Der Vorleser (“one who reads aloud") by Bernhard Schlink was the first German book to hit the NY Times Best seller list and was heaped with much critical praise in Germany. The story begins when 15 year old Michael Berg falls ill with hepatitis and is helped by the then 36 year old Hanna. After his recovery he returns to thank her and they embark on a passionate affair. Later on she disappears mysteriously from his life. He meets her again when he attends the trial of several women, including Hanna for war crimes during WWII.
In framing the story against the WWII and its aftermath, Schlink poses one of the most difficult questions –what would you do if the person you love is guilty of doing horrific things? There are no easy or definite answers to such a question and it is one that Michael grapples with all his life. And in posing this question, Schlink doesn’t limit the question to the crime to which Hanna is accused of and later incarcerated for. He poses this question to the generation that was present during the war. “Our parents had played a variety of roles in the Third Reich. Several among our fathers had been in the war, two or three of them as officers of the Wehrmacht and one as an officer of the Waffren SS. Some of them held positions as in the judiciary or the local government. We all condemned our parents even if the only charge we could bring was that after 1945 they had tolerated the perpetrators in their midst.” And if this is the case, what should the second generation (the children and their children) do with the knowledge of such crime? Do they stop loving the person? Or are they too condemned because they continue to love this same person?
This novel is not by any means an easy read. But I can't recommend it enough to other people. Schlink doesn’t provide easy answers neither for his character nor for us readers. What he has done is to write his novel with great sensitivity and insight that allows for much reflection. The objective is not so much to assign guilt or blame to specific people but to make us understand that there are some crimes especially those born out of hatred and prejudice that transcend the specific perpetrators. And while there aren’t any answers, there is room for the possibility of redemption and even love. In the end, this is perhaps the great lesson to be learned.

A book for these troubled times

In May 1992, a little after the beginning of the Sarajevo war, 22 people were killed by mortar fire while waiting to buy bread at a bakery. To honor and mourn the people who had lost their lives Vedran Smailovich, a cellist decided to play at the square where they died for 22 straight days. His actions formed the basis for Steven Galloway’s novel The Cellist of Sarajevo.
The book traces the lives of three people caught in the middle of the war. There is Kenan, a father of three who must make his way across the dangerous streets of the city to fetch water for his family and a cantankerous old neighbor. Then there is Dragan, a baker whose wife and son were able to leave the city for the safe shores of Italy and finally there is Arrow, a young woman recruited by the city’s defenders to shoot the snipers. Her latest mission is to save the cellist from being killed as he plays his tribute.
In the hands of a less skilled novelist, a story like this has the potential to become melodramatic and overwrought. Fortunately, Galloway is skilled enough to let the story tell itself. And it is a moving one. It brings home the horrors and alienation caused by war and the toll it takes on every individual. One of the most touching moments of the book comes when Dragan sadly realizes that the beautiful Sarajevo of his memories is fast being degraded by the current war torn state of his city. It is one of the most heartrending parts of the book. Reading it made me marvel at our collective capacity to make war when it exerts such a high toll.
Despite the grimness of the story, there are flashes of hope. Incongruous as it may seem, we see in Arrow’s character, the promise of a better future (clichéd as that may sound) when she refuses to forget the decent person that she once was and by choosing to be this person despite the ultimate sacrifice this entails.
Many books on all the different wars that have blighted our history have been undoubtedly been written but Cellist of Sarajevo is a worthy addition to our shelves and is a definite must read. And after reading it, I'm sure you will have the same urge I had to pass it on.

The Sarajevo Haggadah

I love the dedication of this book. It seems very fitting that it is “For all the librarians.” For this is all about the Sarajevo Haggadah. It is an illustrated manuscript that contains the traditional text of the Passover Haggadah to accompany the Passover sedar. The Sarajevo one is unique in that it is beautifully and sumptuously illustrated in gold and precious minerals. This is a remarkable fact given that at the time of its creation in the 14th century, Jewish theology o the times forbade graven images. It has survived all these long years and was saved at least twice from destruction by Muslim hands. It is one of the most beautiful and valuable books in the world. And yet, the facts surrounding its creation and survival remain a mystery.
From the bare yet known facts about the Sarajevo Haggadah, Geraldine Brooks has fashioned a richly imagined tale of its creation and travel till it comes to rest under the auspices of the Sarajevo National Museum. The story is told through Hanna Heath, a young Australian restorer of ancient manuscripts who is selected to restore the Sarajevo Haggadah. As Hanna works on the manuscript, she discovers several tiny artifacts embedded within ---a wing fragment, a strand of white hair, salt and wine. From here the narrative splits into two directions, with one strand unfolding the tale behind each ancient fragment while the other strand tells Hanna’s story.
While the story is told through Hanna, there is no doubt that the main protagonist of this book is the Sarajevo Haggadah. It is clear from the writing here that Brooks has done an enormous amount of research in order to imagine the tale of this important book. In vividly tracing the trajectory of the book from its creation in 14th Century Seville by a young African woman illustrator, to the time of the Jewish Expulsion, through its sojourn in Venice in the 17th century and 19th century Vienna and the harrowing years of WWII and the Saravejan war, Brooks has crafted a rich tapestry of stories that will beguile any reader. “Saltwater and White Hair” are especially moving. I had to pause after these chapters to recover my breath before I continued on.
Occasionally the device of using Hanna’s story as a jump of point for the more ancient tales is a bit jarring but the Haggadah narrative is so compelling that it more than makes up for it. And perhaps, because the stories behind the Haggadah are so compelling, it makes it difficult for Hanna’s story to be as compelling. Nevertheless she is a greatly likeable character and it is through her that we get a real insight into the work that goes into restoring precious old manuscripts. “Of course, a book is more than the sum of its materials. It is an artifact of the human mind and hand. The gold beaters, the stone grinders, the scribes, the binders, those are the people I feel most comfortable with. Sometimes, in the quiet, these people speak to me. They let me see what their intentions were, and it helps me to do my work.” It would be hard to resist such a heroine and you'll come to root for her as I did.

When truth and history collide

I never would have heard about Sebastian Barry’s The Secret Scripture, had it not been for the Booker Prize. Being shortlisted for the Booker Prize is by no means Barry’s first time under the limelight. He received much critical praise for his earlier novels The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty as well as A Long Long Way. In fact, the Eneas McNulty in his earlier book plays a small but pivotal role in Secret Scripture.

The story is told in alternating chapters between Roseanne McNulty, née Clear and Dr. Grene. When the book opens, we learn that Roseanne has been confined for the past 60 or so years in the Roscommon Regional Mental hospital. Due to the building’s age, it has been slated for demolition and it falls upon Dr. Grene to determine who among the old patients can be transferred to the new hospital. He tries to elicit from Roseanne the story of how she came to be confined, all the while suffering from his own personal crisis. Unbeknownst to him, she has started to write down her story, secreting the pages of her life under a loose board in her room.

It is a bit slow going in the beginning and you need to be patient in order to reap the fruits of Barry’s writing. But, as the story progresses, the reader is rewarded by the mastery he has over language. Barry is able to turn in the most fetching of phrases even for the most mundane details. To wit, the town of Sligo is described as “a cold dark town, assaulted by rain so brutal, it makes the houses shiver and huddle like people at a football match.” What finally engages the reader however is the character of Roseanne who is very much a modern heroine but has the misfortune of being born during the wrong era. It’s a tale of woe as she suffers deprivation and marginalization at the hands of the cruel and the prejudiced. At this point you might be wondering why bother with such a story, and the answer is that we come to care for this character whose will to survive and to believe in inherent goodness remains intact.

What is interesting as well in this novel is the way Barry captures the vagaries and shifting nature of truth. There is no one objective truth in this novel (as in life), just the different facets of it, as viewed from different points of view and by different individuals. And if truth is a slippery ever shifting thing, memory and history which is supposed to rely on it, can never be fully reconciled. As Roseanne points out, “No one has the monopoly on the truth, and that is vexing and worrying thought.”

So much of the characters personal history must as well be evaluated against the canvass of history. In this novel, this is an Ireland ravaged by war with deep and lasting enmities. Against such a backdrop, the characters can never escape and are condemned to struggle perpetually against the weight of their own history. It makes it all the more remarkable that Roseanne is able to reach for her own happiness, fleeting though it may be.

As you all know by now, all of us at RWB loved Amy Bloom’s Away. It is one of our favorite books. Since we have the pleasure of Amy’s company on the 24th (Wednesday 7PM), I thought I would read one of her earlier books. I picked up Come To Me, her debut collection of stories and was happy to discover that her gift is just as strong with short stories as it is with a full length novel.
The running theme through this collection is love, in all its forms and all the ways by which we seek, destroy and nurture love. But this is by no means a fairy tale collection of maidens and princes with their happy ever after stories. Instead we have stories of flawed people struggling with death and crippling grief (Love is not a Pie, Sleepwalking and Semper Fidelis), madness and illness (Silver Water) and loneliness (Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines and When the Year Grows Old). What leavens the potential for despair is the luminous prose and the palpable sense of hope that permeates these stories. Underlying each story is the rich empathy with which Bloom writes. In this day and age where a true happy ending begins to seem like a myth, Bloom offers us stories of the next best thing—the possibility of happiness and that all important second chance.

I finished Sea of Poppies yesterday just as they announced the Booker Shortlist. And guess who made it in the shortlist? Amitav Ghosh! Hah! Vindication maybe for the long hours I spent on his book. But lest you get the wrong idea, I was happily enslaved by Sea of Poppies and towards the end, could hardly tear my eyes off the page.
It tells the story of a group of disparate strangers, brought together by fate in the guise of the workings of the British Empire in the Far East to one place, the Ibis. The Ibis is an old slave ship, newly out fitted for its new purpose of trading opium from India to China. But before it commences its opium journey, it must first transport a group of slaves destined for the islands of Mauritius.
With this premise, Ghosh carefully lays in place the stories of the principal characters. There is Deeti, with the clear gray eyes of a witch who loses her husband to opium addiction and is forced to flee her abusive brother in law. Paulette Lambert, an orphan who seeks a way of returning to Mauritius, her mother’s birthplace after she learns that she is to be engaged against her will. Then there is the disgraced Raja Neel Halder, who unwittingly loses all his property to his British partner Benjamin Burnham. And finally there is Zachary Reid, a free mulatto man seeking to make his fortune in the Far East. Despite their different stories they are all forced to flee their circumstances and somehow end up in the Ibis. In the hands of a less skilled writer, the weaving together of these different tales might well seem implausible, even contrived, but such is Ghosh’ skill that he is able to do so in a perfectly convincing way. It is to our benefit that he takes his time to tell each tale so that they blend together seamlessly. There is also a strong narrative structure that propels the story forward. Length ceases to matter as the story takes you irresistibly along. Don’t be put-off by the shipping jargon and free use of the Bhojpuri language. This is an epic and addictive tale and you will be swept along.
More than the engaging story however and the irresistible narrative, what really elevates Ghosh’ work is the way he perfectly captures the sense of displacement that is engendered by colonialism. He is able to describe in heartbreaking detail the callousness with which the British overlords enriched themselves at the expense of their Indian colonies. Set in the 1830’s when opium was the primary trading good of the British, these were the days when Indian farmers were forced to grow poppy, and only poppy. For me, what was most galling was the idea that the natives were supposed to be grateful for being on the receiving end of civilisation and religion as brought to them by the British. But at what price?
As Deeti puts it “in the old days, the fields would be heavy with wheat in the winter, and after the spring harvest, the straw would be used to repair the damage of the year before. ..But now, the factory’s appetite for opium never seemed to be sated. Come the cold weather, the English sahibs would allow little else to be planted; their agents would go from home to home, forcing cash advances on the farmers making them sign asami contracts. It was impossible to say no to them.”
Little wonder then that hundreds would be forced to take desperate measures to save their lives and their families, even such measures that would take them far away from all that they know and love. One of the most beautiful passages in the book comes almost to the end, when the characters have crossed the line into the Black Water, the great unknown…"How had it happened that when choosing men and women who were to be torn from this subjugated plain, the hand of destiny had strayed so far inland, away from the busy coastlines, to alight on the people who were, of all the most stubbornly rooted in the silt of the Ganga, in a soil that had to be sown with suffering to yield its crop of story and song? It was as if fate had thrust its fist through the living flesh of the land in order to tear away a piece of its stricken heart.”

In 1770, the Viennese court was held in thrall by the exploits of the Mechanical Turk, a chess playing automaton. His creator was Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen. The Mechanical Turk was a royal sensation and even embarked on a tour to better display his prowess. From such historical basis, author Robert Lohr ( and ably translated by Anthea Bell) has crafted a historical novel about the Turk and his creator, von Kempelen. It is now a well accepted fact that the automaton was a clever hoax but not much is known of the person behind the Turk. Where it deviates from historical fact is a murder for which the Turk comes under suspicion. If that were not bad enough, the hapless victim is the Baroness Ibolya Jesenak , von Kempelen’s former lover. Naturally it is the Turk and Von Kempelen, who fall under much suspicion.

Lohr distinguishes his novel by the rich imagery and vivid details with which he infuses his prose. Viennese court life and life of the nobility in Pressburg (now known as Bratislava) are skillfully depicted. He captured my attention immediately with the wealth of details with which he presents his story. Even more than the period details however, what really captured me was the theme of struggle between science and religion which was of foremost concern during those times. Von Kempelen (the Pressburg Promethus, as Lohr cleverly calls him), the creator of the machine was indisputably at the forefront of a movement which threatened the religious institution. A great deal of the frenzied prosecution directed against him stemmed from the fear on the part of the religious institution that he represented a great, if not mortal, danger to the institution. For the clergy, “the chess playing Turk represented a presumption in the face of God’s creation.” A gauntlet thrown with such audacity must be addressed in no uncertain terms. There is a particularly wonderful passage in the book which perfectly captures this mighty struggle. It is the scene where von Kempelen is summoned by the Primate of Hungary and Archbishop of Gran (or the Pressburg Zeus to von Kempelen’s Promethus). They enter into a duel of words where Promethus is forced to defend his thinking automaton before Zeus. If only for this part alone, the book is elevated above the usual run of the mill historical fiction.

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.

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.

I don’t know about you but I’ve always had a hard time with mathematics. It was something I could never wrap my mind around and it was a struggle to make sense of formulas and all that it entailed. It was thus always a source of marvel for me to hear about individuals for whom numbers held no secrets.
Gifted by Nikita Lalwani is exactly about one of those special individuals except in her case, the prodigy discovers her talent when she is seven. Rumi and her family are immigrants from India hoping to carve out a better life for themselves in the United Kingdom. When they learn that Rumi has an exceptional talent for math, it transforms their life. Their lives increasingly begin to revolve around her gift and the goal of making it to Oxford by the time she is 15.
The biggest enjoyment in reading this story is the language employed by Lalwani. Whether she is describing the immigrant experience or the teenage Rumi’s growing sense of isolation and confusion, she is able to capture the situation in a language both elegant and which rings true. There was real pleasure just from the way the language flowed, funny and pithy at times, at other times, belligerent and bleak. I loved the way she transposed the language of math into Rumi’s daily life. One scene I particularly liked was one where Rumi is walking home after a particularly bitter rejection by a friend, and while walking counts of to the beat of her shoes “powering up to exponents of two with the left and subtracting one with the right each time, creating Mersenne numbers (2 to the power n minus 1). Each time she created a new total she checked to see if it was a composite or prime number, working out the possible mutations in her head. Whenever the number was prime, indivisible, it felt like a little stab, a minute betrayal, the tiny catheter of pain, insinuating its way into her heart. 2 to the power of 7 minus 1= 127, which number was particularly painful. Maybe because it had such promise-carrying all the world in it: the certain 1, the right now unbearable 2 and then 7, which would always be lucky and sexy, cheeky and cool. Everything she wasn’t .” Enjoying the language with which Gifted is written in a way, allows the reader to get past the sometimes unlikeability of the characters and the somewhat negative slant it takes towards family and the perpetual concern of fitting in and making something of oneself, which is especially poignant when far from the familiar comforts of home.

I’d long been curious about the Fred Vargas books. The story lines of her books always seemed interesting and I had seen on more than one occasion people absorbed in her stories when I was in the metro. One of them had even been turned in to a movie. So when we got her books back in stock, it seemed the fitting occasion to pick up one of them and plunge into her universe.
And what a universe it turned out to be. Fortunately I decided to start with one of the earlier novels starring, if I may use that term, Police Commisaire Jean Baptiste Adamsberg, who at the start of “Have Mercy on Us All” has just been appointed head of a newly formed murder unit. Adamsberg possesses an almost uncanny knack for finding the bad guys, hence the appointment. But we meet Adamsberg just after we meet Joss Le Guern, a modern day town crier who has set up a rather thriving business barking out the news three times a day in a square just of Edgar Quinet. As towncrier he receives a number of odd messages but none as odd as some messages which start hinting at the return of the dreaded Plague. Yes, the plague which as we all know has been eradicated. And the plot thickens when victims start turning up showing the deadly signs. It was at this point that I realized I’ve entered into a completely different murder mystery story altogether.
It is an intriguing and well written story that surprises you till almost the last page. Through out all the inventive twists and turns, Vargas manages to keep a tight hold of the story so that there is a seamless narrative and anything loopy or out of the ordinary becomes possible in the world she creates. There is a impressive amount of historical data in the story which can only come about from much research. It turns out the Fred Vargas, whose real name is Frédérique Audouin-Rouzeau is a historian and archaeologist, hence the wealth of details in her story. Another enjoyable aspect in her book is the engaging humor with which it is written. While it is true that this crime fiction, it is written with a lighter hand than most and it is peppered with genuinely humorous situations. Have Mercy on Us All is certainly a great introduction to Fred Vargas’ universe and now I know why people are so taken in by it. Definitely a worthy addition to my shelves.

Other Fred Vargas books in stock at RWB include Seeking Whom He May Devour (2004), The Three Evangelists (2005), Wash This Blood Clean from My Hands (2007), This Night’s Foul Work (2008) and something to look forward to in 2009 is The Chalk Circle Man.

I had always seen Stefan Zweig's book on Marie Antoinette on our shelves and thought to myself that I was one day going to read this Austrian author. Unfortunately Marie Antoinette always seemed a bit too hefty (I'm ashamed to admit!) and there was always this or that other book that caught my fancy. Recently, I picked up Chess, Zweig's last novel before he and his wife committed suicide and was utterly captivated by his writing.
The tale is simple. Passengers on board a cruise ship bound for Brazil are pleased to discover that the world’s greatest Chess master is their co-passenger. Some of them naturally take it upon themselves to challenge him to a game which they promptly lose. Undaunted they challenge him again and once again they seem to be losing till someone intervenes in their favor. The identity of the stranger is the crux upon which the whole story revolves and ultimately ends.
It is a tribute to Zweig’s outstanding writing prowess that his story grips you from the first page and stays with you long after. Days after I’ve finished it, I’m still haunted by the main protagonist of the story which you will see is not after all the great Chess master. And closer introspection reveals complex layers under the seemingly simple story. What makes it outstanding is the deftly told psychological aspect of the tale. As it turns out, the story takes place within the environs of World War II and as such the story is suffused by the horror felt by the author at the psychological brutalities suffered by and imposed on the casualties of this particular war. And out of fear of giving too much of the story away, I will only say that Zweig’s prose will send chills up your spine even if you’re reading it in the clear light of day.