A woman is losing her ability to speak, for the second time in her life. A man is losing his vision. He is a teacher taking evening classes of Ancient Greek in Seoul. She is his student, wanting to learn a new language, hoping that, it would somehow help her speak.
The woman, whose story is narrated in the third person, is bereaving her mother and is simultaneously fighting for the custody of her son. She feels devastated and defeated by death and separation. She overflows with rage and rancour that consume her. She is subsumed with an overwhelming sense of love which at the moment seems uncertain and unwanted even. The man, who is narrating his own story, is trying his best to acclimatise himself to Seoul after having moved from Germany. His anguish over his past strained relationships, strains his ability to adjust to his present situation. His loneliness, his longing for a city and people that are no longer present become the fodder for his lamentations on the pathological darkness that is enveloping him slowly and steadily. Through the class, the man and the woman, come together, to provide respite to their troubled yet kindred souls by being that requisite restrained sense to each other’s losing sensibilities.
Han Kang, is a South Korean writer, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2024, a first for an Asian woman and for a Korean. Her other book, The Vegetarian, became the first Korean language novel to win the International Booker Prize in 2016. This book, has been translated by Deborah Smith and Emily Yae Won.
Greek Lessons, is a master storytelling on grief and its flagrant consequences. The book is seeped in all kinds of grief and loss, portrayed at various levels of intensity, conscientiously. This subtextual presence makes it ominous and omnipresent. This book also meanders on the characters’ existentialism, romanticising the desperation and the futility of it. The author has depicted Seoul to be this unwanted and cold third character, that is failing to provide warmth to its people. Han Kang’s words are measured, meticulous and mundane. Language drives the pathos, at times its dissolution drives the sentiment. Words are metaphorical, full of palpable melancholy. This is a piece of literature that is deliberate and visceral, but beautiful nonetheless.
Saffy Morris is waiting for her turn at an interview. Her mobile pings suddenly with three WhatsApp messages from her best friend, Leona. They say,
“Can’t speak
Don’t text or call
Pls just come”.
By the time Saffy could even register what these messages could mean, they get deleted. Saffy leaves her interview in a state of panic and dashes towards Leona’s house in pouring London weather, only to find a bewildered Leona being querulous about Saffy’s untimely and unexpected arrival. At the time, Saffy finds Leona’s current husband, Ash who she despises and her daughter Rosie in the house. With much resignation and following Leona’s questionable assurance that everything is fine and unfaltering indignation about the messages, Saffy leaves her house and goes to pick up her son Fox and brings him home. Soon, within a few hours, two detective officers land up at Saffy’s house claiming that Leona, Ash and Rosie are missing and since Saffy was the last person they met, she had become a person of interest in the ongoing investigation.
From here begins an edge of the seat thriller that sees the troubled protagonist Saffy, battling her inner demons, her innate fears and worrying personality, taking upon herself to find Leona and Rosie. She finds innumerable setbacks as the police suspect all her intentions and regularly take her up for questioning. In the melee, there’s Saffy’s sister, Poppy who tries her best to help her, despite her constant scrutiny of Poppy’s life. There’s also Saffy’s ex-husband, Neil, who is more of an impediment than help in these trying times. As the events unfold at breakneck speed, Saffy and Poppy need to come to terms with a past trauma and Saffy, a secret, both of which threaten to disrupt their lives and Saffy’s relationship with everyone around her.
Message Deleted is a taut, crisp page turner that is engaging and suspenseful. K.L. Slater, a prolific psychological thriller novelist, has written an engrossing novel with fleshed out characters having skewed emotional arcs. The mystery and characters’ personal trajectories intermingle in a seamless way through the narrative. The climax, does have a jaw dropping moment but soon becomes a tad predictable. Nonetheless, Message Deleted, kept me hooked with its premise and comes highly recommended if you want a book to cozy up with for these chilly winter days.
Six astronauts are inside the International Space Station; Anton, Chie, Nell, Pietro, Roman and Shaun. The book is a snapshot of a day in the lives of the astronauts as they orbit the earth 16 times during the earthly 24 hours. They grapple with a sunrise every 90 minutes which remains juxtaposed against the indescribable ethereal beauty of the planet Earth. On this particular day, there is a catastrophic typhoon that is approaching the Philippines whose path the astronauts are feverishly trying to follow as they zoom in and out of their orbital planes. The typhoon and the anticipated destruction that it would leave in its wake often becomes a vague segue and at times literature’s metaphorical liberty to delve into the internal cosmos of the individual astronauts while they themselves remain scattered in the grand cosmos of all.
The book meticulously describes the space and how space stations orbit our planet without using any technical jargon. Earth in all its glory comes alive in the words of the author and simultaneously she transports us into the world of death and grief as one of the astronauts bemoans her mother’s death while the other, a dying relationship. Peering onto the earth, moving through the 16 orbits, the book provides a lingering, at times fleeting, but mostly a longing look at all the continents from the Americas to Antarctica, then getting more granular and microscopic as it describes the countries it crosses, all the lightness and darkness in the innumerable cities of these countries on our planet as they respond to the earthly sunrise and sunset which when observed whilst being suspended from a spacecraft can appear to be elliptically elegiac.
Samantha Harvey’s Orbital, winner of the 2024 Booker Prize, is a piece of literature that is here to let us know that books need not always be having a proverbial plot and a protagonist. Sometimes literature at its finest can be discombobulating, it can be nebulous, it can be meandering, but at the same time be a yardstick for a soulful sojourn across human lives and emotions which are unique, malleable, flawed and fascinating. Harvey’s ingenious writing can seem deceptively simple but every word of every sentence represents the complexities of the human existence when ironically the existence is now 250 miles away from the very planet that makes us human. This is a book that will stay with you for its indecipherable melancholy and literary gravitas as we continue to orbit the planes of living and existing.
Tara, is a reticent and docile girl, who grows up in Mangalore with her grandparents and a schizophrenic uncle. Her parents along with her younger brother, move to Dubai during her formative years leaving her with her grandparents despite her disapproval and reluctance. She grows up to becomes a journalist, works for the local newspaper and has an arranged marriage with Sanjay who lives in Atlanta. After the marriage, he leaves her behind in Mangalore and Tara is only able to meet him after three years once she herself goes there. Undeterred by the abandonment and the questionable intentions of Sanjay, Tara hopes for a blissful life in the US. However, all her hopes come crashing down, as Sanjay continues to ignore her, remains non communicative and disapproving of her likes, behaviour and even her friendship with a Russian girl, Alyona. Tara continues to tolerate his mercurial temperament, his gaslighting, his passive aggression which gradually morph into physical and verbal abuse. When her parents dismiss her concerns about Sanjay and instead ask her to compromise, she feels betrayed. One day, after a particularly violent incident, she leaves her house and Sanjay, and with the help of friends manages to start her life from scratch. Later on she meets Cyrus, who develops feelings for her, as does Tara; but her unresolved past issues come to wreck havoc in her new oasis and she doesn’t stop short of self sabotaging everything that is loving and deserving of her.
Purple Lotus is an intense meditation on abandonment and shame. Through Tara, the author has portrayed how these emotions overpower our lives until a resolution is achieved. Brushing them aside, never makes them go away, rather they always come back with a vengeance in the most vulnerable of times. Tara is made to feel guilty by her parents for choosing her freedom from an abusive marriage. She carries this shame and countless other moments of shame from her growing up years, till it snowballs into a disaster that is ready to upend her life. Unbeknownst to Tara, others’ disappointment in her for her actions, and her constant longing for their approval, makes her tied to them in an emotionally calamitous way. However, through her self-actualisation which is indeed painful and unpleasant, the author shows us all that, there is always the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.
Veena Rao’s debut work, Purple Lotus, is a poignant and urgent read on abuse, domestic violence and its unsettling impact on the victims. Though the language is easy to read and engaging, the story does hit you hard. Through this book, she highlights the various ways in which abuse can present itself and it necessarily needn’t be physical and torturous. She also makes an emphatic case for gross emotional abuse that is often disregarded not just by the victim but by the people close to her. The narrative does a sharp commentary on how Indian parents especially ignore their daughters’ call to distress and instead of comforting and supporting them, often reprimand them for even having such thoughts.
2024 is coming to an end and Indian women are still fighting off abuse and striving for an equal stance in a marriage. Indian men are very easily given the benefit of doubt, let off the hook even in grave circumstances and celebrated for just being in the relationship. The fact that nobody questions them and challenges their innate chauvinism and misogyny, sometimes deceptively disguised as feminism and hence difficult to decode, has created this dictatorial monster that is soon becoming a monolith of unwavering patriarchy.
That’s why we need to read this book, Purple Lotus.
Alma Cruz is a successful writer in the US. Even with all her fame and wealth, she constantly has this gnawing sensation that something’s missing. One day she decides to move from Vermont to her homeland, Dominican Republic, in the pursuit of peace and happiness. This decision is met with a lot of opposition and criticism from her other three sisters. Nonetheless, she moves to her country and decides to open a cemetery in the backyard of her house. When the locals hear about this oddity of a plan, they gossip, eavesdrop and even scramble to secure a job at this cemetery only to know that this cemetery would be for all the unfinished manuscripts and stories that Alma as a writer began earnestly but could never finish.
To bring this cemetery to fruition, she hires an architect who starts building sculptures of the people beside the graves where their stories lay buried. To do the upkeep of the cemetery and maintain the house, Alma also hires Filomena from the neighbourhood. As Filomena starts working at the cemetery, the sculptures start coming to life and start telling their stories. Bienvenida talks about her distraught life, her troubled marriage with the dictator el Jefe (Trujillo), his second marriage to his mistress because of Bienvenida’s miscarriages, his decision to exile her, the premeditated reconciliation during the exile that leads to Bienvenida’s pregnancy, and later forcibly separating the daughter from her under the pretext of a safe and secure upbringing. Filomena too starts chatting about her life, the feud with her sister Perla, the unconditional love for her nephew Pepito, the estrangement between the sisters and a recent tragedy that forces understanding between them. As the stories intermingle, and the characters real and unreal get candid with their lives, we soon realise that these stories aren’t separate, instead are interconnected.
Alma comes across as a stoic, independent, intelligent woman who remains resilient through her unconventional choices. She straddles her immigrant identity, the realities of being Dominican American and the belongingness to her Dominican heritage. She oscillates between the rights and the wrongs, but remains resolute with her decision, no matter the consequences. Filomena, is a harbinger of unconditional love despite a tedious and lonely life. Others’ selfishness never extinguishes the selflessness that’s inherent in her. Bienvenida’s docility and fragility shouldn’t be mistaken as her personality for they tend to overshadow her grit and perseverance.
Julia Alvarez’s latest book, The Cemetery of untold stories, was my pick for September’s Hispanic Heritage Month. Julia is a poet, novelist and essayist and is regarded as one of the most significant contemporary Latina writers. The book is unique not just because of its plot line that indulges in magical realism but also the language and writing style. Spanish is generously interspersed with English, to the extent that I thought the book was written in Span-glish (if that could be a word!), which I thoroughly enjoyed. The author has taken her time to build the story, she has let the characters grow with the story; almost as if one is uplifting the other in a surreal symbiosis. There’s also an interesting queer character in the book. Dominican culture, geography and politics form an integral part of the narrative and Alvarez proudly flaunts all its naïveté and nicety.
The Cemetery of untold stories is Julia Alvarez’s allegory to letting go and providing oneself the proverbial closure to everything that has remained incomplete and insufficient. Quite poetic, indeed!
Ruchira Gupta, journalist, activist, Emmy award winning documentarian, has written this ‘social justice adventure novel’ that celebrates hope even in the pit of despair. Heera, the fourteen year old girl protagonist in the book, lives in the red light district of Forbesganj, Bihar that borders Nepal. Her entire life, she has witnessed women being forced into prostitution, tortured and brutally abused. Since she belongs to the Nat tribe where there is intergenerational prostitution, her father is keen for her to carry on with this abominable tradition. While Heera vehemently opposes this, and is keen to pursue education, she faces innumerable struggles and ostracism at her school due to her caste and where she comes from. Her mother and her brother Salman remain her only support system. But one day, when she is expelled from her school and the threat of her being sold off as a prostitute at a local fair starts becoming more real, she seeks help from Rini Di who runs a girls hostel. Rini is actively fighting prostitution in the locality while taking on all the big names who are involved in this global trafficking racket. She also is providing a safe haven to the rescued girls and survivors. She imparts kung fu training to them and Heera soon becomes proficient in it, which slowly changes the entire trajectory of her life.
The book is a gritty retelling of the horrific realities of child trafficking and human trafficking that abound our cities, towns and villages. While we often turn a blind eye to this grim actuality, Ruchira Gupta has made it her life’s mission to rescue and rehabilitate the vulnerable women survivors; and she does it through her Nonprofit organisation, Apne Aap. The story too is inspired by real life events and characters, and while it begins on a very hopeless note, she sees to it that as it progresses, hopelessness keeps turning into hopefulness, and the proverbial hope just doesn’t remain an elusive dream but something real that can be claimed, built and asserted, even when all odds are against you.
Not just Heera, the narrative is peppered with various strong women characters such as Mai, Azra and Mira Di. The book celebrates resilience, determination, sisterhood and the joys of conviviality, friendship and community. While we feel shame in even uttering the word prostitution and prostitute; the women survivors of this profession are now looking us in the eye and demanding their rightful respect and dignity. Ruchira Gupta is helping countless such women to regain their self respect and this book, ‘I kick and I fly’ is just another resounding message for the same.
Sashi is an earnest, young girl full of hope and aspirations, dreaming of becoming a doctor and serving her people in Jaffna. Her family consists of her parents and four brothers. The eldest, Niranjan is already a doctor and dotes on her, constantly encouraging her to study so that she can crack her exams. Seelan and Dayalan, have natural political inclinations and often engage in charged rhetoric. Aran is subdued and wanting a simple and peaceful life. However, it’s 1981 and life in Jaffna is never peaceful. The Tamils are facing crackdown and oppression from the government resulting in a growing dissent and uprising. Niranjan disappears during one such riots in Colombo; their grandmother’s house gets torched to ashes by violent zealots while Sashi and Ammammah escape and endure a perilous and arduous journey back to Jaffna. These events prompt Seelan and Dayalan to join the militant group, Tamil Tigers, who now have taken control of whole of Jaffna. As the government and Tamil Tigers engage in skirmishes, Sashi gets admission to a medical school. There, persuaded by her friend K, joins the Tigers’ field hospital and starts treating their cadres as well as civilians. At her college she comes across her professor who soon becomes her mentor and confidante, Anjali. However, with the political situation becoming increasingly volatile and dangerous, she loses Seelan and Dayalan to the movement; Anjali gets abducted and Aran decides to emigrate. Sashi is gripped by her righteous rage and beliefs, and faces the predicament of whether she should stay back or join Aran and how her future now depends on this very important decision.
The book is a breathless, often claustrophobic account of Sashi’s difficult choices, her internal struggles as she oscillates between interests and intentions, her emotional turmoils as she navigates loss and grief, and her mental prowess dealing with hope and hopelessness. Sashi as a character is an unassuming force to reckon with. The narrative also takes us on a journey of Sri Lanka’s political quagmire, the helplessness of Tamil civilians as they are caught between the militant groups, the government and the Indian Peace Keeping Force. Massacre ensues as places and people get bombed, and depression looms large at every turn.
Brotherless Night, winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2024, is a historical fiction written so brilliantly, that it is unsettling and uncomfortable. The gifted author, V. V. Ganeshananthan, builds the restlessness of the characters, as they encounter death and dilemmas and keeps the book unrelentingly atmospheric. The writing is compelling and persuasive, peppered with Tamil words. Tamil culture, cuisine and traditions get the requisite mention throughout the book. There are moments of such literary brilliance in the book; the scene where Sashi’s docile mother emerges as the proverbial phoenix and leads an uprising against the government along with a group of fierce, inspiring women; the dialogues between Anjali and Sashi as they contemplate the movement, the militants and their pursuit and purpose; as also the extremely unnerving and shocking medical examination scene of a rape victim, brutalised by the Indian Peace Keeping Force.
Brotherless Night will disturb you and it should. It is a complex catastrophic story of survival amidst doom and despair. The ingenuity of the author is such that despite the barbarism and violence on display, humanity finds its place; in the thoughts, conversations and actions of its various characters. This is literature at its finest; V. V. Ganeshananthan, its proud torchbearer.
Sudan, is one of the poorest countries in Africa, and has been afflicted by repeated revolutions, civil wars and military dictatorships leading to international sanctions and isolation, internal instability and factional violence. Sudan achieved independence on 1st January 1956 from Egyptian and British colonisation. The partition of Sudan happened in 2011 and South Sudan was formed in July 2011. The war in Darfur was a major armed conflict in Sudan from 2003 to 2020, akin to a genocide, leading to hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties and deaths, brutal rapes and various other horrific human rights violations.
This novella, my pick for Women in Translation Month, is an anthology of short stories, set in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan. These stories offer a contemporary outlook on Sudan but often replete with the issues plaguing Sudanese people such as poverty, insecurity and safety. The first story, titled ‘Thirteen months of Sunrise’, is about a bittersweet friendship between a Sudanese woman and an Ethiopian man; also why Ethiopia has thirteen months! The other stories that stood out were, ‘A woman asleep on her Bundle’, that spoke about a woman’s benevolence despite her abject poverty and hence forced ostracism; ‘Stray Steps’, that portrayed a diabetic woman’s ordeal with hunger and hypoglycaemia and how stray dogs come to her rescue; and ‘Doors’, a story about an unemployed man’s hope of securing a job only to be left despondent and indignant.
Rania Mamoun is a Sudanese fiction writer and journalist, known for her novels, poems and short stories. The book which has been translated from Arabic into English by Elisabeth Jaquette, won the Pen Translates Award in 2017 and was also shortlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation 2020.
The ongoing civil war that began during Ramadan on 15th April, 2023, between the two rival factions of the military government of Sudan, has been concentrated around the capital city of Khartoum and the Darfur region. The country is facing one of the most severe humanitarian crises in recent history. According to the UN, UNHCR and Amnesty International; over 18,800 people have been killed; 6.7 million are at risk of gender-based violence, particularly women and girls; 755k people are on the brink of famine and 25.6 million people are in acute hunger that includes more than 8.5 million people facing emergency levels of hunger. Over 10 million people have been forced to flee their homes both within the country and across its borders; out of which over 7.7 million are internally displaced persons; as the devastating civil war heads for its 500th day.
Sudan, Gaza, DR Congo, Burkina Faso, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Yemen, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Haiti, Manipur. The world in 2024.
Molly Gray is back. She’s socially awkward, fails to understand the world around her, misses the obvious, has a keen eye for the unobvious and has a flair for the English language. She’s now the Head Maid at the Regency Grand Hotel, has a loving relationship with her boyfriend Juan and has again become entangled in another scandalous murder. J. D. Grimthorpe, an award winning mystery writer, is supposed to make a big announcement and has booked the hotel’s Tea room for the event. The room is packed to the rafters with journalists, media professionals, photographers and eager fan club members. Grimthorpe takes the stage, sips his tea on stage and drops dead. Lily, a maid-in-training under Molly was responsible for arranging his tea cart and had handed him the tea in front of everyone. Detective Stark is tasked with solving this mystery and again Molly becomes her unlikely partner.
It’s a very simple murder mystery and the author presents various characters as suspects including Grimthorpe’s secretary, Serena Sharpe; Hotel’s manager Mr. Snow and even Mr. Preston, the kind grandfather figure in the life of Molly who continues to dote on her. The happenings in the book are fast paced and this time around the author provides substantial backstory on Molly’s childhood growing up with her Gran. Molly continues to fight the social odds stacked against her and with her grit, perseverance, unassuming intelligence and cheeky wit cracks this murder too.
For all those who have read Nita Prose’s debut book, The Maid, which for the first time introduced us to Molly, this second book, doesn’t disappoint. Through Molly, the author drives home the message that, everybody deserves to be seen and no one should be underestimated because of their appearance or background. Nita has created a world of hope and optimism, while Molly brings in the beauty in her oddity.
Katharina is a nineteen year old girl living in East Berlin. Hans is a fifty plus gentleman, a novelist and working for a local broadcaster, also living in East Berlin. The year is 1986. The Berlin Wall is intact. Katharina and Hans have a romantic meet cute and soon start dating each other. She gets completely besotted with Hans and turns a blind eye to his behaviours and transgressions. Hans is a married man and has a son. He has various extramarital relationships while being married to Ingrid. Katharina is aware of his philandering ways but is too consumed by his charm, his sex appeal, his taste in music, art and books to even subconsciously register it as a concern. When Katharina goes away to Frankfurt an der Oder for a year, for a theatre internship, she develops a close friendship with her colleague Vadim. He has feelings for Katharina and after multiple romantic and sexual advances from his side, one fine day, they end up having sex. Through one of the loose pages of her diary, Hans finds out about this affair and mayhem ensues.
Hans is mortified by Katharina’s behaviour and leaves no stone unturned in punishing her. He emotionally abuses her, threatens to end the relationship and even violates her sexually. He periodically records his disdain and hatred for her as cassettes, both sides, 60 minutes each and expects her to answer him. The verbal abuse meted out through these recordings is excruciating. Katharina continues to soothe his chauvinism and misplaced anger by dutifully listening to these recordings, genuinely begging for his forgiveness, despite the repeated attacks on her character and morality. The relentless oppression makes Katharina question the love if it exists between them, even forcing her to self censor at times, but is never able to end the relationship. She continues to suffer because she feels, she deserves it and Hans continues with his torture routine, because he believes, she deserves it.
At the same time, Germany is in the midst of the Cold War. The tensions between East and West Berlin continue to escalate. The political situation becomes volatile and chaotic leading to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Soon after the fall, it almost seems like an erasure of East Berlin as the West with its wealth and capitalism takes over, leaving no traces of what was once before, the people and the city. These developments run parallel to Katharina and Hans’ relationship, being metaphorical at times; creating an atmosphere of foreboding and unease.
This isn’t a love story, but a story about control. Hans wanted total control over Katharina’s mind and body under the garb of love, but the moment it faltered, control easily metamorphosed into misogyny and toxic masculinity, also under the garb of love. Katharina is groomed by Hans since the beginning of the relationship and because of her tender age and his towering seniority gets moulded into believing the necessity for her suffering because of her indiscretion, prompting acquiescence. At some point, as a reader, you wonder if Katharina wanted to sabotage herself and her happiness by being in this relationship. She represents millions of women worldwide who suffer through such sexist bullying and exploitation, because they aren’t aware of their worth, and of a life outside of emotional captivity.
Jenny Erpenbeck, a prolific German author and opera director, is the first German writer to win the International Booker Prize for Kairos, which is also the first novel originally written in German to win the award. Kairos has been written with a lot of consideration for German politics, the history and the societal structure of East and West Berlin. The book also makes a poignant case for ‘love bombing’ and ‘breadcrumbing’ in relationships. Erpenbeck takes us on Katharina’s traumatic journey of abuse without sugarcoating it. As a reader, you squirm and feel frustrated for Katharina and I wondered, if she felt ennui in Hans’ narcissism. Music, art and theatre play a significant part of the narrative and the author delves deep into them through conversations between the protagonists. Michael Hofmann, a German poet and translator, who shared the International Booker Prize with Erpenbeck, has done an exacting translation of the original.
Kairos is a multilayered sensory experience. The story and the politics kept me intrigued and exasperated simultaneously. Chopin’s Nocturne and Polonaise seem perfect for part one of the book, while Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier and Goldberg Variations blend in seamlessly with the second and Mozart’s Symphony is the ideal score for the climax. Read the book with these musical masterpieces in the background! I am definitely doing a reread.
the shiny diaries 