Reading between the lines

Took close to a month to read this 560 page epic. Had to re-read some parts as I didn't fully grasp what it was about until I almost finished reading it. Too Far Afield is very similar to Grass' other books like Tin Drum or Crabwalk, that deals with German history, and how Germans try to come to terms with their own rather colourful past. The book goes through almost two hundred years of German history starting from the early eighteen hundreds to the late nineteen eighties when the Berlin wall fell and Germany was reunited. The book is told from the perspective of two main characters - Theo Wuttke, an author and intellectual, and Ludwig Hoftaller, an officer of the secret police. The title of the book gets it's name from the German novel Effi Briest by Theodore Fontaine. This sentence is found before the beginning of the book: "...and Briest said queitly, 'Oh, Luise, let it be...that takes us too far afield.'" And then for a long time nothing more. The sil...

 Over the past year, I read a few books written by African authors and after having completed the fourth one, I thought it is time to write a blog post about them. In sequence, they were Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, The Devil that Danced on the Water by Aminatta Forna, Black Moses by Alain Mabanckou and Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah. All of them beautifully written and in some ways deeply moving. Initially, I thought of writing a blog to compare them, but I realized that Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe was a masterpiece that deserved a dedicated post. So this post is all about this gem. I have tried my best to remove any spoilers and extract isolated quotes without giving away the plot. But for those who like what they read, it would be advisable to stop before reaching the end of the blog post, as it might become obvious how the book will end. The book is rich with tribal culture, their beliefs, their closeness to nature and also shows the brutality of tribal life wi...

My second book by Kazuo Ishiguro after The Remains of the Day. Written in the usual style of Ishiguro with beautiful but simple language and leaves you with unanswered questions. The book is about Artificial Friends (AFs) – robots with ability to understand human emotion besides the usual speech and mobility. These AFs are for “lifted children” – those who have been genetically altered to enhance their intelligence. The practice of lifting by then had become fairly common to the extent that many elite universities had closed their doors to those who had not been lifted. However, lifting comes at a cost – leaves the children weak and mortality rates are high. And of course, there is damned if you do damned if you don’t scenario for parents – should they lift their children in the hope for better opportunities and risk losing them or should they let them be? SPOILER ALERT, if you have not read it and would rather not know what it is about before you read it, stop reading right now. It ...

A heartbreaking story based on real events surrounding a murder case in the 1800s with the accused being Grace Marks. The story as told by Margaret Atwood is however a work of fiction retold using the same places and dates as the actual story. As I read the book, I thought of a Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. The story begins with Grace Marks as a child in Ireland. Her father an abusive alcoholic and her mother bearing children after children, the family is supported to some extent by Grace’s aunt and uncle. Finally fed up of supporting this ever-growing family, the uncle suggests a migration to Canada and to their luck, Grace’s father has been getting into some trouble with the law due to which he takes up the proposition. Unfortunately, Grace’s mother dies on the journey and is buried at sea. Grace later regrets using her mother’s second best blanket to wrap her dead body. Coming to Canada, life gets a bit better as she finds herself a maid in a...

This was the first book of Iris Murdoch’s that I read and might be the last. For some reason, Iris Murdoch’s quotes appeared quite a few times within one week (perhaps it was her birthday some day that week) on some Facebook page on literature that I had subscribed to. The book was quite a disappointment set in London among a group of friends and family. Almost like a soap opera, everyone had slept with almost everyone else, and the ones whom they had not slept with, they were deeply in love with. As always, spoiler alert. Stop here if you don’t want to know any part of the story. Not too far into the book, a fairly interesting part does turn up. There are two brothers Lucas and Clement. Lucas was initially adopted by their parents who had given up hope on having their own child. But after several years, they do indeed have their own – Clement. Initially, Lucas was the focus of all their love and attention but once Clement was born, the parents apparently diverted ...

For some reason I have been putting off reading this book for a long time and I never watched the movie because it seemed so “colonial English”. A lot of the book is quite mundane and about the ways of the English thinking adorably of the “British empire”. The book is a sad story if not an outright tragedy about dedicating your life to the wrong causes and the wrong people. The main character is Stevens who is the butler at Darlington Hall and spent most of his life serving Lord Darlington. The lord eventually dies and the house has been bought by an American as after the second world war, it was the Americans who grabbed most of the spoils. The American doesn’t entertain as often as Darlington did and for that matter spends most of his time in America leaving large parts of Darlington Hall under wraps and with a skeletal staff on duty to maintain the house. Under these diminished circumstances, the butler Stevens recollects nostalgic memories of old times and even...

This is a book of Nikos Kazantzakis that I found a bit disappointing but then I guess the book was set in a gloomy time in the history of Crete. An island occupied by Turkey but with Greek ancestry, it is about the freedom struggle of Crete. Crete has seen several uprisings and the book is set probably towards the end of the 1800s or the early 1900s just before the First World War. The book takes the reader through the uprising, how it started, the feeling that culminated in fighting and the foregone conclusion. As usual, spoiler alerts. At the heart of the novel is Captain Michales who is like the Braveheart in this novel. A humorless man, he feels nothing but pain and agony with Crete being occupied. He has fought in a previous uprising and survived. Was given amnesty and safe passage to escape to Greece but refused to go. “Freedom or Death” was his slogan. And eventually his agony causes him to begin the fighting by provoking the Turks. After a few retaliations,...

An absolutely brilliantly written book by Coetzee, this is a sequel to the book “Childhood of Jesus”. Set in a utopian land with strong socialist laws – guaranteed employment, lifelong learning opportunities, and you name it, it attempts to break open the cracks in even such a utopian society. As always, spoiler alerts. The main characters – Simon, Ines and David, have come to this strange land on a ship. They first come to a city called Novella in the first part of the sequel. It turns out David is not related to Simon or Ines, but Simon decides to look after the boy David and reunite him with his mother. David’s mother is not Ines, but in a manner similar to Simon, decides to play the role of mother to David. As they try to enroll David in school, they find that David is either autistic or has learning disabilities, and the authorities try to put him in a special school. This is when the imperfections in this utopian society begin to show. Until then, Simon and Ines were given jobs ...

One of the best books by Philip Roth that I have read - far better than “The human stain” and “Exit Ghost”. "His skull looked so fragile and small now. Yet within it were cradled ninety of the past. There was a great deal in there. All the dead were there, for one thing, their deeds and their misdeeds converging with all the unanswerable questions, those things about which you can never be sure ... to produce for him an exacting task: to reckon fairly, to tell his story without too much error." The book is narrated in the first person by the reclusive author Nathan Zuckerman who in turn hears a narration of a story by Murray Ringold his revered high school English teacher. But the central character of the story is Ira Ringold the younger brother of Murray who was to a large extent Nathan's adopted father. Nathan believed he was Ira's protégé but towards the end of the book he realizes it was the converse - it was Ira who was adopted by Nathan. ...

I don’t read much nowadays which is something I regret. Besides my day job, I have several side projects and rarely do I have my evenings free. The only time I am able to read is when I am traveling. On a recent road trip to Toronto, I was able to read “The Red-Haired Woman” by Orhan Pamuk. If you are reading this, please note this warning “Spoiler alert!”. This post will give away what happens in the book, so if that stops you from reading a book, please go no further! Despite the title, the book is about father-son relationships. The book portrays Cem from his boyhood years until his middle age when he is murdered. As a boy, Cem’s father was largely absent, either because he was arrested due to his left-wing political activities or because he was a womanizer. Though he resents his father for the hardship he and his mother had to endure, his feelings for his father don’t border on hatred. His father was not a hard man and was never harsh to him or his mother. As a...

Though not much might be in common between these two men and their principal works, I found these two books and the men who wrote them greatly admirable. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, a crusader against the caste system in India, a man born in the lowest caste and attained the highest educational degrees despite being denied opportunities to learn, he is a symbol to so many Indians and yet quite sadly still looked down upon by upper caste India. Niccolo Machiavelli, who held public office in turbulent times in Italy, was forced out of office due to a change of regime but spent his days in exile writing The Prince in th hope of gaining favour with the new regime and getting his position back. Both were great thinkers, visionaries, way ahead of their time and quite sadly both men died disappointed and bitter. Ambedkar was never able to see the caste system set aside and Machiavelli never got his position back and Italy was as divided as ever. Annihilation of Case: What rep...