Category: Book reviews
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Review | Partition, Borders and Refuge: Reflections on Gulzar’s Novel Two (2017)
They say a picture speaks a 1000 words. But the author Gulzar would say that memories speak infinite. In his book “Two”, he elucidates on the haunting memories of the refugees and their endless search for a home. One the occasion of Partition Remembrance Day and Independence Day, our correspondent Priyam reviews and reflects on… Read More
3–5 minutes
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Review | Learn to die, you learn to live | Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
In a world obsessed with hustle, Morrie Schwartz taught Mitch Albom to pause. To cry. To forgive. To love. And to do it all with open hands. Read this review of Tuesdays with Morrie by our correspondent Roshni Ramanan. She promises that this book will change how you look at love, loss and all things… Read More
4–5 minutes
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Review | Words of Power – Babel, or the Necessity of Violence, by R. F. Kuang
Kuang masterfully navigates these questions while proposing another viewpoint – when all you have known is the grace of the colonizer protecting you from death, when what he has given you is security and peace, how do you still choose the world over your safety? By weaving a thought-provoking narrative, Kuang pitches to us what… Read More
3–4 minutes
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Review | Prophet Song by Paul Lynch
The Prophet Song by Paul Lynch depicts the journey of a family as they navigate through a war-struck Ireland. The Prophet song was awarded the Man Booker Prize in 2023. Worthy of the prize, the book perfectly captures the idea of a dystopian society. It is worth the read purely because of the author’s brilliance… Read More
6–8 minutes
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Review | Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Kawaguchi’s characters, while telling tales of hope and emotional growth, are also representative of certain moral positions. The four stories have a moral message to send, for instance, placing filial piety above individualism. Read More
3–5 minutes
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Review | A story narrated by Death. | The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
‘The Book Thief’ opens with a shockingly mundane statement – ‘Here is a small fact: You are going to die.’ And the crux lies not so much in the statement but in who says it. Of all the aspects that make a book impactful, the perspective in which the book is presented to the readers… Read More
7–10 minutes
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Review | The Illicit Happiness of Other People by Manu Joseph
What makes a father ponder about his son’s life three years after his suicide? When Ousep Chacko finds the last cartoon his son drew, he restarts his journey for clues about Unni’s death. From this point, the story slowly unravels the life of Unni Chacko, a seventeen year old talented cartoonist who had jumped from… Read More
4–6 minutes
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Review | Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
— Gowri Raj Varma Today morning, I woke up to the smell of rain and decided that I simply had to read. It had been months since I’d finished a work of fiction even though my bookshelf has been fully stacked. I decided to go down the good-old Libgen/Z Library route, scouring through its catalogues Read More
5–7 minutes
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Review | Persuasion by Jane Austen
— Neha Cherian Not long ago, Netflix earned the dubious distinction of precipitating an unprecedented spike in the global demand for smelling salts with what can only be described as a truly horrific adaptation of Persuasion. The New Yorker sagely observed that “Fans of Austen’s novels often respond to new adaptations by following an Austenian playbook. Read More
4–7 minutes
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Review | The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
Reading the book is, in some ways, like watching a baby take its first steps. It takes some time for the narrative to steady, but once it does there is really no going back. Read More
4–6 minutes
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