Funny Boy Shyam Selvadurai 1994 Penguin pp. 316 Funny Boy is the story of a young boy who comes to terms with his personal and social context as he matures into adolescence. The novels revolves around his childhood and adolescence in Sri Lanka. Set in the context of civil war during the 1980s, the story…
A River in Darkness: One Man’s Escape from North Korea Masaji Ishakawa (trns. Risa Kobayashi and Martin Brown) 2000 Amazon Crossing pp. 159 The book descibes the life of Ishikawa. Born in Japan to a North Korean father and a Japanese mother, Ishikawa was not yet an adult when he migrated to North Korea along…
How the Zebra Got Its Stripes (And Other Darwinian Just So Stories) Leo Grasset (trans. Barbara Mellor) 2016 Hachette, Profile Books pp. 154 I picked up this book as part of Hachette India’s bookstagram challenge during the COVID lockdown, currently in progress. This lockdown has had many effects including giving me even lesser time for…
Har Kahaani Kuch Kehti Hai (Hindi) Avdhesh Joshi 2020 Notion Press pp. 122 The book is a collection of short stories that revolve around young adult concerns of love, career and friendship. The stories are set in tier two and tier three settings of India. The language is simple and suits the characters that form…
The Unspeakable Joy of Less: Discover your Path to Radiant Joy, Unshakable Peace and Deeply Satisfying Liberation Tabata Yukio and Joyce Fung 2018 CreateSpace pp. 108 Another one in the life management, self help genre, this one is in line with what I have been trying to change in my own life. The book is…
To-Do List Formula: A Stress-Free Guide To Creating To-Do Lists That Work! Damon Zahariades 2016 Createspace pp. 109 I picked up this book in a moment of desperation to become more organised coupled with the frustration at not being able to find time to work. Combining the two, I cheated myself into believing that reading…
Musafir Dil Srinath Chaudhary 2020 Big Foot publication pp. 309 It took me a month to get back to books and a week to write the review. It is quite disconcerting ! There is more work than there is time to read and the first two months of 2020 have been very disappointing with reference…
The Lively Library and An Unlikely Romance Niranjan Navalgund 2016 Readomania pp. 96 The Lively Library… is a novella that uses animism to create a narrative of books coming to life. A young man inherits a library and sets it up despite his wishes to the contrary. He and other library members are unaware that…
21 Lessons for the 21st Century Yuval Noah Harari 2018 Penguin pp. 352 This book presents Harari’s vision for what lies in the future. He covers a variety of themes ranging from advancements in biotechnology, warfare, world politics, employment opportunities and changes in political and personal spaces. It is an interesting read. At some places,…
Janta Store Naveen Chaudhary 2018 Radhakrishnan Publication pp. 300 Janta Store is a story of three friends written in first person narrative of one of the three protagonists. The story revolves around the three friends’ experiences in college, hostels, and coffee shops. Much of the story revolves around university politics. A thinner, parallel strand revolves…
