LitPundit Home of all things literary

I just read Albert Camus’ "The Plague" - Camus being Camus, I was ready for a slow read , but after part I (the book is divided into five parts), I could hardly put the book down. Consequently, I am done - in the literal sense of the word. But perhaps, not really. Even after starting on my next book, I feel my thoughts returning to the life and choices of the characters of The Plague.

For the uninitiated, The Plague is an account of life in Oran, a city in Algeria that finds itself, rather unexpectedly, in the middle of a deadly epidemic. The book follows the reactions of various individuals as well as the collective, as they progress through the various stages of the plague. I am not sure I would call it an existential classic, but it definitely does a phenomenal job of examining the absurdity of life, its irrationality and human reactions to anything that they have no control over.

One of the emotions that Camus paints beautifully, especially in the early stages of the plague, is the feeling of exile. The town walls have been closed and almost all means of communication have been stopped. Telegrams have...

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The first sentence of "The Outsider"/"The Stranger" (from the French L’Étranger) is one of the most catching and enigmatic of the first sentences I have read, but what caught me more was the last part of the last sentence of the book.

(...) my last wish was that there sould be a crowd of spectators at my execution and that they should greet me with cries of hatred.

The 'weirdness' of the sentence summarises the tone and depth of Albert Camus's novel, often classified as existential. The novel examines the life of Meursault who ends up committing a murder and is waiting to be executed. During the trial he seems to be persecuted more for not feeling sorrow that his mother has passed away recently or that he had not cried at the funeral, an entirely normal occurrence as far as Meursaulti is concerned, than for killing a man.

It is one of those classic novels that has been analysed and reviewed to death and I am not going to add to that list. "The Outsider" seems to be one of those books (like "Atlas Shrugged") that formed the staple diet of boys and girls during their growing up...

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Everyman is a rather depressing narrative about an old man coming face to face with his physical vulnerabilities and eventually, his own mortality. The book opens with a funeral scene at a run-down Jewish cemetery, where the protagonist's family is gathered for his funeral. The beginning sets the tone for the rest of the book. At times, it seems to be a never ending narrative of someone's predictably uninteresting medical history. There is not much that even the best of writers can do to make hernia followed by appendicitis followed by carotid artery surgery and angioplasty and six stents interesting. At other times, it is his attempts to come to terms with the life he had lived, for the decisions he made, for the family he could have had.

Perhaps, this is where I let my own personal judgment cloud the literary appreciation of the book, but I just couldn't identify with the protagonist enough to appreciate his worries, anxieties and vulnerabilities. A womanizer who leaves his first wife and two resentful sons for a woman, who by his own admission, was his perfect companion, whom he leaves again to marry a Danish model nearly 20 years his junior,...

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It had been a long time since I had finished a book in one sitting, until I read Mohsin Hamid's recently published The Reluctant Fundamentalist. It would be easy to attribute it to the rather short length of the novel, but it is much more than that. The narrative makes you feel like part of a conversation, part of a setting that is highly captivating even while being complex, which you just don't want to peel yourself away from. The protagonist, Changez, is involved in a monologue with someone who seems to be an American visiting Lahore. And as Changez captivates his audience and keeps him in his seat through the long evening, you find yourself listening in, enthralled.

I must admit that when I first read the synopsis on the back jacket of the book, I wasn't that excited about reading it. After all, it seemed to be one of the several post 9/11 novels that seem to be sprouting up around the themes of immigrant identity and allegiance in the context of America's changing international relations. But what makes this book different? It has to be the powerful and engaging voice and the complexity of the...

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Have you ever felt that everything that was happening was preordained, that every action, there, at that time was carefully thought out by an invisible mind in order to lead to a grand finale? I had not, until I read River of Gods by Ian McDonald and it upset me because I wished the book could do much more than fit back every piece of a jigsaw puzzle that was removed after numbering the assembled pieces.

River of Gods looks at what once was India, far in to the past (or is it?) when it has been divided into smaller countries in a world where water is the new precious commodity. Monsoon rained three years ago. The AIs have grown to such a level of sophistication that it has become difficult, if not impossible to distinguish them from humans. Countries, including USA are trying to pass Hamilton Acts, banning all AIs beyond a certain level of sophistication from being used. In return for their support of this bill USA is backing the move of one state Awadh to build a dam over Ganga, leaving the downstream neighbor Bharat gittery. And oh, something unusual has been discovered in the outer space...

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As a child I, like most Indian kids, used to get a larger than usual dose of fantasy stories thanks to national obsession with Mahabharata, the longest epic poem in the world. Back then it was just a long story with Gods and demons, incredible weapons and wars and ever so often a moral lesson on how to lead your life. When we grew older, the fantasy angle seemed childish and was left completely ignored while we went off searching for the deep truth s and philosophies buried inside the epic. Embarrassed for no reason, I refused to read any more stories labeled 'Fantasy'. It didn't help that the novels that I glanced at on rare ocassions were turgid piece of work that I promptly put down before someone caught me reading them. Then someone recommended The Lord of the Ring (mind you, long before the movie came out) and I surprised myself by finishing the trilogy in a week or so. Sadly no other work captivated me after that, that is until I started reading Rothfuss's debut fantasy "The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle: Day One)".

It was night again. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and...

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The Attack traces the story of Dr. Amin Jafaari, an Arab surgeon who lives with his beautiful wife, Sihem, in one of the exclusive neighborhoods in Tel Aviv. Highly successful in his professional life and well liked by his friends, Dr. Jafaari is a poster boy for successful integration. Until that eventful day, when he was woken up in the middle of the night to identify the body of his beloved wife, who was killed in a bomb blast.

I've seen mutilated bodies in my life. I have patched up dozens of them. I've seen some so badly damaged it was impossible to identify them. But the shredded limbs on the table in front of me pass all understanding. This is horror in its most absolute ugliness....Only Sihem's head, strangely spared by the devastation that ravaged the rest of her body, emerges from the mass, the eyes closed, the mouth open a little, the features calm, as though liberated from the suffering....I could think that she's peacefully sleeping, that she's going to open her eyes any minute and smile at me.

What follows is the shocking revelation that his wife was not just killed in the blast, she was in...

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Has any character in a book you have read recently so frustrated you that, you felt the urge to plunge your hand into the depths of the pages and give him/her a good shake/whack? I had my moments while reading Edna Mazya's "Love Burns". Ilan Ben Nathan, the character that took shelter in the pages and escaped my wrath, could be mistaken for a human version of Marvin the Paranoid Android. At least the paranoia and depression has certainly seeped through!

... I can't wait for him to go so that I can be alone and fall with my heavy load into the pit of despair and loathing and guilt, which is the only place where I feel at home.

Ilan, an astrophysics professor at Technion Institute of Technology, in Haifa is married to Naomi, almost half his age. It doesn't help his chronic insecurity that he feels Naomi is too pretty for him and things go into a a tailspin when Ilan follows Naomi on one of her secretive outings and realises that she is having an affair. Ilan, unable to handle the development head on, relapses into smoking and his dependence on Valium increases.... Continue reading

What better book could I have chosen to take with me on my holidays than Margaret Atwood's "The Tent" - it offers the best food for thought for one to lie on a warm sunny beach, stare into the wide open ocean and philosophize about life.

The Tent is a wonderful collection of Atwood's work - not just stories and poems, but also a few original illustrations to accompany them. The stories are a tribute to imagination, where Atwood masterfully tackles a wide range of issues with disarmingly charming narratives. In true Atwoodian fashion, some pieces could be described as abstract - leaving you with a feeling of staring into a famous work at a modern art museum and wondering whether what you see is indeed what the writer intended. But that these stories leave some room for the reader to interpret adds a distinctive appeal to them.

The book starts with a masterpiece, 'Lifestories', where a writer working on her life story discovers the virtue of editing. She seems to have used this virtue of scissors throughout the book, leaving most of the stories with a lean and delightful sparseness.

Truths and perspectives are... Continue reading

A well crafted book can hold your life hostage for at the least the duration of the read and if exquistely written, the characters and plot will haunt you in a sweet aching way, lingering in your mind like the last truly beautiful holiday you had. Diane Setterfield has spun, in her debut literary thriller "The Thirteenth Tale", such a beautiful tale of suspense, love, deceit and human emotions that the reader is lifted up and carried into the depths of the ageless art of storytelling. As the character Margaret Lea so rightly put it - "It was like falling into water."

The plot is set into motion with Margaret, a bookseller's daughter, receiving a handwritten letter from the famous yet elusive writer Vida Winter inviting her to come to Winter's home to listen to her secret life story. As the letter explains, Winter has, for the last forty years, spun one strange tale after the other every time someone asked her about her life. Margaret arrives at Winter's, apprehensive, half-expecting yet another fabricated tale, ready to walk away and she almost did until the words pulled her back - "Once upon a time there were twins ---"Continue reading