Seahorse by Janice Pariat

Blurb (from the jacket):

Nem is a student of English literature at Delhi University. He drifts between classes, weed-hazy parties, and the amorous complexities of campus life, until a chance encounter with an art historian steers him into a world of pleasure and artistic discovery. Nem’s life is irrevocably transformed. One day, without warning, his mentor disappears.

In the years that follow, Nem cocoons himself in South Delhi, writing for a chic cultural journal. When he is awarded a fellowship to London, a cryptic note plunges him into a search for the art historian—a search which turns into a reckoning with his past. 

Retelling the myth of Poseidon and his youthful male devotee Pelops, Seahorse transforms a simple coming-of-age story into an epic drama of loss, love, and healing.

The Sicilian by Mario Puzo (Mario Puzo's Mafia)

Blurb (from GoodReads):

Michael Corleone's exile in Sicily is ending, but on the instructions of his father, The Godfather, he must bring back to him the young man known as Salvatore Giuliano - if he can find him. At sea amid the treacheries of a brutal and unfamiliar land, Michael must find a way through the labyrinthine deceits that surround him, while Giuliano prepares himself for a final confrontation with Don Croce, Capo di Capi of the Sicilian Mafia. A novel of explosive suspense, heroic action - and evil on an epic scale. In the hands of Mario Puzo's brilliantly sinister talent, the reader comes to know again the terrible magic of the Mafia.

Dvarca by Madhav Mathur (Dvarca Trilogy #1)

Blurb (from the jacket):

ONE NATION | ONE RELIGION | ONE WAY OF LIFE 

Welcome to a land called Dvarca. 

At the turn of the 22nd century, the world is a mess of warring factions (surprise!). The powers-that-be have fought insanity with an equal and opposite insanity. India has been remodelled under a new bicolour flag, and a State religion called Navmarg. Anyone who does not belong, is a threat. 

Madhav Mathur's Dvarca is a dark and humorous satire that follows the life of an ordinary family, struggling to get by, in this totalitarian regime. Gandharva, is a patriotic and pious low-level bureaucrat at the Ministry of Finance and Salvation, working hard on his status and overdue promotion. His dutiful and curious wife, Jyoti, works at Dvarca Mills and witnesses a ghastly act of terror, leading to perilous flirtations with dissent. Their two little children, Nakul and Mira, are model students in their predestined streams, indoctrinated and well on their way to becoming faithful and productive citizens. 

The State religion and cutting-edge science combine to create new ways to make citizens safe, and to hound and hunt those who do not conform. Everything is 'perfect' in this controlled and policed system, until one fateful night, a man happens to break routine . . . 

The Last Word by Hanif Kureishi

Blurb (from the jacket):

Mamoon is an eminent Indian-born writer who has made a career in England - but now, in his early 70s, his reputation is fading, sales have dried up, and his new wife has expensive taste.

Harry, a young writer, is commissioned to write a biography to revitalise both Mamoon's career and his bank balance. Harry greatly admires Mamoon's work and wants to uncover the truth of the artist's life. Harry's publisher seeks a more naked truth, a salacious tale of sex and scandal that will generate headlines. Meanwhile Mamoon himself is mining a different vein of truth altogether.

Harry and Mamoon find themselves in a battle of wills, but which of them will have the last word?

The ensuing struggle for dominance raises issues of love and desire, loyalty and betrayal, and the frailties of age versus the recklessness of youth.

The Japanese Wife by Kunal Basu

Blurb (from the jacket):

An Indian man writes to a Japanese woman. She writes back. The pen-friends fall in love and exchange their vows over letters, then live as man and wife without ever setting eyes on each other – their intimacy of words tested finally by life’s miraculous upheavals. 

The twelve stories in this collection are about the unexpected. An American professor visits India with the purpose of committing suicide, and goes on a desert journey with the daughter of a snakecharmer. A honeymooning Indian couple is caught up in the Tiananmen Square unrest. A Russian prostitute discovers her roots in the company of Calcutta revolutionaries. A holocaust victim stands tall among strangers in a landscape of hate. 

These are chronicles of memory and dreams born at the crossroads of civilizations. They parade a cast of angels and demons rubbing shoulders with those whose lives are never quite as ordinary as they seem.

A Fistful of Earth and other stories by Siddhartha Gigoo

Blurb (from the jacket):

Set in a land ravaged by political upheaval and war, A Fistful of Earth and Other Stories depicts a surreal world where people find themselves trapped in circumstances over which they have no control.

In a series of bizarre incidents, a researcher is baffled by the secrets he unearths about a dying clan; a monk encounters an enigmatic stranger at a railway station; a municipal commissioner suddenly goes mad for no discernible reason; a medical intern discovers a shocking secret after a patient’s death; two chess-loving inmates are unable to escape from a prison long after it has ceased to be one; and a refugee undertakes an odyssey through time and memory in search of his lost friend. 

Written in elegant and lyrical prose, and traversing a range of themes, these stories will transport you to a world of conflict and persecution, of banishment and exile, of loneliness and despair, but where still glimmers a hope for redemption.

The Patna Manual of Style by Siddharth Chowdhury

Blurb (from the jacket):

'Go to any party, in any country, on any moonlit terrace of the world, the best dressed man is always the one from Patna. ' 

In these nine interlinked stories we meet the not so quintessential Patna man Hriday Thakur, Literature junkie, aspiring writer, inveterate lover of women and rain, Jishnu da, his acquaintance from Delhi University, who is now an 'importer of blondes', Samuel Crown, the fastidious proofreader who mentors Hriday and instils in him an irrevocable love for the art of 'book-making', the parade of women in Hriday's life: austere, doe eyed Charulata, love of his youth, the one who got away, Chitrangada, his wife, who works hard to be accepted in his world of books, art, politics and activism, the beautiful Anjali Singh Nalwa, ex-flame who is now a fiery, controversial novelist, Imogen Burns, the intrepid chronicler of graveyards, Sadaf Khan Abdali, who loves the smell of Listerine early in the morning and 'Sophia Loren', dream girl of many schoolboys, now a mother of two.

Unsentimental to a fault, Siddharth Chowdhury's stories deal with relationships that are intimate and sensuous and sometimes hard to define, taken together, they are an affectionate nod to an idealist generation, insulated in a world of publishing, academia, gin-soaked brunches and Marxist philosophy.

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami, Philip Gabriel (Translator)

Blurb (from the jacket):

Tsukuru Tazaki had four best friends at school. By chance all of their names contained a colour. The two boys were called Akamatsu, meaning ‘red pine', and Oumi, ‘blue sea', while the girls' names were Shirane, ‘white root', and Kurono, ‘black field'. Tazaki was the only last name with no colour in it.

One day Tsukuru Tazaki’s friends announced that they didn’t want to see him, or talk to him, ever again.

Since that day Tsukuru has been floating through life, unable to form intimate connections with anyone. But then he meets Sara, who tells him that the time has come to find out what happened all those years ago.

Perfume by Patrick Süskind

Blurb (from the GoodReads):

In the slums of eighteenth-century France, the infant Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with one sublime gift: an absolute sense of smell. As a boy, he lives to decipher the odors of Paris, and apprentices himself to a prominent perfumer who teaches him the ancient art of mixing precious oils and herbs.

But Grenouille's genius is such that he is not satisfied to stop there, and he becomes obsessed with capturing the smells of objects such as brass doorknobs and frest-cut wood. Then one day he catches a hint of a scent that will drive him on an ever-more-terrifying quest to create the "ultimate perfume"—the scent of a beautiful young virgin.

Told with dazzling narrative brillance, Perfume is a hauntingly powerful tale of murder and sensual depravity.

Laburnum For My Head by Temsula Ao

Laburnum For My Head by Temsula Ao
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There are so many highly acclaimed literary awards. Booker, Pulitzer, Orange, what-not. In fact, how many Booker winners and shortlisted have I read! I have read a few Indian literary awards too - like Shakti Bhatt First Book and Hindu Literary Prize - but I have left behind the father of them all - Sahitya Akademi Award! The official literary award of India. When I came across this book on some online book selling portal, I felt some kind of a patriotic urge to read the book. And so here I am done with it finally...

It is a bunch of eight short stories, the first one being the Laburnum For My Head is very touchy. In fact, all the short stories were touch, with nothing as much as an ant same. Each story is unique in it's own way. The only similar all the story share is that their settings are all North Eastern India, but even the time spaces differ from story to story. While Laburnum For My Head could be a modern day story, The Boy Who Sold an Airfield and Death of a Hunter are from pre-Independence.

Having nothing much to say about the stories, I decide to conclude the review stating that the language and the narration of the book is one of the best. Serenity is in every word in the story. When I was reading the book, it felt like I was living in a lush forest, among the other human-inhabitants, spending a uneventful, peaceful and a tranquilizing life.

I doubt there would people who wouldn't enjoy reading this book...

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

Blurb (from the jacket):

Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment of India’s independence. Greeted by fireworks displays, cheering crowds, and Prime Minister Nehru himself, Saleem grows up to learn the ominous consequences of this coincidence. His every act is mirrored and magnified in events that sway the course of national affairs; his health and well-being are inextricably bound to those of his nation; his life is inseparable, at times indistinguishable, from the history of his country. Perhaps most remarkable are the telepathic powers linking him with India’s 1,000 other “midnight’s children,” all born in that initial hour and endowed with magical gifts. 

This novel is at once a fascinating family saga and an astonishing evocation of a vast land and its people–a brilliant incarnation of the universal human comedy. Twenty-five years after its publication, Midnight’ s Children stands apart as both an epochal work of fiction and a brilliant performance by one of the great literary voices of our time

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

Blurb (from the jacket):

The compelling story of two outsiders striving to find their place in an unforgiving world.

Drifters in search of work, George and his simple minded friend Lennie have nothing in the world except each other and a dream--a dream that one day they will have some land of their own. Eventually they find work on a ranch in California's Salinas Valley, but their hopes are doomed as Lennie, struggling against extreme cruelty, misunderstanding and feelings of jealousy becomes a victim of his own strength.

Tackling universal themes and giving a voice to America's lonely and dispossessed, Of Mice and Men has proved to be one of Steinbeck's most popular works, achieving success as a novel, a Broadway play and three acclaimed films.

Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami, Philip Gabriel (Translator)

Blurb (from the jacket):

Sumire is in love with a woman seventeen years her senior. But whereas Miu is glamorous and successful, Sumire is an aspiring writer who dresses in an oversized second-hand coat and heavy boots like a character in a Kerouac novel. 

Sumire spends hours on the phone talking to her best friend K about the big questions in life: what is sexual desire, and should she ever tell Miu how she feels for her? Meanwhile K wonders whether he should confess his own unrequited love for Sumire. 

Then, a desperate Miu calls from a small Greek island: Sumire has mysteriously vanished...

The Illicit Happiness of Other People by Manu Joseph

Blurb (from the jacket):

Seventeen-year-old Unni Chacko has done something terrible. The only clue to his action lies in a comic strip he has drawn, which has fallen into the hands of his father Ousep, an anarchist. Ousep begins investigating the extraordinary life of his son, blissfully unaware that his long-suffering wife is plotting to kill him.

Set in Madras in 1990, this is a darkly comic story involving the relentless pursuit of a failed writer who has found purpose, an adolescent cartoonists dangerous interpretation of truth, the plots of a brilliant housewife, and the pure love of a twelve-year-old boy for a beautiful girl.

If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino

Blurb (from the jacket):

You go into a bookshop and buy If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino. You like it. But alas there is a printer's error in your copy. You take it back to the shop and get a replacement. But the replacement seems to be a totally different story. You try to track down the original book you were reading but end up with a different narrative again. This remarkable novel leads you through many different books including a detective adventure, a romance, a satire, an erotic story, a diary and a quest. But the real hero is you, the reader.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Foreword:

The Great Gatsby. What must I say? What can I say, perhaps? Name a book list featuring top books and you will find this book in it.

Even the author, is considered one of the most celebrated authors of Classic Literature.

Though I had in my possession the '94 edition of the classic, I stalled it for a long time. The blurb and everything else about the book just gave me the impression that it was just another overrated classic. You know, those classic which are overrated only for the fact that they had been written way back in the history. Or portrayed some extinct culture followed by people of that time - like, in the case of this book, the Jazz Age. 

Until, the movie starring DiCaprio, titled the same, found its way to the theatre. To watch the movie, I had to read the book first. That was an age-old resolve I had taken during the start of my reading days. So, basically, it is DiCaprio who had made me read this book. 

And, in that case, I would love to thank Leonardo immensely for it! Or else, I would have missed so great a book.

The Mountain of Light by Indu Sundaresan

Foreword:

It was during the release of this book, it hadn't yet hit the market. There was a huge campaign of marketing going on about this book. Almost every book-reviewing site I knew was marketing/advertising about this book.

In fact, the author was hailed like some very well known author, when it was the first time I had heard of this author. I didn't even hear of her most acclaimed work, The Taj Trilogy - consisting of The Twentieth Wife, The Feast of Roses, Shadow Princess.

Having very high expectations, I liked the author's FaceBook page.

After the book hit the market, I saw a post by the author, herself, announcing a huge giveaway to readers in exchange to a book-review. Well, I dropped in my e-mail ID.

The following day, I was contacted for the shipping details, which I provided. A month or two passed since then. I even forgot that a book like this even got published. All of a sudden, there was a courier at my doorstep. I was wondering who sent the book, as I had stopped accepting books for reviewing during that time.

To my surprise, it was this book. Then I left the book as it is for a very long time, until day before yesterday...

Untouchable by Mulk Raj Anand

Foreword:

In my spree of reading more Indian books than international authors, I have read a quite a wide array of books. Most of them were love stories. IITians. IIMs. Contemporary college romances. Some chic-lits. Then came intense stories and authors, like Amitav Ghosh, R. K. Narayan. With Narayan came Mulk Raj Anand.

A line in the author's introduction in this book goes like this,

"... he together with R. K. Narayan, Ahmed Ali and Raja Rao, was one of the first India-based writers in English to gain an international readership..."

I have read R. K. Narayan. I see him as my idol. I admire his work. I decided to try Mulk Raj Anand in the hope that he writes with the same intensity as Narayan.

Well, I am disappointed. They are no same authors. They way of fiction differ entirely from each other, save for one aspect. Only that they write about Indians. Even the societal class of which they describe in their story differ!

But it must be accepted that every author has his own way of writing and his own stories. No two author's work must be compared. Keeping that in mind, I move on to write the review to a book, whose type I have never encountered before. It was fresh. New to me. And refreshing.

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Foreword: 

This book had done to me that which I had never experienced, ever: It abandoned me.

Yeah, you read it right. I didn't abandon it. It abandoned it. Well, it was actually my fault.

This was probably the last book I was writing last year, and was travelling. It was an overnight bus from Hyderabad to Chennai. When I woke up the next day, the bus had reached the terminus and the conductor of the bus was literally yelling at me to get down, so I had to de-board in haste.

Back in my uncle's home, when I was unpacking, I couldn't find this book in the bag. Well, I placed it on the top in my bag because I was reading it the previous evening when I boarded the book. That is when I realised that I left the book on the overhead luggage compartment of the bus!

The next half an hour, I spent cursing myself for the folly. In the book was a bookmark, designed and made by the other author of this blog, Srinivas.

I tried to pacify myself on the fact that the book was withering. Actually I got this book from a local bookstore that sold second-hand books, back in Hyderabad. It's binding was not in a great condition. The cover of the book gave off, always letting the pages slide and disorient. In fact, even before I got the book the initial pages were missing. I didn't notice that when I bought that book from the bookstore. Though not entirely, it provided some sort of solace. I pledged to get a new book and complete it. Which I did.

Blurb (from the jacket):

Mariam is only fifteen when she is sent to Kabul to marry Rasheed. Nearly two decades later, a friendship grows between Mariam and a local teenager, Laila, as strong as the ties between mother and daughter. When the Taliban take over, life becomes a desperate struggle against starvation, brutality and fear. Yet love can move people to act in unexpected ways, and lead them to overcome the most daunting obstacles with startling heroism.

The Virgins by Siddharth Tripathi

Foreword:

I would like to start this review by thanking The Tales Pensieve Team for feeling me eligible to read this wonderful book.

I am more obliged for reading this book for the second time. Someone said, "So many books, so little time." I am firm believer of this quote. I am always on the run to read all the books and as many books as possible. In the run, there is little scope for a re-read. There are seldom a handful of books that I would like to give a re-read. And The Virgins is one of them, and it is the first which I had re-read.

Maybe that must have provided you the idea of what possible the books holds in me. However, for details scroll on...

Blurb (from the jacket):

How does one become a man?

Three young friends are about to find out.

With six unmarried sisters and a perennially drunk father, Pinku, a 19-year-old school dropout, has only one dream left: to marry the plump girl who’d caught him stealing flowerpots. His friend and confidant, 17-year-old Bhandu, is not faring any better — his parents are divorcing, his father has abandoned him, and the American tourist he is infatuated with doesn’t even know he exists. Bhandu and Pinku seek solace in the distracting shenanigans of their friend Guggi — a pampered rich brat who can do anything for a thrill. Guggi’s reckless hedonism lands the threesome in a series of 'sexpot' escapades — each adventure weirder than the one before.