The blurb for Leopard at the Door reeks of The Far Pavilions. “A sweeping tale of self-discovery, betrayal and an impossible love.” “evocative portait of a woman — and a nation — on the cusp of profound change” Note how...
Since this is a bestseller with such a promising title, I was keen to read it in the hope of some ‘pseudosciency’ content. Alas, it turns out not to have much to do with science despite its protagonist being a...
In the early 1600s, America was vast and Europeans had a tenuous foothold in Jamestown, Virginia. To encourage immigration, every Englishman who brought a servant or bonded labourer to America was ‘given’ 50 acres of land. One of the Englishmen...
When this collection came out in 2009, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was already well known from the excellent Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun, but had not yet published the wonderful Americanah. This collection, This Thing Around Your Neck,...
At first reading of the blurb, I was none too sold on this book; it came across as being in the fantasy genre with ghosts and hauntings – the supernatural is not really my scene. However, since it is set...
Imagine a weatherproofed box of books outside a house where anyone is free to stop by and pick up a book, drop off a book, or just browse. It is such a charming idea, and seems so community-minded and friendly....
A debut author with a collection of short stories set in Bangalore; definitely worth investigating. Most of the stories in Shubha Sunder’s collection, Boomtown Girl , focuses, as befits the title, on girls growing up in Bangalore in the 1990s....
The early wave of South Asian immigrant writing focused on the immigrants themselves: their unfamiliarity with the new country, discrimination, yearning for a home that changed after their departure, and excitement about the opportunities now available to them. The next...
The perennial problem with getting one’s hands on a new release by a favourite author, is the reining in of expectations, so as not to unfairly set up a novel for failure/disappointment. It is hard however, not to get excited...
Novels about neurodivergent people are no longer unusual. After the well-deserved success of Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog In the NightTime, there have been several novels with very memorably ‘different’ characters who have to adjust to an...
Having been very impressed by Fierce Kingdom, I was eager to try another Gin Phillips novel. This one is not quite as thrilling and suspenseful, but the voice is similar, and similarly engaging. The novel focuses on the relationship between...
The title of Allegra Goodman’s novel, and its cover, point to the nature of its content: it is about a girl called Sam. The first sentence of the novel is almost unnecessary. There is a girl, and her name is...
Yang’s Chinese-immigrant-coming-to-America novel is in some ways similar to others of its genre, in that our protagonist, Ivy Lin, finds herself different from her American peers and longs to fit in. In these ways, Ivy’s tale is like many second...
If Indian villages were populated by American teenagers, The Bandit Queens would be a black-humor romp. The novel is inspired by the true story of Phoolan Devi, a poor woman at the bottom of the caste structure in Uttar Pradesh....
This book is predicated on the notion of epigenetic inheritance and generational trauma. The idea is that perhaps people can inherit traumas which they themselves did not experience, but which is somehow written into their genes so that it produces...
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