Honour Bound
~ Honor, by Elif Shafak ~ This is neither here nor there perhaps, but the 2012 Viking (hard backed) edition of this novel spells its title as “Honor” while within the pages of the novel, the word is always spelt...
Diaspora
Displacement
~ Exit West, by Mohsin Hamid ~ While all four of Hamid’s novels have been well written, I thought his first (Moth Smoke) and this fourth, Exit West, were the most beautiful: moving, resigned yet optimistic, tackling complex and controversial...
California Romance
A romantic novel with some social commentary, Sonali Dev’s ‘Pride and Prejudice and Other Flavours’ very loosely follows the Austen original. This is all to the good, as most Austen retellings are pale shadows of the originals. (see ‘A Multitude...
Stranger than Fiction
~ Stealing Green Mangoes, by Sunil Dutta ~ Two brothers, of whom one grows up to be a cop and one to be a criminal. It sounds like a Hindi film script, indeed. But this dichotomy is just one of...
Host Women
~ The Farm, by Joanne Ramos ~ This is definitely a debut novel. It was a pleasant read, but was flawed in many of the typical ways a debut novel too often is, if lacking editorial support. The title of...
Lives formed in Oxford and Istanbul
~ Three Daughters of Eve, by Elif Shafak ~ An engaging novel, characterised by a distinctive writing style which demonstrates a fine-tuned consciousness and critical awareness. Particularly enjoyable are the author’s acerbic but good tempered observations on Turks, Turkey, and...
The Immigrant Generational Divide
~ Number One Chinese Restaurant, by Lillian Li ~ Joining other recent debut novels by Asian/Chinese American authors such as Jenny Zhang (Sour Heart, 2017) Lily Wang (Family Trust, 2018), Lillian Li’s novel also purports to examine relationships and family...
Asian Cliches: Materialism and Pragmatism
~ Family Trust, by Kathy Wang ~ This novel predominantly set in the Bay Area – though it is also partially sited in Hong Kong, Bali, etc. – features elite Asian Americans who attended Ivy League universities and hold high-paying...
Empowerment through Erotica
~ Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows, by Balli Kaur Jaswal ~ The Punjabi widows of the title live in London, perhaps not one’s first guess at a location for women living heavily circumscribed lives. But these women live in Southall,...
Perfect Pitch
~ Netherland, by Joseph O’Neill ~ Although I was born and brought up in a cricket-mad country and have been surrounded by cricket-o-philes for much of my life, I have no particular interest in the sport and can name only...
Social Realism: Divorce
~ Custody, by Manju Kapur ~ This novel contains Manju Kapur’s most radical protagonist to date. If one regards Kapur’s five novels as a series in her ouevre, Custody challenges Indian tradition and Indian middle class gender roles in a...
Intersecting lives in a fluid history
~ A God in Every Stone, by Kamila Shamsie ~ For those of us who are avid Shamsie-readers, this sixth novel is an eagerly awaited one. Kamila Shamsie’s first four novels (In the City By the Sea, Salt and Saffron,...
Important theme, but unconvincing harvest
~ Foreign, by Sonora Jha ~ The context of this novel contains many interesting elements: the protagonist is an Indian woman who after rejection by her son’s father, migrated to the US and had not been back to visit India...
Greed? Envy?
~ The Billionaire’s Apprentice: The Rise of The Indian-American Elite and The Fall of The Galleon Hedge Fund. By Anita Raghavan ~ The billionaire of the title is Raj Rajaratnam, the charismatic, Sri-Lanka-born hedge fund CEO whose success was built...
In and out of Africa
~ Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ~ This extremely accomplished novel is Adichie’s fourth: a marvellous discussion of the identities of middle class Nigerian immigrants to America and UK, as well as migrant returnees to Nigeria. The central protagonists are...
Recent Comments