Book Review Of THE KITE RUNNER

Book Review of the Kite runner

“Hassan and I fed from the same breasts. We took our first steps on the same lawn in the same yard. And, under the same roof we spoke our first words. Mine was baba. His was Amir. My name. Looking back on it now, I think the foundations of what happened in the winters of 1975 – and all that followed – was already laid in those first words”                               - The Kite Runner, page 11

Using the simplest words and language possible, Khalid Hosseini paints a realistic picture of an Afghanistan without Taliban, where we travel through crowded streets and climb tall trees along with Amir and Hassan , the two principal characters of the book. The themes dealt with in this book are universal: the horrific realities of war, the relationships between father and son, jealousy and betrayal among friends, the unforgiving caste system and above all redemption.

Being an upper class Pashtun, Amir’s earliest memories are those of a life of luxury, education, physical comfort and a playmate who constantly supports him in the form of the son of his father’s longtime Hazara servant, Hassan. However, what Amir really yearns for is the approval of his father which he wishes to do so by winning the local kite flying tournament. Hassan agrees to help him saying, “For you, a thousand times over”, not knowing how that fateful day was going to change their lives forever and that his Amir was going to fail him.

This first failure in the form of betrayal rages on as an inner conflict inside Amir, even when he lives in America, until he is requested to return to his homeland by an old family friend. This inner conflict is the underlying theme of the book which spans form the peaceful 70s to the violent 90s when almost all of Afghanistan has been subjugated by the Taliban.

Another point that the author probably wants to draw attention to is the dilemmas faced by migrants from Afghanistan to America. While Amir and his father reside comfortably in U.S.A, their homeland is destroyed by almost constant warfare. It is then we realize the immense irony in the title of the book; the childhood innocence in “kite running” can no longer be found in the battle hardened children of Afghanistan: “There are a lot of children in Afghanistan, but no childhood”.

The ending of the book is written in powerful yet unbelievably simple words. It displays the immense capacity of kindness in the human race; the power of love to heal all the wounds that life has given and that it is only by committing mistakes we become the men that we are supposed to be and by seeking forgiveness for such mistakes we discover the childlike joy in “ kite running”.

Prathamesh Kumar

2009EE20452

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

“Unless it can be proven to me—to me as I am now, today, with my heart and my beard, and my putrefaction—that, in the infinite run it does not matter a jot that a North American girl child named Dolores Haze had been deprived of her childhood by a maniac, unless this can be proven (and if it can, life is a joke) I see nothing for the treatment of my misery but the melancholy and very local palliative of articulate art”.

Lolita was first published in 1955, in a Parisian press after being rejected by a string of publishers who feared that the novel will attract the ire of the multitudes, which it actually did. The novel grazes the controversial topic of relationship between a middle aged European man and a twelve year old American nymphet. The novel was announced as a story of “Old Europe debauching the young America” by certain critics from the west, and was accused of mocking the twentieth century America, but still was received with great enthusiasm by the Americans. Such has been its influence that Lolita is now a publically acclaimed term for a precocious young girl.

The story is told in the first person by narrator Humbert Humbert, a seemingly intellectual, middle-aged but otherwise handsome European, who regularly uses his French witticisms to convey his literary transcendence over regular good old Americans. He reminisces of young Annabel, with whom he committed carnal debaucheries in his childhood that left him addicted to young girls of nine to fourteen, whom he fondly calls nymphets. The narrator as he makes a clean breast of his inner feelings accepts that he would go to any extent to ogle at young girl or to fondle with her. Despite his exploits, it is rather harsh to declare him as a paedophile; rather his erudite narratives often arouse a sense of sympathy and awe in the readers.

His quest for the nymphets takes him to the forlorn town of Ramsdale, where he is accommodated in the house of a widow Charlotte Haze, mother of an auburn nymphet, Dolores or Humbert’s Lolita. He starts on his quest of seducing the young Lolita, and goes as far as marrying her mother Charlotte, a melodramatic woman who aspires to be a typical American sophisticated lady and utterly fails at her attempts to do so, or at least Humbert thinks so. She is considered as an obstacle by Humbert on his way to Lolita. But a series of unfortunate events leave Lolita in the custody of Humbert, who grabs the opportunity by both hands and leaves for a yearlong trip through America with Lolita, in the hopes of wooing her before she is intimated of her mother’s death. From then, the novel reduces to a series of puns and farces that Humbert introduces between his bouts of lustful sordidness in which he debases Lolita along with himself.

Humbert doesn’t qualify as a reliable narrator. He would regularly modify the versions of his history and describe his most heinous treacheries with an utmost sense of gaiety. His regular cribbing about the federal laws of guardianship reflects his insecurity about Lolita. While Lolita, from the viewpoint of Humbert, is a spoilt child and is his seducer. Whenever he describes her, his lust and possessiveness for her pervades into the picture, but she stands out as a confused youth herself. Her flinching at her step-father’s touch is wrongly interpreted by Humbert as her indolence.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that it is an extremely tragic story of a young girl who is deprived of her childhood, which has been told in an equally farcical manner. Novelist Robertson Davies says that “the theme of Lolita is not the corruption of an innocent child by a cunning adult, but the exploitation of a weak adult by a corrupt child”. It can be said that Nabokov has left Lolita at the discretion of the reader to decide. Although at the beginning, it reeks of a mediocre clichéd pornographic novel, promising everything that a promiscuous brain would expect, Nabokov conveniently manages to iron out all the hideous details and never do the narratives appear sensual. Nabokov has given birth to an entirely new form of writing, full of puns, and humorous jeering of the then American culture, giving rise to words that are hard to find in most of the dictionaries.

Perhaps the novel is a bit overhyped, because of the sensitive issue it addresses, but it still is one of the greatest works of the century, and definitely among the best works by an author in his second language. Nabokov manages to weave the magic with his play of words, amazing many by various interpretations his narratives are open to. As he says in his afterword that his novel does not stand for any motto, it was an urge that didn’t let him abandon the story midway. To those who question his anti-American sentiments he concludes his afterword by saying, "My private tragedy, which cannot, and indeed should not, be anybody's concern, is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammelled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian language for a second-rate brand of English".

-Sanskar Jain, 2008TT10701

The Old Man And The Sea

Book review

THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA

An epic story of an old Cuban fisherman’s duel with a huge swordfish in the Atlantic, ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ by ‘Ernest Hemingway’ is a work which has won the Nobel Prize and undoubtedly wins the heart of the reader. With only a handful number of characters and an easy to follow story line Hemingway teaches us an important lesson, a lesson of courage and optimism. The book is independent of pessimism and negativity.

‘The old man’, ‘Santiago’, a fisherman despite being poor, seemingly frail and having the worst luck possible at work is symbolic of such courage which is seldom seen. This is a story of Santiago’s trip to ‘The Sea’ which turns out to be more eventful than usual. Most of the fishermen mock him for his fruitless voyages at sea, he is alienated and for him life is just baseball and his work. The only person who loves him is a boy named ‘Manolin’, who used to work in his boat but was forced by his parents to work in some other boat. Initially the reader tends to form a view of the protagonist ‘The Old Man’ as a helpless person facing the downfall of his career.

Santiago ventures farther into sea than any of his fellow companions in pursuit of his catch which is a swordfish larger than his boat. Dedication and perseverance on the part of Santiago is seen in the face of solitude and hardships. After a classic struggle he successfully hooks the fish, but on the return journey the fish is completely mutilated by the repeated attacks by sharks. Eventually only the skeleton of the once immense fish remains. Instead of mourning for his loss and cursing his bad luck ‘The Old Man’ begins preparing for the next day as if nothing has happened. The reader is taken to a realm of courage which has never been seen before. An experience which can breakdown a normal person fails to even shake Santiago.

‘The Old Man and the Sea’ is tragic in many ways but Santiago is not defeated by the ordeals which tend to generate pity in the mind of the reader for Santiago. The book shows a manly love for adventure and danger. Admiration is generated for individuals who fight a good fight even in the face of violence and death. A zeal to go all out to reach the goal and not succumbing to bodily ailments and pain which have to be endured on the way, all this is seen in the book.

The story is a classic example of the fighting spirit which does not give in even if there is no material gain. Giving the best possible fight to reach the set target and not losing heart even if the result is not in your favour. It is a tribute to moral victory in the midst of defeat.

             

         “A man can be destroyed but not defeated”

                 - Anders Österling (Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy)

Shahzad Gani

2009ce10338

Group-04

Inputs from- www.nobelprize.org

                        

Waiting For Godot By Samuel Beckett

"Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful!" 

Waiting for Godot is perfectly described by the above phrase said by one of the two main characters in the play. The play is a perfect satire on human nature that how one keeps waiting for the good things and God, the almighty, from which Samuel Beckett got to the term GODOT.

Samuel Beckett is a classic example of the "Theatre of The Absurd" who wrote a seminal work of the twentieth century “Waiting For Godot”, a tragic comedy. The two main characters Vladimir and Estragon keep waiting for a person named Godot who doesn’t arrive at two instances in the play. Godot is supposed to bring new hope with him in their lives so that they can move on.Often referred to as a play in which "Nothing Happens, Twice" . 


It consists of two acts and nothing significant happens in both of them .In the beginning it is a bit confusing as the dialogues of the two main characters who are tramps, interchange arbitrarily and are repeated again and again, depicting the vicious circle of life.Pozzo mentioning the second one (Pipe) is not sweet as the first one, depicting how repetition brings dullness to life. Vladimir is shown to be a much stronger character than Estragon of a little helping nautre.Two other characters Lucky and Pozzo, arrive and go, bringing no significant change on Vladimir and Estragon, which signify how people arrive and leave in one’s life. At one point in the play, they try to commit suicide but as always are distracted by their useless talks and thoughts. It portrays the escapist nature of mankind.

The most important thing is that they have nothing to do in their lives except to wait for Godot who never comes. Instead a message is brought to them by a boy who says “he will be definitely coming tomorrow”. The message brings assurance to them that he exists and they again come back the next day to meet him.

Act two is almost similar to the first act and the play goes on .As a reader one wonders that why the writer wrote the second act. Act Two superficially does not signify much, but through this Beckett wants the reader to feel the futility of life and the absurd situation man is into. Man has created a complex world and and now his life revolves around it. Vladimir says that “it is not every day that we are needed” shows how meaningless their life is.

In general the play does not give any message, that is exactly what the message is, the futility of life in itself. It invokes them to think on it, and hence the message is left to the individual. It is a must read play having many good ideas hidden in some of the dialogues , comic sense in the tragedy of lives, though a cynical one and you get much more out of it than what is contained in it.

By Tushar Tuteja

2009CE10351

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

THE BELL JAR

by SYLVIA PLATH

The classic novel written by the Sylvia is an autobiographical one that takes its course through the critical phase of the author’s life. The story entirely written in first person makes us read through the mind of the Protagonist and the narrator, Esther Greenwood. It's as if we are viewing the world through her own eyes, hearing all of her thoughts and feeling her every single thrill of fear, disgust, delight, and shock. The novel goes through transition phase of Esther from a naive adolescent to an experienced woman encountering terrible experiences of her life. Concerned almost entirely with the education and maturation of Esther Greenwood, Plath's novel uses a chronological structure to keep Esther at the centre of all action. Other characters are subordinate to Esther and her developing consciousness and are shown only through their effects on her as central character. The principle elements of youth- growing up, struggle for name, alienation, ordeal of love and gradual self-discovery have been reflected through the novel.
The book portrays a women's entry into the throes of depression. Esther's character contains unusual strength to challenge the society. She is a woman lost in between several stereotypes she tries to make her own. Esther is attractive, talented and lucky, but uncertainty plagues her. She has a very unconventional way of dealing with reality. She has got numerous awards her poetry and a scholarship at a prestigious women’s college. She gets a month long job in a fashion magazine in New York. She has got everything to be called a perfect life except her depressed soul. Her surrounding expects her to be cheerful but her dull, melancholy nature doesn’t allow her to be happy. A great deal of the novel concerns the expectations that others have for Esther with regards to behaviour and her future, as well as the expectations that Esther has for other. This is most explicit in the societal expectations that Esther feels concerning decisions about a possible career and family. Esther feels that she is pressured to succeed in whatever career she chooses, despite the fact that she cannot yet even decide on which career path she will pursue. In addition, Esther also feels pressured concerning proper codes of behaviour, particularly with regard to sexuality. She is constantly monitored by others, including her mother, who gives her a pamphlet on female sexuality, and even her neighbours.
The idea of sexual equality in the society is also brought to light. Women are supposed to remain virgin and pure but their male counterparts are free to involve in any pre-marital relationship. As Esther presents the issue, the men hold all the interesting jobs, and the women have no choice but to stay at home and cook, clean and have children. They are supposed to provide emotional warmth and security while the men fulfil their ambitions in the world. Esther cannot bear the thought of such a life, which she would have if she married the conventional Buddy Willard. She would have no better prospects if she married the interpreter or any other man of her acquaintance. As she puts it, "This seemed a dreary and wasted life for a girl with fifteen years of straight A's." Buddy, who has no patience with the fact that Esther wants to write poetry, tells her that after she is married with children she won't want to write poems any more. This prompts Esther to think, "May be it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about numb as a slave in some private, totalitarian state."
The problem is compounded for Esther by the fact that many women have accepted the rules that men have made for them, so she is left with no role models on which to base her life. The suicide attempt is the climax. It is through her attempt at suicide that Plath shows the reader Esther's inability to cope with reality and her inability to mesh with the traditions of her time. Eventually as Esther improves, the hospital officials grant her permission to leave the hospital from time to time. During one such excursion, she loses her virginity to a Harvard university professor named Irwin. Though she bleeds profusely after it yet she feels relieved to relinquish her virginity and its attendant worries; she describes her virginity as “a millstone around my neck.” Esther’s mental health seems greatly improved. Esther can now empathize with others, and think of something other than her own pain. She also demonstrates the maturity and strength that are the rewards of surviving such a harrowing experience. When Buddy visits, his selfish, thoughtless immaturity contrasts with her cool strength. Like someone much older, Esther assures Buddy that she is fine, and generously soothes his fears that he causes women to go mad.
The style of the novel is relatively informal and reads much like Esther is conversing with you personally, however, beneath the informal dialect lies powerful imagery and symbolism. The chief symbol throughout the novel is the bell jar itself. Esther identifies this when she states that “her illness as a gigantic bell jar that descends upon her, imprisoning her, suffocating her, isolating her from others, and distorting her view of the world.” She feels her life restricted to a bell jar while undergoing treatment and her recovery as her freedom but she is aware that the bell jar can descend at any time on her life.
Through the use of simple speech, and the slang of the times, Sylvia Plath was able to pull the reader into Esther’s life. Certain aspects of the style are skilfully and subtly used, in order to reflect the changes in Esther’s mental and emotional conditions. Early in the novel, the sentences and paragraphs are of average length and flow logically. As the novel continues and Esther's condition deteriorates, they shorten. As Esther moves toward recover, the style does shift back, and the novel is again written with longer sentences and paragraphs that are logically connected.
Plath also employs the technique of defamiliarization in the novel. When Buddy Willard suggests that they play a round of the traditional children's game--I'll show you mine if you show me yours--she looks at his naked maleness and reacts this way: "The only thing I could think of was a turkey neck and turkey gizzards and I felt very depressed." The repeated description of fig tree brings to light the symbolism behind it. Early in the novel, Esther reads a story about a Jewish man and a nun who meet under a fig tree. Their relationship is doomed, just as she feels her relationship with Buddy is doomed. Later, the tree becomes a symbol of the life choices that face Esther. She imagines that each fig represents a different life. She can only choose one fig, but because she wants all of them, she sits paralyzed with indecision, and the figs rot and fall to the ground.
What makes the novel so moving—and often so marvellously funny—is that the protagonist is just as innocent as she is frighteningly perceptive.
Review by
Basant Kumar Bhuyan2009ph10710

Franz Kafka

Book review

Franz Kafka

When it comes to senseless literature or rather a directionless yet powerful compilation of emotions, Franz Kafka can be undoubtedly crowned at the top. His contribution to world literature in the form of an entirely new genre called Kafkaesque, was however, recognized only after his death in 1924 at the young age of 41. Some of his stories show a powerful portrayal of emotions which are tough to tell otherwise, in simple routine stories, so that we can relate the stories to our lives.

He relies a lot on analogies, which relate complex emotions to mechanical settings in terms of time and space, which gives it a realistic picture and therefore, make it simpler for the reader to appreciate the meaning and connect to the author. Some of his stories like The Castle and The Hunger Artist showcase a typical condition of a human mind in which it tries to make decisions, but cannot make a lopsided choice. So, the author chooses to bring the scenario from a mental stage to a real stage, in which he makes the protagonist interact with other characters, but on the whole, the main crux of the story remains to put a mirror in front of the eyes of the reader, which leaves him/her in awe.

However, it is sometimes observed in his short stories, that he struggles to provide the reader with a convincing analogies or relations between the unreal and real. Sometimes, it occurs to the reader that a better analogy or setting could have been formulated by the author and thus, leaves him in a dilemma. This dilemma is between the obvious and the intentions. Does the author really want to use the specific analogy given in the text and the reader must apply some more of his wits to crack the hidden meaning or is it just that the author has fallen short at inspiring awe in the reader. This apparent mistake can be seen in the story Before the law, in which a person fails to get justice throughout his life despite taking all the measures he could possibly think of, but the way the author has portrayed this is not fully adored by the reader as it is completely meaningless and inconclusive.

Although his short stories collection has come discretely over the time during and after his career, he can, in an overall picture, be considered unaffected from his immediate surroundings, given the fact that in his time, almost every European writer was busy discussing war and social issues, while he was busy untying the knots of the human mind. Also, being translated from German to English and other languages, the text, according to many critics, loses its sheen across the borders of language. He uses long sentences, mostly in his attempt to put in a series of mental states together. However, his uses of dialogues are very powerful and although very simples and basic, they leave memorable imprints n our minds. All in all, a brilliant story teller, he is definitely one of the most unique writers of the twentieth century.

Gandharv S. Kumar

2008CH10057

Of "Of Mice and Men"

The best laid schemes o’ mice and men

Gang aft agley [go often awry]

And leave us nought but grief and pain

For promised joy!

-Robert Burns

A tragic tale of shattered dreams? Or a heart-rending tale of the bond between two migrant workers? John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” is a gripping mélange of both these facets and more. Written in 1937, it is a subtle, ruggedly American, free flowing narrative of “mice”-weak hearted people like Lennie and Candy and “men”-strong hearted people like George and Slim with the American dream of depression era California as a backdrop and the highly sensitive bioethical topic of "Euthanasia" as a lynchpin. Furthermore, the lazy setting of the Californian ranch buttresses the rugged subtlety of the narrative beautifully. The book is in fact a part of Steinbeck’s trilogy on the labour movement of the 1930s commonly known as the “Dustbowl Trilogy”. The other two books being “In Dubious Battle” and “Grapes of Wrath”.

The Novella opens with a detailed description of a Californian creek. It is almost blasphemous, the way in which Lennie and George burst onto the setting disturbing the brilliant image of the serene landscape Steinbeck's planted in our minds. The two are migrant workers looking for a ranch job to raise a stake. George Milton is small, intelligent and cynical whereas Lennie Small is(ironically) a large, semi-retarted simpleton. They had to flee the last town because Lennie touched a woman's dress and had been accused of rape. George’s first words, a stern warning to Lennie not to drink so much lest he get sick, set the tone of their relationship.

. “Lennie, for God’ sakes don’t drink so much

You gonna

be sick like you was last night.”

They begin to work at a ranch near Soledad, California and share the archetypal ranch men’s American Dream: a piece land of their own and a ranch unto themselves. Their dream moves ever closer to reality when an old ranch worker, Candy pledges his modest fortune to them in return for a place in the ranch. At the ranch, a dog has a litter of pups. As the new pups are introduced into the ranch, the old, blind, and feeble dog that lived in the barn was put down with a pistol with the cited reason being to relieve it of a miserable existence. This becomes a foreshadowing parallel to what lies ahead for the men at the ranch.

The decisive moments of the novel revolve around Lennie's love of soft things. All he wants is to have a ranch unto himself with lots of soft pets to pet. This in a cruel twist of fate comes to bring his downfall and not surprisingly there's a woman involved.He accidentally kills a woman on the ranch when she panics as he caresses her soft hair. The other ranch men led by the woman's hot headed husband form a lynch mob and set out for Lennie. George, realizing the parallel between the situations of old dog and Lennie makes the cruel but essential decision to kill Lennie to palliate him of his travails in this world.

In a way, Of Mice and Men is an extremely morose novel. It shows the dreams of people and then brings them tantalizingly close to being realized and then boom! the dreams collapse. But even with all its pessimistic undertones the book does leave us with an optimistic message. Although they do not achieve their dreams George and Lennie's friendship stands out as a shining example of how people can live and love in a forlorn world of such disconnectedness.

The literary faculty of ‘Of Mice and Men’ rests firmly on Steinbeck’s usage of crude and authentically 'American' language throughout the book. This helps him to slip us into the world of the 30s American ranch effortlessly. Although it is the same unbridled use of the American slang which makes the book a vulgar spectacle. Another way of settling us into the novella was describing beforehand, each act (if I could say so) in excruciating detail which almost makes the book a play. It’s almost as if the reader is watching a play which,in a way, furthers our connection with the setting. Hence the book has also come to be known as a play.

But, the best aspect of the novella is in fact its niggardly economy. The fact that Steinbeck managed to fit every theme( some which include discrimination against the impaired, prejudice, racism, tension, friendship, euthanasia etc.) so perfectly into some 100 odd pages is in itself a huge achievement and a triumph of the classic short novel. This coupled with the heavy dose of ”American” in the writing makes this novella, for me at least, the pinnacle of the classic American short novel.

In the years following its publication and its gradual growth of popularity in the world, “Of Mice and Men” has been absorbed into popular culture with many recognizable archetypes. A huge dimwit unintentionally manhandling a vulnerable little creature is a common sight across all forms of art.

Highly recommended for people who want to go back to the joys of unbridled reading, this book although ridden with flaws in writing,is an exemplary piece of narrative genius. Not one for the purists but great for the enthusiasts, this is the quintessential 20^th century American short novel. In a nutshell, I can only say that if you've got three hours with nothing to do then you’ll be delighted you spent them reading this brilliant specimen of the short novel.

-Devansh Durgaraju

(2009BB50009)

Serious Men

         Serious men : review

                                                         

Manu Joseph, a former editor of The Times of India, tries to weave a funny and clever novel about the ridiculousness of academia, and for the most part, he succeeds.  Joseph crusades in this novel from the very heart of Mumbai to a fancy science institute, from a boring life to a self-created fiction. He rammed straight into the caste war without taking the risk of caricature.

Serious Men's anti-hero is Ayyan Mani, a dalit living with his wife and child in a one-room Mumbai slum.

The whole plot revolves around him, his distaste for Brahmins, his hatred for a system of hierarchy that's kept him and his family shackled for generations and his efforts to avoid going insane with boredom and to cheer up his sorrowful life by feeding his son with formidable questions. Mani ,  is a Hindu-turned Buddhist-turned faux crusader for the Dalit cause, whose one goal is to bring a little cheer to the lives of his wife and 10-year-old son Adi. To do this, he weaves together a fable of his son's genius, coaching the partially deaf, and entirely unremarkable boy to say things like "Prime numbers are unpredictable" and "Fibonacci". He fed his son to pose questions at school so that he can pass himself off as a genius.

Joseph has shattered the myth of up gradation of living standards of dalits and oppression of lower castes by those ”above “ them,  how that long-ago-banished hierarchy is still so obviously at play. The lowest castes are the dalits (formerly known as untouchables) and many are still fobbed off with abysmal education, employment and housing. The anger and frustration that engenders provokes strife, and yet the wretched iniquities can also give rise to cruelly pointed comedy. Joseph is scathing in tone as he describes the middle class and intellectual elite and all their pretensions. He also understands something of what women have to go through, and pretend not to notice when it comes to creepy men they're surrounded by, at times. And he's certainly not overly kind in penning the delusions and frailties of old age, or specifically older men.

Mani is one of the lucky few from his neighborhood in gainful employment. His life is quite meshed with that of his neighbors, and yet, stands a bit apart, in that he dares to think beyond his grim circumstances. He works at the prestigious Institute of Theory and Research as a humble personal assistant to Arvind Acharya, but bubbles  with resentment at the Institute's domination by Brahmin scientists. A conflict is brews between Acharya and Jana Nambodri, the Deputy Director. To Ayyan, it is the War of the Brahmins, an event he longs to witness.

The plot portrays him as slimy and shady, despite being a devoted father and ‘lusting’  husband. But actually he is like a fulcrum pivoted in the entire plot. His life itself is a reflecting of the system Joseph wants to pen down.

Despite of his interesting character, the spotlight is also shared by his boss, Arvind Acharya, head astronomer at the Institute of Theory and Research, by his brilliant and self-absorbed attitude and mindset. Though in the end it proves to be inclined to saving his own earned grace because of his fault at being carried away by his genius.

Joseph’s affection for Acharya is quite palpable in the novel - in contrast, he seems to be more of a cool, detached observer and narrator when it comes to Ayyan. For his love for old men who are moralistic and bright at the same time, he couldn't resist throwing the moral man (Acharya) into an 'immoral' dilemma which is the love for his old wife who has several lines on her neck, and the sexual attraction of a young beautiful girl Oparna, who is wooing him, whereas for Mani there's no such divide :). Oparna’s character is almost cruelly drawn. She goes from a restrained yet stunning scientist, to a lovelorn seductress and finally, a vengeful saboteur who spills the beans on herself conveniently. Just in time to aid the plot, she disappears. Though Acharya sleeps with her for a fortnight and then tamely goes back to the silence of his marriage.

Manu Joseph’s Serious Men explores politics around us – between the smart man in a chawl and the more laidback; between the parents of the poor-but-brilliant boy in school and the more prosperous ones; between husband, wife and the rather unfortunate child. There are stories here which need to be told – that Joseph drags them all into his first book is perhaps a mark of a courage which stands on the edge of bravado.

Also sometimes, though not explicitly mentioned by Joseph, his effort to prove Mani’s intellect appears to be an endeavor to pen down hi own literary excellence. But overall this novel by Manu Joseph is worth reading.

Book Review by

Aman

Mechanical engineering

2008ME10486

Group 1

The Master and Margarita

From the land of Gogol, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy comes another author, your chance ignorance of whom can be forgiven (I hadn’t heard of him either!). The back cover quotes the Independent saying that he is probably THE greatest of the Russian masters. If you’re tired of Dostoevsky’s existential dread, and just aren’t impressed by the grandeur of War and Peace, and it’s a Commy author that you want; then Mikhail Bulgakov’s your man.


The Master and Margarita is the story of the Devil coming to Moscow during Stalin’s time, accompanied by his team of demons which includes a vodka-swilling, talking, enormous black cat; a fanged assassin; a beautiful, naked woman and an ex-choirmaster. They wreak havoc on the city and its residents by appealing to their vanity and greed.

In parallel runs the story of The Master, a struggling author whose real name is never revealed and who now resides in a mental asylum; and his long lost lady love, Margarita, who becomes a witch and accompanies the Devil to a ball in order to get him to reunite her with The Master. We also get to read the Master’s unpublished masterpiece; an account of Jesus Christ’s final days from the point of view of Pontius Pilate, the Roman Procurator of Judaea who sentences Jesus to his death.

Bulgakov had a lot of trouble with the stifling Stalin regime. The Soviet Union of the 1930’s was when the Secret Police executed or locked up thousands of people on the barest of evidenc, and the government maintained a strict control on foreign nationals, currency, literature and art. Bulgakov’s plays were banned, publishers refused to publish his work, and he couldn’t emigrate out of Russia. He once burned the first few chapters of his unfinished book, not unlike the protagonist of his novel, before deciding to rewrite the entire thing. Even though the novel was finished in 1940, it could only be published in 1966, 26 years after his death.

This novel is an act of rebellion symbolized by the often-quoted “Manuscripts don’t burn”; which expresses the faith in the triumph of literature, of art, of creativity over oppression. The reader is forced to wonder why the context of The master’s novel deals with the last few days of Jesus Christ’s life; when they could have been about anything at all. It seems to refer to the state-sponsored “Godlessness” of the time, when religion was practically banned, and the incorrect portrayals of Christ in all the anti-religious propaganda. The book opens with a conversation between an editor and a poet over whether Jesus was real or fictitious, when the Devil (who calls himself Woland) joins in and expresses surprise at their lack of belief. And since the supernatural doesn’t exist in atheist Russia, all the mischief that the demons work just cannot be explained and leaves everyone confounded.

But the novel can easily be read without considering its historical and political context. Bulgakov’s style is simply delightful. The accounts of Woland and his retinue taking over the city are hysterically funny. The demons aren’t just plain evil, but have a lot of personality. They are clever and witty, and Bulgakov’s imagination runs wild in his very inventive depictions of how the residents are manipulated, spirited away, humiliated or killed. The demons also display ‘good’ characteristics like sympathy and fairness, and by the end, the author hints at the Devil being in league with God, like two sides of the same coin. The narrative abruptly translates between the satire of the demonic gang chapters, to the descriptive account of the Pontius Pilate story along with his despair and reluctance, and the complex emotions of Margarita and the Master. The adventures of Woland’s henchmen provide comic relief when juxtaposed with the seriousness of the other two narratives. In the dealings of The Devil with Margarita and her Master, complex moral issues on cowardice and justice are explored.

Ignoring the historical context however robs you of many layers of the book. The juxtaposition of political and theological satire with romance as well as exuberant hilarity makes for a very unique book. This book for me gave a whole new dimension to ‘unputdownable’. It was unputdownable not because of the thrill or the suspense, but simply because it was just too enjoyable.

Apoorv Gupta
2007ME20563

Disgrace

DISGRACE

Disgrace is a novel set in post- apartheid period in South Africa written by John Maxwell Coetzee. The book was released in 1999 and won the Booker Prize. With this Coetzee became the first writer to have won two Booker Prizes. Coetzee also won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003.

The book is about a Communications professor at Cape Town Technical University in Cape Town named David Lurie whose affair with his student is discovered at the university. The name of the student is Melanie Isaacs. After the revelation Melanie withdraws from all her classes and a sexual harassment case is filed against Prof. Lurie. After this Lurie leaves Cape Town and goes to live with his lesbian daughter Lucy at Salem, a rural area. At first Lurie finds the rural life slow but soon he gets involved in the work as he volunteers at an animal shelter and helps the farm-hand, Petrus. At the farm Lucy is raped by three Africans who rob the house and also set Lurie on fire. Lucy reports to the police officer the stolen property and her father's assault, but says nothing about the rape. After some time Lurie returns to Cape Town. When Lurie returns to his house in Cape Town, he finds it has been robbed and vandalized. In Cape Town, he finds he is an outcast and the life there has changed a lot. Lurie decides to visit his daughter. On returning, he finds that Lucy gets pregnant from the rape and makes a conscious decision to keep the child. Lucy decides to marry Petrus in exchange for protection. Resigned, Lurie rents a room in Grahmstown to help his daughter at the market once a week and to dedicate himself to the disposal of the dogs' bodies at the shelter.

Disgrace is written in a narrative style known as 'Free indirect discourse' and 'third person limited'. David Lurie's point of view dominates the story. We are given an access not only to Lurie’s spoken words but also to his inner thoughts and unspoken words. The reader becomes intimately familiar with Lurie's desires, passions, and discourse.

“`Are you married?'

`I was. Twice. But now I'm not.' He does not say: Now I make do with what comes my way. He does not

say: Now I make do with whores. Van I offer you a liqueur?'” (pg. 12 in e-book)

Throughout the narrative, Coetzee inserts phrases in Afrikaans, Latin, German, Italian, and French into the text. Lurie tries to rebuild his world with his daughter. Coetzee through his ending leaves the reader to decide whether Lurie has been successful in his attempt and whether he has been able to salvage his relationship with his daughter. Also Coetzee emphasizes on the fact that each human being is equal. Lucy characterizes Lurie, saying, "You behave as if everything I do is part of the story of your life. You are the main character, I am a minor character who doesn't make an appearance until halfway through. Well, contrary to what you think, people are not divided into major and minor. I am not a minor. I have a life of my own, just as important to me as yours is to you, and in my life I am the one who makes the decisions" . Also noticeable in the writing style is the way in which Coetzee treats an event as gruesome as rape which is narrated in a few lines. Although few, yet these lines are convincing. Also, Coetzee portrays his characters in such a way that one can identify with them.The vivid description of college activities and the way in which students behave with their studies make us believe the scenes. They all look like the parts of our day-to-day life.

Nilesh Kanungo

2009ME10601

THE KITE RUNNER : KHALED HOSSEINI

This powerful, enthralling and a vivid image rendering fictional piece by an Afghan-American novelist Khaled Hosseini is a great debut novel which does the twin job of awakening the reader to the harsh reality of Afghanistan about which the world knows very little and telling an equally heart-wrenching story of personal redemption of an afghan.

The title of the novel totally qualifies its purpose as it is indicative of the kite flying tournament that is crucial to the plot of the story ,the one person who affects the entire life of the narrator and also, through the metaphor of kite represents the fragility of their friendship which once affected leads to a series of events which agonizes all the characters of the story.

Through the early life of the narrator Amir, born in a wealthy Pashtun family of Afghanistan before it is ravaged by the war, the author brings out the rich cultural heritage and value which the people gave to age-old customs and traditions. But at the same time ,the discrimination towards the socially low Hazara community who are mocked, jeered and treated unequally is also very pronounced .

Amir finds a loyal friend and a true companion is his Hazara servant Hassan who is his constant playmate and stands up for him and saves him from neighborhood bullies every time, but the former is not able to save him the one time it mattered most when Hassan is brutalized by the same bullies.

Caught in his guilt of having chosen the path of least resistance and in an attempt to be the sole receiver of his Baba's admiration, Amir makes the long time servants move out of his house , but what his Baba later quotes in the book "sometimes, the events of a single day change the course of an entire life " proves to be true for him and this one event becomes the painful dictator of his inner dialogue for the rest of his life.

Set in the backdrop of the changing political scenario in Afghanistan and the subsequent curtailment of peace , the story depicts how the displaced Afghan diaspora in America try to preserve their culture and values amidst impoverishment but at least peace which was absent in their motherland, while Amir who on the outset is leading a normal life suffers from the shame of his childhood, worrying about Hassan and waiting for "a way to be good again".

He is given this chance when the events of his life bring him back to his homeland where his life's shocking secrets are revealed to him, and amidst dilemma , he sets out on a perilous journey to atone the cowardice of his youth. This journey describes the shocking details of the deplorable conditions of Afghanistan as an outcome of war where people are poverty stricken, hungry and victims of violence but at the same time, the plot twists that follow make the novel descend from realistic fiction towards unbelievable , thus breaking the believable flow of events that the author had maintained from the start.

Despite that, the novel is a fine first attempt to bring out the universal themes of love, loyalty and family relationships; guilt, dilemma and redemption in the Afghan setup vastly unknown to the reader and thus successfully draws the sympathy and interest of the reader, and is a classic portrayal of the internal struggle of an Afghan which is equally paralyzing as the war that engulfs and paralyses his own countrymen at the same time.

-KSHITIJ MITTAL

2009CE10307