A nasty fall has severely restricted my movements and has kept me homebound for the past one week. The bright side of it is that I have been catching up on my reading, three hefty titles of which I have managed to devour only two. Two of the books have been discovered by accident (all good reads usually are) the third is a worthy buy after a recommendation. Below is a sneak peek at the covers and what lie between them.
The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng (Myrmidon 2007, £12.99)
Long listed for the 2007 Man Booker Prize, this amazing debut novel by a Malaysian novelist is set in the backdrop of World War II, in the lush tropical island of Penang. A story of trust and betrayal, state connivance and individual integrity, The Gift of Rain heralds a promising voice emerging from post-colonial Southeast Asia.
Map of the Invisible World by Tash Aw (HarperCollins Publishers India 2009, Rs 450)
Tash Aw, another gifted writer from Malaysia, gained literary prominence when his debut novel The Harmony Silk Factory received a Commonwealth writer’s Prize for Best First Novel and was longlisted for the (2006?) Man Booker Prize. Set in post-colonial Indonesia, Map of the Invisible World, his second novel, documents the initial days of Sukarno’s regime through the lives of Adam, an orphan in search of his identity; Johan, Adam’s elder brother, who has been separated from him and now leads a life of decadent privilege in Malaysia in the care of his foster parents ; Karl, a Dutch who raised Adam and is captured by soldiers, a victim of Sukarno’s cleansing drive to rid the island nation of its colonial remnants; and Margaret the American anthropologist and a friend of Karl’s who’s caught up in the crosscurrents of events while trying to help Adam find Karl. A painful account of a nation in transition.
Recipe for Cherubs by Babs Horton (Pocket Books 2008, £5.24)
Many a time I have judged a book by its cover (literally) and haven’t rued my decision later. This book was one such, whose lovely cover, the amusing name of the author and finally the blurb lured me into picking it up. And wasn’t I only too glad. A sleepy Welsh village with castles and lighthouses, a 200-year-old part-recipe-part-Renaissance-art book from Italy and a 13-year-old can be recipe for such a good read that even a seemingly slow reader like me could finish it (416 pp.) in two days flat! Took me back to the days of under-cover late-night reading sessions, oh so long ago. It was truly yesterday once more!
2 comments:
Delighted to know you are on the mend. Good you got some reading done, that is one precious thing we have to stay away from most of the time due to life's demands these days. And delighted to have you back writing. It's been a long time. I am going for the third book of course!
go for it... it's a real delight like a light and smooth Italian gelato :)
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