Now a Finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction 2024 It's hard to categorize this text, and that's where the intrigue lies: Sure, it's a kindNow a Finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction 2024 It's hard to categorize this text, and that's where the intrigue lies: Sure, it's a kind of a memoir depicting the 13 months following the knife attack in Chautauqua, New York, in August 2022, but it's also an intense psychological self-portrait and, as the sub-title suggests, a meditation on survival techniques against all despair. Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa against Rushdie was issued in 1989, he was stabbed 33 years later - how insane is it to have your life that you have dedicated to telling people stories constantly invaded by life-threatening idiocy so absurd it's almost impossible to grasp that it's even real?
And Rushdie's imagined conversation with his attacker is very clear regarding the social status and intellectual capacity of the guy - and here's a left-field connection for you, because I'm pretty sure Rushdie has never heard the biggest hit of German punk rock heroes Die Ärzte, an anti-fascist smasher that describes a young isolated man with low self-esteem who gets radicalized - and the chorus culminates in the chant "oh-oh-oh Arschloch!", which is exactly how Rushie calls his attacker, whom he imagines to be just like the dude in the Ärzte song, throughout his book: A. (okay, it could stand for assassin, but I'm pretty sure it's asshole).
Rushdie juxtaposes horrifying depictions of his injuries, time in the hospital and inner turmoil with tales about what got him through: His family and friends, and also public solidarity. In a way, this is also a written monument of survival, crafted by a guy extremists want to kill so he will finally shut up. But he won't. And while he's afraid he might now be "the guy who got stabbed", this also won't be true: Rushdie is the world-renowned storyteller who has written books so powerful that they terrify fundamentalists into trying to stop him from telling more stories. They should be terrified of all the people who read Rushdie's works and stand with him, because we are too many to defeat.
The White Tiger meets a parody of Slumdog Millionaire: By coincidence, poor Indian teenager Ramesh acquires an education and proceeds to start an illeThe White Tiger meets a parody of Slumdog Millionaire: By coincidence, poor Indian teenager Ramesh acquires an education and proceeds to start an illegal business writing the Indian SAT's for children of the rich. When one of them, Rudi, gets an exceptionally high score and is celebrated in the national media, Ramesh blackmails the family into making him his manager in exchange for not giving away that in fact he, Ramesh, was the one who wrote the exam in Rudi's name. Rudi becomes a quiz show host, and they both get kidnapped...
Raina writes in a very sarcastic tone reminiscent of Aravind Adiga (who, let's face it, should never have won the Booker), but the voice of Ramesh is crafted as wittier. Underneath the absurd plot that reads like the script for a fun Hollywood blockbuster, there is lots of social criticism regarding the hierarchy of Indian society, the conservative values of families, corruption, as well as the discrimination of women, Muslims, and people with darker skin tones.
Granted, the text is overly long and Raina overdoes it with descriptions of scenes and settings, but hell, this is a pageturner, and exactly the kind of reading that I needed after weeks packed with the likes of Jon Fosse, Geetanjali Shree, and Georgi Gospodinov - sometimes, I need in-your-face fiction with some speed and punchlines. And while this won't win the Nobel anytime soon (Fosse will, I hope), it's entertaining and smart....more
Now Winner of the International Booker Prize 2022 I can see why this novel won the International Booker, although it's not my kind of literature: We meNow Winner of the International Booker Prize 2022 I can see why this novel won the International Booker, although it's not my kind of literature: We meet an 80-year-old woman (extra points for having an old woman as a protagonist, see Moon Tiger!) who recently lost her husband, falls into a depression for the first 200 pages, then gathers new strength, and proceeds to cross borders - between countries, ages, religions, genders. She becomes child-like again, reverses roles with her concerned daughter, and befriends a hijra, plus the partition between India and Pakistan plays a great role and gives the text further political and historical dimensions - as the afterword by translator Daisy Rockwell explains, the "partition novel" is an important genre in Indian literature, and one we in the West are mostly unaware of.
Daisy Rockwell clearly deserves all the recognition, as the book celebrates the Hindi language with witty remarks, wordplay, reliance on sound, sentences in Punjabi, Urdu, Sanskrit and (also in the original) English - this translation is clearly stellar. The whole text has a very particular vibe, also when it comes to the composition and length of the sentences, the musings, the humor, the irony.
I found the length slightly daring and I generally struggle with meandering texts, so this is a case of it's not you, it's me - my personal winner was A New Name: Septology VI-VII, but as Frank Wynne put it, comparing the books on the shortlist isn't comparing apples with oranges, it's comparing apples with washing machines: They are just so different, and we all can't shake our personal preferences (and I love experimental Norwegian musings mixed with Latin, apparently :-)).
So more power to this year's judges, to Geetanjali Shree and Daisy Rockwell for choosing this certainly worthy winner. You can listen to me chat with jury chair Frank Wynnehere....more
Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2021 Now available in German: Das Porzellanzimmer This novel has quite a few flaws, but I really enjoyed reading it, thuLonglisted for the Booker Prize 2021 Now available in German: Das Porzellanzimmer This novel has quite a few flaws, but I really enjoyed reading it, thus four instead of three stars. The title-giving China Room has nothing to do with the country in Asia, but refers to a small chamber shared by three young brides (and where some porcelain from their mother-in-law's dowry is stored). It's the year 1929 in rural Punjab, and 15-year-old Mehar wonders which of the three brothers of the house is her husband, as all three girls have been married the same day and are kept unaware of who is whose husband - sexual meetings always occur in a windowless room, in almost complete darkness. When Mehar presumes that she has found out which one is her spouse, tragedy ensues...
In the second, much shorter storyline which is intertwined with the larger portion of the text, we meet Mehar's great-grandson who lives in England (colonizer of India), but comes back to Punjab and the China room before his first year of university in order to free himself of his heroin addiction - and who seems to be the one telling his own and Mehar's story in hindsight. He remains unnamed, but at the end of the text, we see a photo of an old woman holding a baby, which suggests that the great-grandson might be an alter ego of the author. As Sahota was born in 1981, it makes sense that he might have graduated school in 1999, the year the second narrative thread is set. In an interview with the author, he explains that the text is indeed based on an old family legend - but while the common narrative tends to patronize the poor people in the olden days, he wanted to highlight the tragedy, their plight.
I liked how Sahota linked his motifs between the two storylines, and I also found the narrative suspenseful and interesting. Sure, many questions remain unresolved, and the novel could have been longer and could have given more details - in the end, I would have enjoyed to stay longer with the characters, because I wanted to know more about the years and people left out. The atmospheric writing is highly effective and touching.
But then again, this proves that the novel is interesting and smart - a book about family, about loneliness, longing and belonging, about trying to take control of one's own life. Both Mehar and her great-grandson feel foreign and marginalized, although for different reasons, and they both try to break free from what restricts them. Is the China room a place of protection or a prison - that's a question that tends to come up in different variations.
In all of his novels, Sunjeev Sahota ponders questions of class, and this is no exception: It shows how intergenerational trauma permeates centuries and countries, how the wish to escape marginalization is the common root of the pain depicted. I hope there will be a new novel by Sahota soon!...more
Now Nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2021 Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2020 Avni Doshi's debut is a feminist novel set in modern-day IndNow Nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2021 Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2020 Avni Doshi's debut is a feminist novel set in modern-day India that ponders motherhood, memory, and the change of roles from being a daughter to becoming a caregiver for an elderly mother. The main character and narrator is Antara who is faced with the fact that her mother Tara's memory is starting to fail her. While the young woman is trying to figure out whether her career as a visual artist will ever take off and where her marriage is going, she ponders what to do with her mother, a strong-willed, free-spirited and often selfish woman with whom she has always had a strained relationship. When Antara finally gives birth to a daughter of her own, she struggles with post-partum depression...
Doshi has split her book in two alternating storylines, one about the events outlined above and one chronologically re-telling Antara's childhood, especially the time she spent in an ashram after her mother left her father to become the lover of a guru. The author does a great job evoking a particular cultural and social climate, and she cleverly shows a protagonist who suffered under her mother's self-centered version of self-actualization without declaring that a more conservative approach is the solution - in fact, there is no general solution. None of these characters are flawless; I would even claim that none of the characters are particularly likeable (which is not a deficit of the text: It's often the less likeable characters who can be deeply interesting).
Still, the story failed to completely captivate me and about halfway through, the text started to drag. The pacing is uneven, the construction is not particularly elegant (the two storylines simply alternate) and the story relies on a myriad of well-known themes: Classism? Check. Religious tension in India? Check. Beggars and gurus in India? Check. The overbearing mother-in-law? Check. The emotionally stinted husband? Check.
What I really appreciated though was the fearless portrayal of the complicated feelings a caregiver can experience if trying to care for a person they have a difficult relationship with, and the anger and helplessness that stems from the feeling of being inadequate in this role or from being taken for granted while the sick person is showered with understanding and pity (many caregivers start to suffer from depression and exhaustion because their needs tend to get ignored). Also, the portrayal of post-partum depression is effectively harrowing in its directness (unfortunately, the author herself has suffered from this condition).
So all in all, this is a promising and interesting debut and I'm glad that I read it, but I'm not sure whether this should be shortlisted (I haven't read the whole longlist yet) and for me, it's definitely not a Booker winner.
Update: While I was right about the Booker, the novel sold over 150.000 copies worldwide, and the translation rights have been sold to 26 countries (German translation: Bitterer Zucker). Indo-Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta is currently working on a movie adaptation....more
In her multi-award-winning debut, Indian-American author Jhumpa Lahiri gives us nine elegantly crafted, even-paced short stories - this is peak traditIn her multi-award-winning debut, Indian-American author Jhumpa Lahiri gives us nine elegantly crafted, even-paced short stories - this is peak traditional storytelling, well done, but unbelievably tame. The characters we meet are mostly caught between two worlds, namely India and the US, and affected by Indian history and politics. Many of them are interesting or even fascinating, but the stories they live through have left me feeling detached far too often: Nothing here will shock or surprise the reader, or even - God forbid - disturb, irritate or agitate audiences. How can something that plays on such a high level be so bland?
The core themes of the stories are universal: Marital troubles, alienation, the ghosts of the past, etc., and there is no doubt that depicting the lives of Indian-Americans is a merit in itself. It would also be hard to point at serious narrative flaws, but I just expect more intensity and narrative force - this is way too safe, especially considering that the author is trying to convey a world of uncertainty....more
Esteemed Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh ponders migration and climate change by improvising on the motifs of Bengali myth: Protagonist Deen Datta deals Esteemed Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh ponders migration and climate change by improvising on the motifs of Bengali myth: Protagonist Deen Datta deals with rare books and Asian antiques in Brooklyn. Each year, he travels to visit his family in Calcutta, and this time, a relative tells him the story of a Bengali folk hero called the Gun Merchant, a (you guessed it) merchant fated to travel the world seeking a safe haven from the goddess of snakes. As the story progresses, others chime in the elaboration of the tale, which starts to blend with scientific facts and urgent political and ecological challenges (see Ghosh's The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable). Where will we flee if the earth has become uninhabitable?
The story strongly relies on myth and metaphor and has a lavish scope: The pacing is particular, the events rely on readers suspending disbelief (on the other hand: myth plays a large role), and the text goes off into all directions. I'm not the reader for this, as I love stringency and intricately composed narrative structures, which is not what Ghosh aims to do here. For those who enjoy political fiction that also offers sprawling storytelling, "Gun Island" is the right pick. ...more
Now Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2019 Much like I Am Sovereign (the novel I would have longlisted instead), this is a book about writing and the coNow Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2019 Much like I Am Sovereign (the novel I would have longlisted instead), this is a book about writing and the connection between fiction and how we narrate our own lives: Facing his past, Indian-born crime writer Sam DuChamp feels like a failure. Estranged from his family, he tries to righten his wrongs and starts to craft a re-telling of - you guessed it - Don Quixote with which he not only aims to create something more meaningful than his previous second-rate crime novels, but that he also uses to reflect and ponder his own journey towards (hopefully) betterment as it is happening. And isn't our quest to give our lives meaning and to find happiness a quixotic endeavor and sometimes even a fight against windmills?
So the premise of the book is pretty great, but I had some issues with the execution. To illustrate them, let's dive into the plot of Sam's novel which, in Rushdie's novel (already confused? we're just getting started! :-)), is just as important as the storyline about Sam: In alternating chapters, we hear about what happens in Sam's life and how he fictionalizes it in his book. Sam's Quichotte is an Indian-born former pharma salesman who embarks on a quest to win the heart of TV personality Salma R (no kidding). As he is childless, but dreams of having a son, he simply wishes one into being: Voilà, Sancho, his new travel companion. Together, they cross the United States, and they as well as Sam get confronted with all kinds of timely phenomena: Racism, gun violence, the opioid epidemic, media culture, cyber terrorism, you name it - plus the timeless topic of family relations.
This approach has a very broad scope, so the individual topics presented are never explored in-depth - their treatment is often rather superficial, the themes show up like flashlights. Together with the fragmented structure, filled to the brim with narrative ideas, reading the book can sometimes feel like Rushdie is constantly throwing ideas (but smart ideas!) at his readers while keeping them busy putting together the pieces - it's not really immersive. This is a mash-up, a collage of a novel, that also indulges in presenting us with numerous pastiches of other literary works like Rhinocéros or The Conference of the Birds (Rushdie names his literary inspirations in his acknowledgements).
Bottom line: This is not a bad book, and I found the take-down in the New York Times to be rather vicious and unfair, but it does have some flaws. So while I applaud this year's Booker panel for longlisting so many timely and political novels, "Quichotte" doesn't look like shortlist material to me. (Update: Of course it got shortlisted, to my dismay! :-))...more
This book narrates the life stories of five young girls who grow up in a slum called "Heaven" in Bangalore, and while it touches upon numerous social This book narrates the life stories of five young girls who grow up in a slum called "Heaven" in Bangalore, and while it touches upon numerous social issues, the tone remains light and playful - this is the highly accessible cousin of Arundhati Roy's The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. In an attempt to reflect the diversity of the slum population, Subramanian introduces characters with different religious beliefs and family backgrounds, gender identities and sexual orientations as well as physical disabilities. Connected by their common faith of being female in a patriarchal society, our main characters Rukshana, Joy, Deepa, Banu, and Padma stick together and try to overcome various obstacles, mainly the planned destruction of "Heaven" which is threatened to be demolished so a new shopping mall can be build. The girls are the ones who drive the action forward, who determine the focus and direction of the book while learning to speak up for themselves. And while this is certainly heart-warming and sends a positive message of female empowerment through solidarity, the text sometimes dangerously ventures into kitsch territory.
I really enjoyed how the author employs the first person plural as a narrative voice: This is very hard to pull off without sounding pretentious, and Subramanian's version of this stunt reads effortless and natural. In addition to that, she is jumping between characters and timelines, thus also shining a light on the destinies of the girls' mothers and grandmothers, which gives the story a historic dimension. We hear about the impact of poverty, casteism and sexism, about forced sterilization, the longing for education and the pressure to become a wife and mother, and all of these vignettes are told with great empathy.
Subramanian is a former public school teacher and education expert, and this novel would certainly also be suitable for younger reading audiences: It doesn't require any prior knowledge of India, refrains from using strong language or explicit imagery and is generally - let's face it - not particularly challenging to read. But it is certainly a well-written, intelligent, entertaining novel and full of heart....more
I have the greatest respect for the way Kumar has structured this novel, because instead of going for maximun accessibility, he found a poetic form thI have the greatest respect for the way Kumar has structured this novel, because instead of going for maximun accessibility, he found a poetic form that reflects how his protagonist is trying to mentally integrate the disparate experiences of his past and present as a fresh immigrant to the United States. While the classic bildungsroman suggests that personal growth happens in steps, one building upon the next, Kumar knows that what might have been true for rich kids of the bourgeoisie in 18th century Germany (hello, "Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship") certainly isn't for a young student from India whose father was born in a hut to an illiterate young woman. This Kailash, our protagonist, is now trying to make it as a grad student in the States, at a university that (although never named) is quite obviously Columbia. His development is interspersed with various obstacles and highly influenced by the effort to bring (at least) two cultures into a balance.
Kumar illustrates this by creating a text that contains large passages about Kailash's past in India, his family, Indian politics & history, US politics & history, foreign relations between India and the US, books and movies that influence the protagonist's personal growth, people he meets, stories he hears, and, importantly, his relationships with women. This mosaic shows the different forces that are occupying Kailash's mind while he is trying to make sense of himself as a foreigner, and I particularly liked how Kumar Shows that the experience of living abroad makes you re-think and re-evaluate what you thought you knew about your home country. As it is always the case with novels that dare to shatter contents to make a point, it takes a reader willing to work a little to appreciate this text.
But let's go back to the women in Kailash's life for a second: I found it interesting that quite a few other reviews state that every chapter is about a woman Kailash dates (incorrect) and that there is oh so much sex in this book (while this is a question of personal standards, I find it a little hard to maintain in this case). What is true though is that the development of the protagonist's sexual identity is an important part of the story, and that he isn't always nice to women - and I commend Kumar's approach to write about this as well as academic research projects and world politics in a coming-of-age novel, because life is all about simultaneous challanges, especially when you're in your early twenties.
And there is another interesting aspect I'd like to mention: It intentionally remains unclear how much of this account is the memoir of Amitava Kumar, and how much of it is a novel about Kailash. The connection between fact and fiction, mediated by memory, is sometimes strong and sometimes weak, and where the truth lies is yet another question altogether.
At one point, Kailash listens to the radio and hears the story of a wolf who got shot in "Immigrant, Montana" - there is no town called "Immigrant" in Montana, but there is one called "Emigrant". And that's the question at the heart of the novel: It's not even about arriving at a place that was once foreign, it's about what encompases the field between "here" and "there"....more
Now Nominated for the National Book Award This controversial novel led to book burnings and almost ended the career of its author, Tamil writer PerumalNow Nominated for the National Book Award This controversial novel led to book burnings and almost ended the career of its author, Tamil writer Perumal Murugan. Local caste-based and religious Hindu groups found the portrayal of their culture so objectionable that they staged violent protests - but while the police compelled Murugan to sign an "unconditional apology" and the district banned the book, the Madras High Court later (in 2016) declared the ban illegal and directed the state to better protect artists. The same year, Aniruddhan Vasudevan won the Translation Award of the Indian Academy of Letters (Sahitya Akademi Award).
So what made the conservatives fume? The short book tells the story of a young married couple, Kali and Ponna. They both love each other very much, but the fact that after 12 years of marriage, 28-year-old Poona still couldn't get pregnant puts a strain on their relationship. The reason for their worries is less that Kali and Ponna desperately want to be parents - in fact, Kali is more than unsure whether he wants to have children at all, and Ponna is also ambivalent -, but that they are shamed, ridiculed and ostracized by their families, friends and other villagers because of their childlessness: Kali is called unmanly and impotent, and Ponna is the barren woman who brings bad luck.
Ponna and Kali try everything: They consult astrologers, make offerings to the gods, try to fight off presumed curses, and partake in rituals, but nothing seems to work. Finally, their families scheme to convince Ponna to attend the annual chariot festival celebrating the half-man half-woman god, where men and women are free to copulate with anyone. It was obviosuly the portrayal of this ritual as well as Murugan's criticism of cruel societal standards that protesters wanted to see banned.
Murugan writes empathically about the plight of Ponna and Kali, and his allegorical descriptions of nature and animals give the text the feel of a fable. This impression is heightend by multiple stories that are told within the text - about family members, ancestors, gods, and the past of the couple. The outside pressure puts a heavy psychological burden on both of them, and they also start to fail each other (which is especially true for Kali, who commits a horrible act).
Murugan writes an urgent tale about the pointlessness of sticking to convention without considering the happiness of the individual, the cruelty of some societal norms and the caste-system. And as the court in Madras put it: "If you do not like a book, simply close it. The answer is not its ban." That's how fiction can help progress....more
"That is the aim of the rapes, all this rough sex. Not just a disciplining, but a disabling. He believes that after him, I will have nothing in me to "That is the aim of the rapes, all this rough sex. Not just a disciplining, but a disabling. He believes that after him, I will have nothing in me to love, to make love, to give pleasure. This is a man breaking his own wife. This is a man burning down his own house."
This is not for the faint of heart, the book is in fact full of paragraphs like the one cited above. Kandasamy tells the story of a highly educated Indian woman from a well-to-do family who marries a man who keeps the outward appearance of a respected college professor and social rights activist, while at home, he increasingly isolates and abuses his wife. As the violence spirals out of control, the beatings become more and more vicious, the insults turn into threats, and the wife gets raped regularly. Kandasamy paints a gruesome picture that vividly explains why the wife stays with her husband, what strategies he employs to keep her under his control, the emotions she experiences, and the role of her own family and Indian society at large. By that, the book successfully exposes the power dynamics that allow violence against women to happen, and although this is a book specifically about India, many aspects also apply to other societies.
I think it is worthwhile to compare this book to Gwen Riley's First Love (my review), as both works talk about different forms of violence against women within a marriage. Riley's book mainly deals with different shades of emotional abuse (which is a topic that should get far more attention), and the language she employs is somewhat preying, tense, and sometimes ambiguous, which of course perfectly fits her topic. Kandasamy, on the other hand, talks about rape, physical violence, open threats and insults, and her language is raw, emotional and impactful - two very different books that feel equally important. (It is particularly remarkable how Kandasamy manages to make some jokes about her protagonist's dire situation - jokes that managed to make me laugh and feel sad and angry at the same time.)
Another important aspect of Kandasamy's book is that she is very political and often refers to the common phenomenon that a system of thought that maintains to fight for equality is used to oppress other people, in this case women. The husband in this story claims to be a devoted communist and derides his wife as "bourgeois" and a "bad comrade" whenever she behaves in a way that he does not agree with. While pretending to fight for the rights of oppressed workers, he oppresses, beats and rapes his wife; while condemning the dehumanizing consequences of the capitalist system, he tries to take away his wife's individuality; while declaring his aim to free the ailing poor, he incarcerates his wife. His "communism" is a charade, a tool to put him in the right, a cover-up for his twisted personality, and it remains unclear whether he himself buys into his obscure arguments:
"I must learn that a Communist woman is treated equally and respectfully by comrades in public but can be slapped and called a whore behind closed doors. This is dialectics." - "In this marriage in which I'm beaten, he is the poet. And one of his opening lines of verse reads: When I hit you, Comrade Lenin weeps."
Of course, this use of ideology or perversion of a system of thought happens quite frequently and in different contexts, but to read Kandasamy's description of the incarnations of this phenomenon in India is fascinating. For instance, I had no idea about the reasons why "a woman with short, loose hair in the bazaar also became synonymous with the white man's prostitute", the rite of burning widows, and the culture around the "bachelor politician".
And then there's the question whether this book is at all fictitious. Unfortunately, it is not. In the "Times of India", Kandasamy made it very clear that this did indeed happen to her (https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/h...), although for reasons that become apparent when reading her book, "Kandasamy is reluctant to expand publicly on her own case of domestic abuse, except to say she divorced her husband and moved on" (https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...). The author has since become a powerful activist for feminist issues and the anti-caste movement.
All in all, this is an excellent book that is currently on my #3 spot for the Women's Prize for Fiction (#1 Home Fire, #2 H(A)PPY), and I also wouldn't be surprised if it made the Booker longlist this year.
Is this book overburdened with information, does it push a political agenda, does Roy get carried away by her intention to work towards a better IndiaIs this book overburdened with information, does it push a political agenda, does Roy get carried away by her intention to work towards a better India? Yes, yes, and yes! But the characters she creates, the poetic language, and the dedication that carries the whole text impressed me, and I was not bored for a second while reading it.
I will not even try to sum up the story, because that would almost mean to miss the point: Roy introduces us to vivid characters like Anjum, who was born with both male and female sex organs, Tilo, an independent young woman, Musa, who is a Kashmiri freedom fighter, and Saddam Hussain (not be confused with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein), a low-caste worker who lives in a graveyard with Anjum and rides around on a white horse. All of the characters are affected by political and religious turmoil in their home country of India. Roy shifts between perspectives and styles (classic narrative, fairy tale, poetry, song lyrics, letters, historical account), and space and time also change frequently.
Admittedly, this textual tornado struggles with strong centrifugal forces, and its discursive structure sometimes makes you ask “Hey, but what happened to so-and-so? And where the hell is XY now?” Some characters vanish for more than 100 pages, others disappear and reappear in various stages of their lives. At the same time, it is this technique of overwhelming the reader with people, events, narrative colors, and powerful images that lies at the core of this book, it is what constitutes its fascination and appeal. There is an immersive effect to it, and it made me want to go on reading (I generally love this kind of po-mo extravaganza though).
As to the overflow of political and historical details, I think it is only fair to state that this effect is certainly at least in part evoked by the fact that most readers (including me) know next to nothing about domestic politics in India and the intricacies of various conflicts spurred by religion, colonialism, territorial questions, and the caste system. Most of us (again: including me) have a rather vague concept of the trials and tribulations that strain the population of the world’s biggest democracy and the people in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Kashmir. Roy gives foreign/non-Asian readers an idea how it must feel to be a part of these societies and what all these issues actually mean for the individual, and I am pretty sure that for someone from South Asia, many passages of the book are way more accessible, as the topics at hand are well-known.
So although at first, I did not intend to read this, I am glad I did it anyway: The argument that persuaded me was that in his review, Neil compared “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness” to “Bricks and Mortar” (a book by one of my favorite German-language writers), stating that both texts have a similar structural approach and hypnotic effect. Although “Bricks and Mortar” was way more accessible to me (well, it’s about Germany and I am German), I agree: Roy also makes your head spin, and I loved the entrancing effect of this novel. (So thanks, Neil! :-))...more
MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2008 // Don't let the book's cover fool you: Aravind Adiga's "The White Tiger" is an unfaltering, angry critique of modern Indian socMAN BOOKER PRIZE 2008 // Don't let the book's cover fool you: Aravind Adiga's "The White Tiger" is an unfaltering, angry critique of modern Indian society. There's nothing playful and cute here, and the blurb's choice of words, particularly "mischief" and "endearing", are absolutely out of place.
The novel's protagonist Balram, a poor countryboy, escapes his miserable, degrading life as a servant by becoming a murderer and a thief, and goes on to succeed as a businessman in Bangalore (no spoiler here: The text is about how all of this happened; what happened is clear pretty much from the beginning). The genius of the text is that it still manages to create a degree of moral ambiguity: How much degradation and unjustified inequality can/should a person take? What can your family demand from you before it becomes okay to betray them? How far would you go to get the possibility to live in dignity?
Adiga finds some powerful metaphors and strong images to describe the plight of the working poor - who are the motor of India's economic growth, but barely profit from it - and how widespread corruption undermines the functioning of the world's biggest democracy. But it is the author's rightful anger (he once said in an interview: "It is important that writers like me try to highlight the brutal injustices of society") that also becomes a problem for the novel: The characters are highly emblematic and symbolic, some of them absolutely devoid of features that go beyond anything you would expect from "the rich magnate without a conscience", "the conservative, illiterate grandmother", or "the corrupt policeman". This is really a let-down, because in those parts of the novel where the writing is strong, it is STRONG.
"The White Tiger" clearly is a text with a political agenda, and although fighting for social justice is certainly a more than worthy cause, it does not add to the strength of a novel when the clarity of the message is put before the complexity of storytelling, and it's also less than ideal when not the reader, but the author seems to get a little carried away by his emotions....more