fiction review
BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / ‘Huckleberry Finn’ through the eyes of Jim
Everett’s breezy, fast-moving retelling of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) is about putting in some due respect.
BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / All our heroes end up dead
Review of ‘The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida’ (Sort of Books, 2022) by Shehan Karunatilaka
BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / It’s summer, it’s New York, and the girls are dressed up (and broke)
Happy Hour greeted me like a warm hug. This is definitely one of the sweetest books I’ve read this year, and possibly one of the sweetest books I will ever read.
BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / Agonies of the downtrodden
Anasru Ishwar written by Kazi Labonno is an impressive work of fiction, shedding light on the deepest gloom pervading the remotest corner of society.
BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / Mermaids are real: A story of the Haenyeo
Dear readers. I want you to do something with me. Take three long breaths—as deep as you can. Now hold it for two minutes! How long did you hold? I only survived one minute and 23 seconds. And I’m used to spending time in the water.
BOOK REVIEW : FICTION / Riding the early years of motherhood through ‘Soldier Sailor’
While reading it, one might feel that they are reading a mother’s confessions while she takes care of her son.
BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / A “knockout” debut from Rita Bullwinkel
The eight girls in Headshot clearly hope to escape the chaos of their lives in the ring.
BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / 'Prophet Song': Full of sound, fury, and significance
The 309-page-long dystopian novel is an oppressive account of Eilish who tries to keep her family from falling apart as everything around her crumbles.
BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / Otherness and invisible identities
'The Hippo Girl and Other Stories' holds up a mirror to a society that judges and ridicules those that do not adhere to its shortsighted vision of a homogenised culture.
Tough choices, terrifying consequences
A major scientific breakthrough has ensured that boys born with a particular gene can be identified as having the potential to grow into violent men.
Homegrown heroine
This story, which originally began as a short story, features a headstrong heroine putting her desires above what society expects of her, in order to realise her destiny.
Can ideology win over desire?
Set in 1990s Dhaka against the backdrop of the military occupation, the novella follows the lives of a young university professor, his wife, and their house help, Phulbanu. The story is narrated entirely from Phulbanu’s perspective.
A legacy of women's freedom in art
Schwartz’s narrator speaks in the choral “we”, and like a daisy chain, they connect all these women’s shared yet individual experiences of feeling closed in, being violated, feeling misunderstood by society, until they all shed their names and managed to “escap[e] the century”.
Rushdie, and the victory of words
The story begins with an unnamed battle where all men of the tiny principality of Kampili die. Their wives commit mass suicide by lighting a massive bonfire on the coast of the river Pampa and immolating themselves in the pyre.
1901 feels a lot like 2020 in Orhan Pamuk’s latest novel
How Mingherians responded to the infectious plague in 1901 isn’t altogether different from our response to the Covid-19. They too hid their patients in fear of stigma and isolation.