Category Archive: Book Review

Book review: Book of Prayers for the nonbeliever by Dibyajyoti Sarma

Reviewed by Paresh Tiwari

book of prayers front and back

Title: Book of Prayers for the nonbeliever
Author: Dibyajyoti Sarma
Publisher: Red River (2018)
Pages: 128 (Paperback)
Price: INR 400

To read Dibyajyoti Sarma’s, Book of Prayers, is to see — in one’s own lifetime — the birth of a modern mongrel mythology, rendered skilfully on every page. Dibyajyoti’s poetry deftly fuses together bits from Mahabharata, ancient Assamese lore, and his own story. The terrain is one of love, loss and longing, and that in itself isn’t something new or particularly unique. What, however is, is his voice. Dibyajyoti’s poems are travellers. Brimming with symbolist images, the poems move deftly from deeply personal experiences to mysticism and fables, relentless in their pursuit of the self.

Dibyajyoti opens the book with a warning where he candidly owns the reader, when he says – this book is about you, and me. In this one sentence, so seemingly innocent, he establishes a tone of confession – almost as if he and the reader are lovers – and it is this tone of confession that roots the book in a pursuit of truth. With this one line, which isn’t even a poem but a precursor relegated to a page before you dig your teeth into his work, he joins the pantheon of Walt Whitman, striking an intimate relationship with his reader. And we gladly hold his hand.

Book of Prayers is divided into five sections, the first four named after an element each and the last titled ‘An Unfinished Yantra for an Unnamed Personal God’. In each of these sections, Dibyajyoti shines a light on humanity, in all its messy, heartbreaking, soaring glory. He gets down into the soil of his roots, digging with his bare hands. His poetry deftly navigates the history of an entire community, touching briefly yet deeply, myriad subjects and themes – love, lust, longing, pain, memories, to name but a few. And he juxtaposes them with mythology known and unexplored, which reminds us that the universality of human emotion is not even a factor of time, and in this timeless saga, life germinates over the pages one ink blossom at a time.

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Book review: State of Emergency by Jeremy Tiang

Reviewed by Mitali Chakravarty

state of emergency

 

Title: State of Emergency
Author: Jeremy Tiang
Publisher: Epigram Books, 2017
Number of pages: 245

Jeremy Tiang’s State of Emergency won 2018’s Singapore Literature Prize (SLP) for fiction. Kate Griffin, one of the judges for the award, wrote in an article, “Erasing Histories” (https://nationalcentreforwriting.org.uk/article/erasing-histories/): ‘State of Emergency, Jeremy Tiang’s beautifully written first novel, highlights a lesser known side of Singaporean history, exploring the leftist movements and political detentions in Malaysia and Singapore from the 1940s onwards, through the stories and memories of an extended family.’

Focused mainly within the local and Malayan Chinese community, the Communist movement found refuge in the jungles of Malaysia. The novel traces the development and then the quelling of this movement through the stories of three generations of Jason Low’s extended family. Jason’s wife, Siew Lee, chooses Communism over her family and leaves for the jungles of Malaya, partly to save herself and partly to live by her beliefs. Jason loses his sister in the 1965 Konfrontasi terrorist bomb blast in MacDonald House where she worked in a bank. The Konfrontasi was an Indonesian reaction to oppose the colonial decision for the formation of a separate Malaysia (of which Singapore remained a part till August 1966). These political movements in the ASEAN rip through the fabric of the Low family, tearing it apart.  Though his daughter continues to work as a Singapore government official, his son leaves him to immigrate to the United Kingdom and Jason Low finds himself in a ‘C’ class geriatric ward.

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Book review: Not Elegy, But Eros by Nausheen Eusuf

Reviewed by Dr Faustina Pereira

Not Elegy But Eros.jpg

Title: Not Elegy, But Eros
Author: Nausheen Eusuf
Publisher: NYQ Books (US) and Bengal Lights Books (Bangladesh)
Pages: 88 (NYQ); 94 (BLB)

It has been at least two decades since my university days that I made time to go through a poetry collection as mindfully as I have recently. It is no accident that it is the newly published collected works of Nausheen Eusuf, Not Elegy, But Eros, that helped me emerge out of my doldrums on the poetry front. The title certainly played its part in drawing me to this new work. It was not long before I delved into it properly, that the full spectrum of what was on offer became apparent. Here was a fresh new voice of a global citizen who stirs up emotions against a universal backdrop which nevertheless reverberate at an individualised, atomic and primal level. Who would not be able to identify, in their own way, with, for example, the language of the trees that ‘held court with the birds, and drowsed at noon with the dragonfly’ or marking the passage of time through a thousand moons that ‘fattened and fell’?

Let me clarify at the outset that when I learned that the poet was born and raised in Dhaka, Bangladesh, I was intent on picking up deshi points of attachments from the get go. Part I, which barely contained the reference points I was looking for, initially almost disappointed. Then, of course, I came to “Ubi Sunt”, which chants an ode to the ‘ordinary sacraments’ of everyday life that are at once deeply personal and yet inherently universal. A poem woven intricately through shiny red seeds of sandalwood and garlands of jasmine freshly fallen after a night of rain, assures us of a continuity with all those who have gone before us and reminds us that sometimes the answer we are ‘hoping to find, if not what I seek, at least something that might suffice.’ “Ubi Sunt” is quickly followed by other gifts of homely indulgences – from the dining room and its many flourishes in “Musee Des Beaux Morts” to the almost delicious smell of Kiwi shoe polish and the rich feel of stiff-bristled horsehair brushes in “Shining Shoes”. What I found interesting in this particular clutch of poems is a quiet elusiveness of the poet herself. If it is by design, then it is pulled off cleverly – to invite the reader to such an intimate sanctum, yet remaining just beyond the line of visibility.

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The Best of Kitaab, 2018

It is that time of the year again – the threshold – a time to look back and a time to look ahead, to take stock and to plan. This is the time when the publishing world turns to scores of year-end lists for readers. At Kitaab, we have turned the gaze inwards.

Much has been written on Kitaab’s pages in the past 12 months: reviews, interviews, fiction, essays (though we could do with more on that page), curated articles from across Asia… We have spread the ground to publish writing from Tibet, Korea, and a lot of Singapore this year.

Asian writing in its diversity and rich heritage has found its way into two powerful anthologies from Kitaab’s books publishing division – The Best Asian Short Stories 2018 and The Best Speculative Fiction 2018 and into the pages of kitaab.org. We have interviews from some of the best writers across the continent, powerful poetry, fiction and book reviews that have covered almost all ‘genres’ of writing. We have kept our promise of sharing our platform with debuting writers and independent publishers. What we have in return, is the gift of a profusion of voices, styles, themes and subjects from writers exploring their skills to those who have already proved their mettle.

As we wrap up the year, we would like to thank all of you who have contributed to Kitaab’s wealth of literature with your poetry, stories, reviews, essays and interviews; we are grateful to the writers and poets who have taken time out to engage in conversation with us.

Much remains to be done, but for now here’s the best of Kitaab, 2018:

In conversation with

 

 

Hannah Kim
Kamila Shamsie
Monideepa Sahu
H.S. Shiva Prakash
Sudeep Chakravarty
Nayomi Munaweera
Bhuchung D Sonam

 

Nayomi Munaweera – Sucharita Dutta-Asane
Charles Ades and Smita Sahay – Shikhandin
Dr Mohammad A Quayum – Shikhandin
Bhuchung D Sonam – Shelly Bhoil
Sudeep Chakravarty – Shikhandin
Siddharth Dasgupta – Pervin Saket
Anjum on Bergman – Zafar Anjum
Saubhik De Sarkar – Dolonchampa Chakraborty
H.S. Shiva Prakash – Kamalakar Bhat
Kamila Shamsie – Sucharita Dutta-Asane
Gopi Chand Narang – Rahman Abbas
Hannah Kim – Mitali Chakravarty
Felix Cheong – Mitali Chakravarty
Zafar Anjum and Monideepa Sahu – Sucharita Dutta-Asane

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Book review: The Town that Laughed by Manu Bhattathiri

By Vinayak Dewan

 

The Town that Laughed

Title: The Town that Laughed
Author: Manu Bhattathiri
Publisher: Aleph Book Company (2018)
Pages: 262 (Hardcover)
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Manu Bhattathiri’s latest novel leisurely reveals deep insights into the human mind through its dysfunctional army of sleepily adorable characters.

The cover page of Manu Bhattathiri’s The Town that Laughed depicts the novel’s protagonist-antagonist duo: Yemaan Paachu, a retired former local police chief; Joby, the town drunk that Paachu takes on the job of reforming. Standing true to its promise of being a twenty-first century novel, it does not betray which is antagonist and which protagonist — a complexity that extends to many of the sleepy town’s residents. Instead, they are simultaneously comical and troubled, happy and sad, silly and incredibly intelligent.

The Town that Laughed evokes nostalgia for Malgudi, the titular setting of Malgudi Days (1943), a collection of short stories by Padma Vibhushan winning novelist R. K. Narayan. India has come a long way since 1943, and has, in the process, concocted its own multiple Englishes. As a postcolonial novel, The Town takes a big leap from Malgudi that hesitated to speak English, often italicizing, parenthesizing or poorly translating many aspects of Indian rural life for the western audience — diluting idlis to rice cakes, for instance. The Town, on the other hand, finds an audience situated closer to home and more adept at understanding the novel’s cultural milieu. Dialogues in the vernacular often find no translation or explanation in English. This might sometimes alienate a non-Malayali speaking reader such as me but allows the writer to write his story with confidence.

Provided by a robust toolkit, the omnipresent narrator is kind and funny and honest: ‘… you must be completely honest if you are seeking to give the reader a true picture.’ Bhattathiri is seamlessly able to don the skin of the novel’s diverse characters, revealing insights into their psyche with a heart winning tenderness. A case in point is the aunt-niece duo Sharada and Priya, Yemaan Paachu’s wife and niece respectively.

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Book review: The Who-Am-I Bird by Anuradha Vijayakrishnan

Reviewed by Vineetha Mekkoth

TheWhoAmIBird_print_02

Title: The Who-am-I Bird
Author: Anuradha Vijayakrishnan
Publisher: Bombaykala Books (2018)
Pages: 70
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As you read them, these poems by Anuradha Vijayakrishnan appear oddly familiar. Familiar like half-forgotten dreams, sometimes nightmares that tug at you from within as your eyelids flutter open. Lyrical and richly allegorical, Anuradha’s poems are diverse – they are poems of sisterhood, of coming of age, of warnings, of celebrating womanhood and freedom, of woman to woman sharing, of the vulnerability of being a woman/girl, of love and adventure, of temptation, passion, of family, of tender love, of death, of violence and more death, of life and minutely vivid observations on her journey as a poet. In Anuradha’s poems you will find the whole gamut of life as a woman.

A poem which first caught my attention was “Listen”. In this, the poet leaves unsaid the fears and warnings that rise unbidden when we see a girl unfettered, unaware of the dangers around her and of the choices she faces and her identity, as adolescence creeps upon her. Anuradha concludes the poem by freeing her own fear and repressions, thus giving and finding freedom.

 

Listen, listen. Or even better find your way, your unique gender,
your loosened tongue, your anger, your flawless game on the field,
streets, of the country you choose to be yours, not the other
way around. Forget we ever met
or that I tried to stop you. I did not.

There are the mother-daughter poems that resonate in you. Both, “The Woman Who Once Loved Me” and “What My Dark Mother Meant”, speak of the connect between the poet and her mother, of the love and of the prejudices faced. “Daughter” too belongs to this class of poems and is lyrical in its quality.

But remember, you were born of a woman.
Her love is the secret
you carry.
“Notes On Visiting Your Mother’s Grave” is a poignant poem. Remembrances that

She liked good things, handmade soap,
cowhide bags gifted by admirers, expensive
footwear. Her last pair was simple cotton
her skin could bear, but before that

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Book review: I Sing the Glory of this Land – Translated Verses of Bharathiyar

Reviewed by Bhaswati Ghosh

I Sing the Glory of this Land - Front Cover

Title: I Sing the Glory of this Land
Author: Bharathiyar, Translated by M. Rajaram
Publisher: Rupa Publications India (2018)
Pages: 240 (Hardcover)

Subramania Bharati first came to me in the arguably less-than-inspiring pages of my history- and-civics textbook in middle and high school. Though not exactly a footnote, without the presence of his poetry or the context of his scholarship and vision, his was merely another name to remember as part of the annals of India’s freedom movement. Such is the unfortunate, even exanimate nature of our education system. When his name reappeared in a series of interviews I did with former students of Tamil schools in Delhi in relation to a current non-fiction project, Bharati came across as a towering figure who continues to serve as the spiritual and linguistic compass for Tamil children similar to what Tagore does for their Bengali counterparts. Reading through I Sing the Glory of this Land, M. Rajaram’s recent book of translations of Bharati’s verses, I could see why.

While I’m disadvantaged by my lack of Tamil to appreciate the cadence and music of the original, the clear-eyed directness of Bharati’s (popularly known as Bharathiyar) verses didn’t fail to strike me. As did the expanse of his poetic canvas. The eleven sections of the book – including God, Freedom, Bharath, Women and Children and Nature – bear out this multiplicity of themes even as they trace their intersections. Kneading them together is Bharati’s unwavering accent on liberty, equality and fraternity — the three pillars of the French Revolution — as he envisioned them in British-ruled India.

Human dignity is one of Bharati’s preoccupations and manifests itself in poems like “Labour” with exuberance. In the scope of that single poem, he places workers, farmers and creative artists on the same plane — each group celebrated for its contributions to mankind.

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Book review: Invisible Ties by Nadya A. R

Reviewed by Nisha Misra

Invisible Ties

Title: Invisible Ties
Author: Nadya A. R
Publisher: Rupa Publications India
Pages: 272

A scintillating saga of longing and desire, love and lust, betrayal and trust, reality and illusion, Invisible Ties keeps the reader hooked till the very end. Sprinkled with historical references and political undertones, the novel seems to read like a Bildungsroman tracing the physical as well as the psychological journey of Noor, its protagonist. As Noor moves out of  Karachi, marries into Singapore, strays into Malay and ‘surfaces’ in London, the reader cannot but be baffled by the enigma that she is.

The novel may seem to be the tale of a young, coy, overprotected girl whose Page 3 narcissistic mother’s only desire is to find a suitable rich match for her (preferably outside the volatile atmosphere of Pakistan) and whose father is a case in hopelessness and self-pity. Nurtured in the confinement of home and country, Noor’s life takes an unexpected turn when a robbery at their palatial bungalow by their own guards, who also abduct her mother, tears the family apart. The most painful part of the episode is the death of her trusted driver, Uncle Joseph, who lays down his life in order to save hers. Her marriage to Meekal, who is settled in Singapore, is a compromise of sorts for the sake of her family, but a compromise that reveals itself to be so only when she joins her husband there.

The author skilfully weaves the mystery shrouding the relationships or the ties that bind the various characters in the novel – be it the mystery surrounding the abduction, the release and subsequent silence of Noor’s mother on the topic, her mother-in-law’s eccentricities and secret life, Meekal’s complicated love-hate relationship with his ex-girlfriend Jyoti, Noor’s illusions surrounding the ghost of Uncle Joseph, her Chinese friend Ella’s attempt at keeping her marriage intact or Jake’s depression and fatal attraction towards his ex-girlfriend – and is an insightful study in the workings of the human mind and the complexities that define and govern human relationships.

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Book review: Table Manners by Susmita Bhattacharya

Reviewed by Pia Ghosh-Roy

 

Table Manners

Title: Table Manners
Author: Susmita Bhattacharya
Publisher: Dahlia Publishing
Year of Publication: 2018
No. of pages: 159
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True to its title, the stories in Table Manners seem to be seated around a long dinner-table having a conversation over the course of an engrossing evening. With each story, I was invited into homes and lives that had their own unique rhythms. The stories wear different personalities, inhabit different parts of the world — India, Singapore, Italy and the UK — but sit beautifully in each other’s company and make for a meal to remember.

Many of the stories took me into the heart of traditional marriages and relationships, with their set dynamics, power imbalance, the dominant male and the ‘good wife’. Yet, within that, there are hidden moments, quietly captured and gently exposed, that reveal more. You will meet women, who while living the life that is expected of them — adjusting their hopes, and lowering their expectations — keep aside a bit of themselves that belong to no-one and answer to no-one. I found these private selves opening themselves up to me in these pages, where they share their concerns, their contemplations, and their inner chaos, where they show their bruises both visible and invisible.

In the first story, a wife nurses a childhood love for her male cousin, and is torn between this reckless and doomed emotion, and “The Right Thing To Do” by her staid marriage. It is told by the female house-help, whose thoughts are consumed by two things: her mistress’s irresponsible heart, and a neighbour, Mrs Dalal, who is regularly beaten by her husband and ‘turns up with her bruises at the most inconvenient of times’.

In one of my favourite stories in the collection, Li, a young woman, plans a quiet evening with a bowl of “Comfort Food”, but gives it up when she has to accompany her husband to a business dinner with a potential client – a potential male client, who subjects her to an evening of unwelcome attention and lecherous stares.

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