“I could do with a bit more excess. From now on I’m going to be immoderate–and volatile–I shall enjoy loud music and lurid poetry. I shall be rampant.” In Chocolat by Joanne Harris, Lansquenet, where the story is set, is described as a quaint, sleepy little French village. There is a Church, where the villagers […]
I read the novel ‘Little Women’ for the first time when I was almost eight years old. It was an old, abridged copy, rather a children’s version of classics that my Dad had brought along with a copy of David Copperfield. This ‘Little Women’ however had beautiful illustrations of the different incidents in the story,
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Doesn’t the book bear a rather odd title? For many of us who judge a book by its title, this would be put down for not being serious, intense literature. And yet, this is a book which has a war at the center of its plot. A little research about what Guernsey is will tell
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We all know Charlotte Bronte best for her Jane Eyre. Villette is her lesser known work, a book that I stumbled upon when I looked out to read a classic. A comparison to Jane Eyre was just inevitable. My first, biased opinion was that it did fall short of Jane Eyre – even as Charlotte
I took an interest in ‘The Collectors Wife’ solely with the intention of reading something about a conflict, an insurgency or civil war. I say this at the cost of sounding elitist: I wanted to know how violence and political instability ravaged the lives of people and – with a childish sense of curiosity –
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I read the ‘Hungry Tide’ – by Amitav Ghosh when I was 20. In the second year of my BA. I knew – one day, even as the book laid on my bookshelf gathering dust, that I would be returning to it. The moment came, almost 10 years later. Either Life has come in a
Odd title, right? I am a sucker for classic novels, and would have not picked this up on my own had not my friend told me that it is written by Nisha Susan – the co-founder and writer of my favorite feminist blog ‘the Ladies Finger’. I had discovered Ladies Finger several years ago, when
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The Forest of Enchantments does not dwell on how Sita looked – like a lotus or a lily or a Goddess. Her beauty is rather visible in the strength of her character. It is the story which Sita tells after all, and she must be tired of the flowery tags too. In fact, Chitra Banerji
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For a foreigner reading Vikram Seth’s ‘A Suitable Boy’ – it will be a commentary on India. At least the North of India, Calcutta (now Kolkata) included. For an Indian reading the same, it is but a slice of life. The story is not infused with Indianness merely from the top, such that one can
Every year, in India – people welcome their beloved Goddess to her earthly abode during the nine days of Navratri. The legend of Ma Durga battling Mahishasur and emerging victorious is recited through stories, drama, artistic installations and songs. For a lot of us, this is largely symbolic of finding our inner strength and destroying
