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Review Date: 4/7/2017
This novel was shortlisted for the 2007 Booker Prize. The protagonist, Animal, is a smart but slum dwelling Indian boy who is a victim of a Bhopal-type disaster. His life changes when an American doctor opens a free clinic as he plots to turn events to his advantage.
I read this book in India and loved it. Irreverent in the extreme, funny in parts, searing in others. Never dull.
From Amazon:
In this Booker-shortlisted novel, Indra Sinha's profane, furious, and scathingly funny narrator delivers an unflinching look at what it means to be human.
I used to be human once. So I'm told. I don't remember it myself, but people who knew me when I was small say I walked on two feet, just like a human being...
Ever since he can remember, Animal has gone on all fours, his back twisted beyond repair by the catastrophic events of âthat nightâ when a burning fog of poison smoke from the local factory blazed out over the town of Khaufpur, and the Apocalypse visited his slums. Now just turned seventeen and well schooled in street work, he lives by his wits, spending his days jamisponding (spying) on town officials and looking after the elderly nun who raised him, Ma Franci. His nights are spent fantasizing about Nisha, the girlfriend of the local resistance leader, and wondering what it must be like to get laid.
When Elli Barber, a young American doctor, arrives in Khaufpur to open a free clinic for the still suffering townsfolkâonly to find herself struggling to convince them that she isn't there to do the dirty work of the KampaniâAnimal gets caught up in a web of intrigues, scams, and plots with the unabashed aim of turning events to his own advantage.
Profane, piercingly honest, and scathingly funny, Animal's People illuminates a dark world shot through with flashes of joy and lunacy. A stunning tale of an unforgettable character, it is an unflinching look at what it means to be human: the wounds that never heal and a spirit that will not be quenched.
I read this book in India and loved it. Irreverent in the extreme, funny in parts, searing in others. Never dull.
From Amazon:
In this Booker-shortlisted novel, Indra Sinha's profane, furious, and scathingly funny narrator delivers an unflinching look at what it means to be human.
I used to be human once. So I'm told. I don't remember it myself, but people who knew me when I was small say I walked on two feet, just like a human being...
Ever since he can remember, Animal has gone on all fours, his back twisted beyond repair by the catastrophic events of âthat nightâ when a burning fog of poison smoke from the local factory blazed out over the town of Khaufpur, and the Apocalypse visited his slums. Now just turned seventeen and well schooled in street work, he lives by his wits, spending his days jamisponding (spying) on town officials and looking after the elderly nun who raised him, Ma Franci. His nights are spent fantasizing about Nisha, the girlfriend of the local resistance leader, and wondering what it must be like to get laid.
When Elli Barber, a young American doctor, arrives in Khaufpur to open a free clinic for the still suffering townsfolkâonly to find herself struggling to convince them that she isn't there to do the dirty work of the KampaniâAnimal gets caught up in a web of intrigues, scams, and plots with the unabashed aim of turning events to his own advantage.
Profane, piercingly honest, and scathingly funny, Animal's People illuminates a dark world shot through with flashes of joy and lunacy. A stunning tale of an unforgettable character, it is an unflinching look at what it means to be human: the wounds that never heal and a spirit that will not be quenched.
Review Date: 4/3/2017
William Boyd, a terrific writer who knows Africa quite well (..he was brought up there), really cuts loose with 'A Good Man in Africa'. He completely deconstructs the psyche of the pompous, self-righteous and arrogant British colonial rulers (diplomats) of Africa during the 1960s. However I think even the most right wing British will not be offended with this book since his leading characters are so over-the-top buffoons and prigs it is obvious the author is writing a purely fictious comic novel, in the Tom Sharpe-esque tradition (but better written), rather than intentionally being cruel.
The story is about the travails of a junior British diplomat who is stuck in a nowhere African country and, despite wanting to succeed in his job/life, completely makes an ass out of himself. This is made easier by having a nitwit boss, a local mistress with a social disease, and the knack of always putting his foot in his mouth. The book is often laugh-out-loud funny. And the author has done a marvellous job in structuring the book; it is well-paced and literate.
Bottom line: surely among William Boyd's best works.
The story is about the travails of a junior British diplomat who is stuck in a nowhere African country and, despite wanting to succeed in his job/life, completely makes an ass out of himself. This is made easier by having a nitwit boss, a local mistress with a social disease, and the knack of always putting his foot in his mouth. The book is often laugh-out-loud funny. And the author has done a marvellous job in structuring the book; it is well-paced and literate.
Bottom line: surely among William Boyd's best works.
Review Date: 6/28/2017
Helpful Score: 1
This is an autobiography rather than a cultural analysis and whilst it is interesting as a memoir, I didn't find it enlightening or particularly well written.
Review Date: 4/3/2017
The book takes place in 1999 with frequent flashbacks to 1948. The story concerns Trond Sander, a 67-year-old man coming to terms with his aging body and still grieving three years after the deaths of his wife and sister. Telling no one, not even his two grown daughters, Trond takes his pension and moves to an isolated lakeside cabin in the wilds of northern Norway.
Circumstances bring Trond together with one of his neighbors, Lars Haug, another solitary man. It doesn't take both men very long to realize that they share a mysterious common heritage of heartache some fifty years earlier when Trond was 15 and Lars was a 10-year-old neighbor boy, the little brother of his close friend Jon. Long dormant memories are awakened and old wounds opened.
Circumstances bring Trond together with one of his neighbors, Lars Haug, another solitary man. It doesn't take both men very long to realize that they share a mysterious common heritage of heartache some fifty years earlier when Trond was 15 and Lars was a 10-year-old neighbor boy, the little brother of his close friend Jon. Long dormant memories are awakened and old wounds opened.
Review Date: 3/28/2017
Volume I of the masterful Cairo Trilogy by Mahfouz. It introduces the engrossing saga of a Muslim family in Cairo during Egypt's occupation by British forces in the early 1900s
Review Date: 3/28/2017
In the hopeful 1950s, Frank and April Wheeler appear to be a model couple: bright, beautiful, talented, with two young children and a starter home in the suburbs. Perhaps they married too young and started a family too early. Maybe Frank's job is dull. And April never saw herself as a housewife. Yet they have always lived on the assumption that greatness is only just around the corner. But now that certainty is about to crumble.With heartbreaking compassion and remorseless clarity, Richard Yates shows how Frank and April mortgage their spiritual birthright, betraying not only each other, but their best selves
Review Date: 4/7/2017
Claire Tomalin is an excellent, witty and thorough biographer. Her account of Pepys won the Whitbread Book of the Year 2002. Pepys was the most famous English diarist and this is an excellent chronicle of the times - 1660 to 1669. A must for fans of English history.
From Amazon:
For a decade, beginning in 1660, an ambitious young London civil servant kept an astonishingly candid account of his life during one of the most defining periods in British history. In Samuel Pepys, Claire Tomalin offers us a fully realized and richly nuanced portrait of this man, whose inadvertent masterpiece would establish him as the greatest diarist in the English language.
Against the backdrop of plague, civil war, and regicide, with John Milton composing diplomatic correspondence for Oliver Cromwell, Christopher Wren drawing up plans to rebuild London, and Isaac Newton advancing the empirical study of the world around us, Tomalin weaves a breathtaking account of a figure who has passed on to us much of what we know about seventeenth-century London. We witness Pepys's early life and education, see him advising King Charles II before running to watch the great fire consume London, learn about the great events of the day as well as the most intimate personal details that Pepys encrypted in the Diary, follow him through his later years as a powerful naval administrator, and come to appreciate how Pepys's singular literary enterprise would in many ways prefigure our modern selves. With exquisite insight and compassion, Samuel Pepys captures the uniquely fascinating figure whose legacy lives on more than three hundred years after his death.
From Amazon:
For a decade, beginning in 1660, an ambitious young London civil servant kept an astonishingly candid account of his life during one of the most defining periods in British history. In Samuel Pepys, Claire Tomalin offers us a fully realized and richly nuanced portrait of this man, whose inadvertent masterpiece would establish him as the greatest diarist in the English language.
Against the backdrop of plague, civil war, and regicide, with John Milton composing diplomatic correspondence for Oliver Cromwell, Christopher Wren drawing up plans to rebuild London, and Isaac Newton advancing the empirical study of the world around us, Tomalin weaves a breathtaking account of a figure who has passed on to us much of what we know about seventeenth-century London. We witness Pepys's early life and education, see him advising King Charles II before running to watch the great fire consume London, learn about the great events of the day as well as the most intimate personal details that Pepys encrypted in the Diary, follow him through his later years as a powerful naval administrator, and come to appreciate how Pepys's singular literary enterprise would in many ways prefigure our modern selves. With exquisite insight and compassion, Samuel Pepys captures the uniquely fascinating figure whose legacy lives on more than three hundred years after his death.
Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates: The Forgotten War That Changed American History
Author:
Book Type: Hardcover
18
Author:
Book Type: Hardcover
18
Review Date: 7/21/2017
Maybe it's because I have just come off a major Ron Chernow jag but I found this book to be very superficial and it diminishes history into a black and white scenario of good vs evil to a farcical, and even hypocritical, extent.
It's a shame because it's a fascinating period of history and a great story. I just wish someone else had written it.
It's a shame because it's a fascinating period of history and a great story. I just wish someone else had written it.
Review Date: 8/29/2017
This is a fascinating story about the struggles of a group of settlers in rural Taiwan and covers a 60 year period involving the occupation of the Japanese up to WWII. I found the description of Hakka family life and the Taiwanese culture and legal system particularly compelling.
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