The Kite Runner

Afghanistan. The immediate image that comes to mind is that of guns, broken down buildings and the sound of heavy shelling. But the moment one opens the Kiterunner, this notion is dispelled. Hosseini paints a picture of blue skies, snowy rooftops, warm fireplaces, good food and happiness. And then come the Russians. Following them are the famous "liberators", the Taliban. Amir, the protagonist, is astounded at the change that the town of his childhood has undergone when he returns after several years. THIS, is the Afghanistan that all of us are familiar with. The Afghanistan that is painted in newspapers and television channels around the world, showing the people as bloodthirsty and the place as war torn. But this book is a must read for anyone who wants a peek into the real Afghanistan with its colourful kite competitions and tasty naans.

Further reading:

Here is a review by the New York Times

A terse but organised review of the book can be found here and another one here

For more about Khaled Hosseini himself check out this personal website

The Inscrutable Americans

I picked up Anurag Mathur's best-selling book on Saturday. And finished it by Sunday. Anurag's writing is hilarious at points, his use of unmistakably Indian English accurate to the last detail. Poor Gopal, you keep thinking, as you follows his travails as a student in Eversville. I chuckled over almost every page - there is a heroism about Gopal that contradicts his apparent vulnerabilities and frailties with the English language. Gopal remains undeniably patriotic to his last drop of hair oil.

Some of the Gopalisms are worth reading all over again. American football, muses Gopal, has "very little to do with the foot and nothing at all to do with the ball." He never does solve the mystery of "vegetarian cats" and his attempts to indulge his lust in the land of free love are comical.

I can't fault this novel for sheer reading pleasure - what I did find mildly disturbing is that America does manage to change our "strictly vegetarian and Coke-drinking" Gopal to devouring hamburgers and beers faster than his grandmother can change her sari! And...like many an Indian guy, America's open in-your-face sexual romps beguile poor Gopal - he becomes obsessed with one idea - to lose his virginity, doesn't matter to who, love be damned! And if you are curious to know if he does, well I am not going to reveal the secret.

My take: Entertaining and never to be taken too seriously.

The Diary of Ma Yan

If ever there was a diary that changed lives, this has to be it. The Diary of Ma Yan is life and its innumerable hardships as seen through the eye of a 13-year old schoolgirl.

When I was 13, I cared not much about studying. School was a necessary endurance that had to be survived. Although not from an affluent family, I never had to struggle to buy a book or a pen. And I certainly never had to go without food for 15 days so that I could afford to buy a pen. Yet that is precisely what Ma Yan had to endure.

The Diary of Ma Yan is a brilliantly inspiring account of Ma Yan's daily struggle to continue her education. Living in the remote village of Zhangjiashu in the north-western province of Ningxia in China, Ma Yan had one plea : I want to study. Her family's average annual income in this poverty-stricken and drought-ridden countryside was a mere 400 Yuan (that is around Rupees 2000 or 50USD). Throughout, Ma Yan depicts with the eyes of a child a life that is suffocating in its poverty. Yet, Ma Yan has but one desire - to study well, and earn a good job so that she can erase the pain in her parents' life.

And ----she succeeded. Ma Yan's story was published in a French newspaper and since its publication into a book, generous sponsorship has poured in, lighting the hopes of not just Ma Yan but several other poor students in Zhangjiashu. The power of the written word? Never been more amply illustrated. As a result of Ma Yan's diaries being read the world over, the Association for the Children of Ningxia was formed. And a 13-year old girl has changed more lives than I have done all my life.

Excerpt: "Mom said to me: ‘My child, I have something to tell you. I’m afraid that this is the last time you can go to school.’ I opened my eyes wide in astonishment, stared at her and said ‘How can you say such a thing to me? People cannot survive without knowledge these days. Even a peasant needs knowledge to work his land, or he will have no harvest.’

“Mom continued speaking: ‘With your brothers and you going to school, that makes three. Your father is the only one who works. We cannot afford to pay for you all. Your two brothers must continue their studies,’" explained Ma Yan.

"I then asked Mom: ‘Why do boys get to study and girls cannot?’ Mom replied: ‘You are still young, you do not understand. You’ll understand when you are older.’

“I want to study, Mom, I do not want to come back home. It would be so magnificent if I could stay at school forever,” said Ma Yan.

This Is Paradise!

If we were given a chance to pick paradise on Earth, which country would you choose? The US? UK? Switzerland? Belgium? Canada? Or would you choose North Korea? Yeah, the paradise that this book refers to is North Korea. Paradise being living in a country where you dig up food from rat holes and paradise being that your school life consists of memorizing verses in praise of the country's self-styled demon leaders.

Home to the world's most brutally closed regime, North Korea is a country teetering on the brink of disaster. I didn't know much of North Korea till I read the book. And what I came to know shocked me. Horrified me. Nauseated me. Sickened me to the core.

This Is Paradise! is written by Hyok Kang - a kid at best who has lived more lifetimes than you or I. Born in a small village called Onsong, he fled along with his family to China in 1998. He tells in stark clear language about the famine that struck North Korea in 1997 and continues to ravage large parts of the country even now, about the ruthlessly restricted life he and his family had to live in North Korea and a insightful glimpse into the workings of the secretive North Korean government led by Kim Jong-Il, son of the late Kim-il Sung.

Not everyone may have the stomach to read this book. One of the more disturbing accounts is about a man who kills his eight-year-old daughter when she begs for food and then driven by hunger slices her flesh for a gruesome feast. As book reviewer Jim Murphy says on Bookbag:

This Is Paradise! is an important book on so many levels. It is an insight into a world about which we have precious little information. It is the testimony of a boy living under a totalitarian regime. The very fact that he is testifying leaves us with a duty to read, to know, to pass on. And the closing pages in which Hyok Kang talks about the difficulties facing refugees, particularly those who have escaped conflict and abuse, are reminders to us all about the way in which human beings can suffer and continue to suffer...

Excerpt from the book:

In 1994, shortly before the death of Kim Il-sung, the Great Leader, the state food distribution system began to break down. Eventually, there was no more rice, no more potatoes. We moved on to vile food substitutes. Weeds, of whatever kind, were boiled up and swallowed in the form of soup. We picked these inedible leaves on the edges of the fields or the banks of the river. The soup was so bitter that we could barely keep it down. Our neighbours collected grass and tree bark — usually pine, or various shrubs. They grated the bark and boiled it up before eating it. And much good it did them: their faces swelled from day to day until they finally perished.

You can read more here on FrontPage. But you really should do better than that - read the entire 176 pages, and read what Hyok Kang has to say here on a Human Rights website.

We Need To Talk About Kevin

If you are reading "We Need To Talk About Kevin" I would suggest reading it during the daytime. No, I am not talking about a Stephen King thriller or a Fear Street paperback. Lionel Shriver's spine chilling book is set very much in the modern world and takes flight from the various college shootings that wrecked America during a certain period. Written in the form of letters to a husband, Shriver's character Eva, describes the turmoils that surround Kevin from the time before his birth to the day he commits an act that would break not just a mother but people around the world. That "Thursday" Kevin commences an act of killing that chills the world.

Shriver's novel, which won the Orange Prize for fiction, is a cold look at motherhood and its precepts. It attacks the conventionalities of being a mother - for example, a mother is supposed to love her child because its her child. But here she describes the myriad emotions that Eva goes through when her child is born and how she struggles to come to terms with the feelings of motherhood. She is not a maternally inclined person by nature. Before you get the idea that poor baby Kevin is thrust into the hands of a devil of a mother, Shriver dispels the notion by showing how he is equally a very different baby. Kevin behaves like a schizophrenic from babyhood but his motions are oblivious to his doting father.

Excerpt - "Subsequent to a particular day in January, the moment I led Kevin by the hand into the classroom, a little girl with Shirley Temple curls began to cry, and her wailing worsened until at some point in February she never came back. Another boy, aggressive and rambunctious in September, one of those biffy sorts always boxing your leg and pushing other kids in the sandbox, suddenly became silent and inward, developing at once a severe case of asthma and an inexplicable terror of the coat closet, within five feet of which he would begin to wheeze. What did that have to do with Kevin? I couldn't say; perhaps nothing."

Pick up this book and have a sleepless night. Guaranteed.

Resources:

Wiki has a neat description of each of the characters.

The BBC has this page dedicated to the discussion of the book.

The Good Women of China

I am still in my China- book reading phase. Probably, I will be for a long long time to come as my fascination with this country endures. Yet so many are ignorant about this country - most relatives, and friends (all educated, mind you) come to me with the most biased prejudices possible - "So did you eat snakes and cockroaches there?" Or worse "Do you speak chinkchangchang?" Or "Don't they all look the same?" Comments like this are nauseatingly ignorant - I rage inside but then realize that those who harbor such misconceptions deserve not my anger. They deserve pitiful scorn for accumulating these biases when the whole world thrives on "wiki" knowledge.

Xinran's book "The Good Women of China" is burning with anger, on the other hand. Shocking. Searing anger. This book will drive a knife through the hardest of hearts - it doesn't matter that Xinran describes in hauntingly beautiful language, the travails of women only in her country, China. What happens to women as shown in this book happens every where. There is no place on earth that women can claim to have had a safe succor through the centuries.

As a journalist with her own radio talk show, Xinran accumulated a wealth of stories - innumerable accounts that tell of horrifying hardships and despair endured by the women of China. There is not a single story here that will fail to move you - there is nothing more I can say but that Xinran is an incredibly brave woman. Read this. You won't regret it.

• Squat Magazine's interview with Xinran.
• AsianWeek's chat with Xinran
• Random House's page on "The Good Women of China."