Lotus Reads

Barcelona Diary (Sep 2011) Las Ramblas

2011-10-03T17:25:00.001-04:00

Las Ramblas in Barcelona is a large pedestrian street lined with restaurants, cafes, souvenir shops, flower kiosks and bustling with tourists, locals, hustlers and performing artists from almost every genre.

Depending on whom you ask, you will be told that the promenade is either a "must-see" or "to be avoided at all costs". I tend to fall in the former category. While Las Ramblas abounds with pickpockets, Pakistani men wanting to sell you their Chinese-made toys and over- priced restaurants with bland food, it's a MUST for people-watching! And that's not all, Las Ramblas is dotted with some beautiful turn-of-the-century buildings like the Liecu Opera House (our apartment was right next door to the Opera) and the Boqueria Open Market, it also has some amazing art deco sculptures.

The very crowded Las Ramblas, tree-lined Las Ramblas, the nerve centre of Barcelona.

At one end of Las Ramblas is the huge Place de Catalunya and at the other end, the old port. It would take you no more than 20 mins to walk the entire length of the promenade from end to end.

As I mentioned, some old and beautiful buildings line Las Ramblas. This patisserie here is called "Escriba" and every morning I would step inside for an almond croissant for breakfast, although Escriba is better known for their life-size chocolate models of famous personalities!

Human Statue 1 - Las Ramblas

Human Statue 2 - Artist - Las Ramblas

The human statues, on their little homemade plinths, are a huge attraction on Las Ramblas. People constantly want to pose with them. Some can stand absolutely lifeless (in the most difficult poses) for hours together and some are constantly entertaining. Many are waiters, or actors that wait while they look for the perfect acting part. Las Ramblas simply wouldn't be Las Ramblas without these human statues.

One of the highlights of Las Ramblas was its open air market, Mercat de la Boqueira. After I was done buying my croissants at Escriba I would dash into Boquiera for some fruit juice. Boqueira is home to every conceivable fruit, sea food and ham and is an absolute feast for the senses. And if you understand Spanish it's an ideal place to eavesdrop on recipes! I was watching people buy mussels, it was so funny how everyone seemed to have his or her own way of cooking the mollusc!

Boquira photos courtesy my good friend, Anjum Poonawalla.

Remember when I said a walk down Las Ramblas yields unexpected surprises? Well, here's one! A modernista dragon designed either by Joan Miro or Gaudi ( I can't remember) for a former umbrella shop. Las Ramblas is full of little gems like this one...but you have to look for them...a veritable treasure hunt!

Modernista Dragon designed for a former umbrella store. Las Ramblas is full of excellent finds like this one.

Another interesting building on Las Ramblas, the Eglesia de Betlem

...notice the beautiful green-capped portals and relief.

La Riera Baxia, El Raval.

El Raval is a neighbourhood bordering Las Ramblas. Unlike Barri Gothic or the "Old Town" which still maintains its medieval charm, El Raval is an edgier neighbourhood with artists and immigrants from Pakistan, Indonesia, East Europe and Morocco filling the apartment blocks down its streets. La Riera Baxia (image above) is a street in El Raval well known for its vintage stores. I was lucky enough to buy a Valentino bag here.

The streets of El Raval are very colourful both literally and figuratively. Throw a stone and it's bound to land on a graffiti-splattered facade. This is a really great neighbourhood to explore if you enjoy street art!

Housing project El Raval

El Raval, because of its proximity to the City Center is destined for greatness. Infact, it's a district in the throes of transformation. However, at the moment, it is a barrio of great contrasts. Turn in to El Raval from Las Ramblas and you're suddenly accosted with high end boutiques, restaurants,cafes and art galleries..but walk to the other end and you see crumbling housing projects or dilapidated buildings in narrow alleyways.

Barri Gothic Square. Close by and housed in five adjoining medical palaces is Museu Picasso which is well known for its collection of Picasso's early works. The image above is a reprint of Picasso's "Self Portrait with a Palette" from 1906. (Unfortunately, you don't see the palette in this print )

Monument to Christopher Columbus: At the Port or Harbour end of Las Ramblas is the impressive Columbus monument. Although still debated by some, most scholars are convinced that Columbus was a Catalan. The monument marks the spot where Columbus stepped ashore in 1493 after returning from his voyage to the Caribbean bringing with him six Caribbean Indians.

Barcelona Diary (Sep 2011) Bullfighting

2011-09-26T14:33:00.001-04:00

Yesterday ( Sep 25, 2011) more than 600 years of history came to an end in Barcelona as the city hosted its last ever bullfight. It delights me to know that after this, no Spanish fighting bull or "toro bravo" as the breed is known, will be killed in the name of sport, art or tradition again, at least in Barcelona.

The Catalonians are understandably proud to be the first region in Spain to ban bullfighting. Supporters of the sport claim that they (Catalonia) did it just to have one more thing to differentiate them from the rest of Spain, but activists insisted that it was voted out because it was a barbaric sport and had no place in an enlightened society.

Above: Barcelona's only remaining Bullfight arena, the Plaza de Toros Monumental. A very striking building made of bricks in the Mujedar (Moor) and Byzantine style. The ban will only affect "bullfighting" and not other sports in which the bull is involved, like "correbou" where the public chase bulls through narrow streets, or "bouembolat" where festivities involve attaching mini fire torches to the bull's horns.

Correbou (not my own picture)

Bouembolat : is a tradition that was first started in the Valencia region of Catalonia. In days of old it was not uncommon for people to be fatally charged by bulls as they walked along poorly-lit streets. To prevent accidents like that from happening, it was decided that bulls would be fitted with fire torches and that way, not only would they light up the streets but it would also warn people to their presence. Nowadays the lights aren't necessary but the tradition continues. Photo courtesy: Josep Llouis Sellart

Arenas de Barcelona, with its beautiful neo-mujedar architecture, used to be a bullfighting arena but has now been converted into a shopping plaza which houses an excellent Desigual store. For the uninitiated, Desigual is a Spanish clothing store, known for their colourful, ultra-urban fashion with their headquarters and flagship store in Barcelona. More on Desigual when I post about shopping in Barcelona.

Barcelona (Sep 2011) Gaudi's Casa Batllo

2011-09-21T13:56:00.001-04:00

What's the first thought that comes to your mind when I mention Barcelona? If you thought "Gaudi" you would be with the majority for Gaudi is synonymous with Barcelona. Everywhere you go in the city, you're never too far away from a Gaudi casa or sculpture. Infact, the road we lived on in Barcelona, Las Ramblas, has several little Gaudi sculptures, photos of which I will include later.

Gaudi's work, which has been described as "Catalan Modernisme" is supremely original. Apparently he was inspired by a nationalistic search for a romantic medieval past and there are elements of medieval and surreal styles in a lot of his work.

Below are pictures of Casa Batllo. I fell in love with this Casa the minute I laid eyes on it because it looked like a house out of a fairytale. Later when I was reading up on the house I discovered that this apartment block was designed to symbolise the legend of St. George killing the dragon, whose scaly back arches above the main facade.

Facade: It is said that when Salvador Dali saw the curving walls and windows of Casa Batllo he observed them as "representing waves on a stormy day". Because the spindly columns were sometimes compared to tibias, Casa Batllo was also called "House of Bones"

Dining Room: The bulbous forms in the ceiling of the Batllo family's dining room are thought to represent the splash caused by a drop of water.

The Main Drawing Room: "One side of this room is formed by stained-glass windows looking out over the Passeig de Gracia. The ceiling plaster is moulded into a spiral and the doors and window framed undulate playfully."

The interior skylight at Casa Batllo...you can't tell from this photo but the blue gets more intense as you travel upwards. This is so that the intensity of light is equal no matter which floor you go to. Gaudi was a genius!

Attics: Don't the arches give one the sensation of being inside the skeleton of a large animal?

Some people say Gaudi created Casa Batllo after reading Jules Verne's "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea" and wanted the house to appear as though it were under water. In this case, the mosaic pattern could easily pass for a colony of brightly-coloured molluscs.

One of the most talked-about features of the house is the Dragon's Back and Cross. The Cross was made in Mallorca but was damaged in transit . Gaudi apparently liked the cracked facade and refused to send it back for repairs.

Another view of the cross but this time with the chimneys. Chimneys were usually an unseen, hidden part of the house but Gaudi liked to show them off.

Barcelona Diary (Sep 2011) The Catalans, Barcelona Harbour and Montjuic Cemetery

2011-09-20T08:25:00.000-04:00

Today I'm going to take a break from the Paris Diaries and visit Barcelona (by special request.)

Everyone's heard of the friendly, fun-loving, fiesta-mad Spaniard so it is with great excitement that we boarded our plane for Barcelona, but as we found out in Paris, stereotyping can be dangerous and misleading. The Parisian, we found out to our relief, is not rude as everyone, including travel writers, would have us believe, but it was time to put the Spanish people to the test!

I guess our first mistake was to think that all Spanish people are alike. Spain is made up of many distinct regions and Barcelona is the capital of the Catalonia region of Spain and thus home to the Catalans who do not like being called "Spanish". They have a distinct culture and language and following the death of Franco, the region was granted political autonomy by the new democratic government. Going by the Spanish stereotypes it would be safe to say that Barcelona is probably the least Spanish city in the country.

Sadly, the Catalans do not get very good press in the rest of Spain. The Spanish people see them as being fiercely nationalistic, mean and unfriendly. When we asked a Catalan friend to explain why this may be so, he said that Catalans were a reserved people who took time to make friends and that reservedness is often mistaken for being unfriendly. He seemed to think the Spanish habit of embracing anyone and everyone as a new best friend was tacky and superficial! :)

We weren't there long enough to make an accurate observation on the Catalan character but I will say they seemed very reserved - they would speak only when spoken to and at times seemed rather abrupt, but their dedication to style, looks, aesthetics and so on is admirable! Barcelona is, without a doubt, a confident, progressive city - one that preserves its past proudly but which is also tirelessly self-inventive. If you read its history and observe its architecture it's plain to see this is a region of proud, confident people who are not afraid to think outside the box. I'm going to post pics of some of the buildings we saw around Barcelona and you can judge for yourselves.

The drive from the airport into the city was quite interesting with the thriving port on the right and the beautiful Montjuic cemetery in the hills on the left. The cemetery seemed to run for acres and acres (I read later that it was 57 acres of cypress forest) and is a resting place for some of Barcelona's most elite citizens and also a fabulous place wherein to observe architecture of many different styles and periods. However, what's challenging is the lack of information on this cemetery in most of the guide books. Turns out the Catalans don't like to take tourists to this place because they consider cemeteries morbid and the idea that a cemetery can be a tourist attraction is rather distasteful to them. Still, if one has the time, I think it might be a great place to visit for the art (the mausoleums are truly wonderful) and also for the beautiful sea views. Unfortunately I only saw fascinating glimpses of it from the taxi.

For more photos of the Montjuic Cemetery go here

Today Barcelona has a truly awesome waterfront, which wasn't always the case. Until a few years ago, the city had turned their backs on the water (literally) with all the development taking place away from the sea. As a result, the beaches were grimy and areas of bad repute and the harbours were home to cargo and container trade only.

Over the past two decades dramatic changes have taken place along the waterfront. Cargo ships have been moved to the south of the city and old dockyards have been given facelifts and now serve as promenades or parks. Beaches have been cleaned up and landscaped.

Beach in Barceloneta.

Barceloneta was once a scrappy fisherman's village but it is now furnished with landscaped beaches, boardwalks, terraced outdoor cafes specializing in seafood, fountains and so on. I took this picture just to get a glimpse of the original Barceloneta.

Standing on a hill in Montjuic with the harbour behind me. Cruise ships are a common sight at the harbour here.

Another view of the harbour

One of the nicest things to do in Barcelona is to grab a funicular from Montjuic and take an aerial tour of the city.

Paris Diary (Aug-Sep) Page 3 Grand Mosque of Paris

2011-09-16T12:05:00.001-04:00

It's possible that one of Paris' best kept secrets is its Grand Mosque. Open up any guide to Paris and you will be floored and impressed with write-up's on the Louvre, the Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower and so on, and so should you be because they are marvellous sights, but after our trip to Paris my family and I have unanimously decided the Grand Mosque is a "must-see".

Built in the Hispano-Moorish style this mosque is a splendid showcase of North African architecture which stands out even more because it is planted among rows of French-style buildings. The minaret is about a 100ft high.

You have to pay to enter the Mosque but it's all so worth it. I could star at this intricate mosaic work for hours.

This is the entrance to the Courtyard, Hammam and Tea shop.

The Courtyard, with its fig trees, fountains, hookahs and mint tea, is the perfect place to relax.

It all began with the tea shop selling North African delicacies like Turkish delight, almond cakes, baklava and so on. The tea place got so popular that a full-fledged restaurant serving Couscous, Tagine and so on, followed suit very quickly.

Some fried chicken, Tagine and Couscous with a glass of very sweet, very nice green mint tea. Bon Appetit.

The only off-putting thing about the visit was the number of beggar women outside the Mosque. I guess it's the same of any place of worship, but these women, many of them in sunglasses to protect their identity (?) were a little intimidating!!!

Parisian Chic: A Style Guide by Ines de la Fressange

2011-09-15T14:53:00.001-04:00

As a woman preparing for a trip to Paris one of my most invaluable reads was Ines de la Fressange's "Parisian Chic: A Style Guide". Parisian chic is legendary and so is their intolerance for sartorial sins. I didn't want my vacation getting off on the wrong foot so I invested in Fressange's book and what a good decision that turned out to be. Fressange, Karl Lagerfield's muse and supermodel in the 80's, lays out in a very easy-to-read manner all the DOs and DON'Ts of Parisian style. Among her many invaluable tips are these ones:

1) Never look rich. Bling, glitter and logos are absolute no-no's when it comes to the Parisian woman. She is uninterested in sporting labels just for the sake of it. Her definition of luxury? "A brand that guarantees good taste, rather than an all-too-obvious price tag.

2) Like the Parisian, be a fashion icon in your own right, worship no idols. "The secret of good style is to feel good in what you wear."

3) NO Fishnet T-shirts, flip-flops, running shoes and Hello Kitty nightgowns.

4) And don't you ever wear bras with a transparent bra straps or you will make a Parisian woman's toes curl with disgust. A stylish, visible bra is far sexier...also...no matter how big or small your bust, not wearing a bra is always a mistake.

5) Forget Botox and don't dress like a teenager - trying to look young is the quickest way to look old!

6) The Little Black Dress: "The little black dress is not simply an item of clothing, it's a concept. It's abstract, it's universal — which means there's one that's perfect for everyone ... Today the Parisian has several little black dresses, just as she has several pairs of jeans: each is a variation on a theme."

7) Here are Inez's 7 key pieces for a magnificent wardrobe (print and paste to your closet door like I did)

a. Men's Blazer (fitted, fitted, fittted)
b. Trench Coat
c.Navy V-neck sweater (pref. cashmere)
d. Tank Top
e. Little Black Dress
f. Jeans (straight-leg are the safest)
g.Leather Jacket

Ines de le Fressange

9) And finally, the GOLDEN RULE: Never follow convention; never be bland; never neglect yourself.

Here are my impressions of the Parisienne:

She is not good-looking in the way we have come to define good-looking - symmetrical features, big eyes, full lips, defined nose, high cheekbones and perfect teeth. But when you see her you just know this is a woman who is confident in the way she looks and doesn't need to resort to trends to be considered attractive. She possesses a certain something - call it an innate style if you will - that always sets her apart from everyone else.

In my observations I found the Parisienne to be conservative by nature. No ultra mini skirts or low necklines for her and the make-up is very subtle too. She is not fond of artificial talons, infact, gel nails which are so popular here are considered vulgar in Paris. She wears her nails short and usually varnished in a pale pink colour. Natural is in and perhaps that is why you don't find Parisians rushing off to get lasered and botoxed. Infact, in the time that I was there I didn't come across a single clinic for cosmetic surgery, I'm not saying they don't exist, just saying they aren't that popular or lucrative perhaps.

The women (and men) do like to be slim though...if I were to wager a guess I'd say the average dress size would between a 4 or a 6. Apparently they don't like to work out (they call it an 'American pastime', but they love to walk and cycle. They are also very heavy smokers and appear to start young.

Oh and how they love their scarves!!! There were three items of clothing I saw almost every Parisian don - a scarf, a blazer and a pair of ballerines. They seem to favour vintage scarves and each woman has her own favourite way of tying it. Olivier Magny who wrote "Stuff Parisians Like" said this about Parisians and their scarves,

" The choice of scarf is a determining social qualifyer of both style and 'class sociale'. So is the way someone chooses to tie his scarf. Parisians know their scarf will characterize them, identify them, position them, rank them, classify them, distinguish them. There can therefore be no messing around when it comes to choosing a scarf" pg 217.

Ofcourse, my observations here are just generalizations, meant simply to provide a general snapshot of the beautiful women of my new favourite city. Sure, there are exceptions, but not too many so if you're a Parisian who doesn't enjoy wearing a scarf, or ballet flats for shoes, I'd love to hear from you! :)

Paris Diary (Aug-Sep 2011) Page 2 The Seine and the Notre Dame

2011-09-15T10:01:00.000-04:00

When anyone says the word "Seine", the first image that comes to mind is "bridge", and that's because no less than 37 functional bridges can be found over this beautiful river. The best way of admiring these bridges, some of which are extremely ornate and beautiful is to take a cruise down the river in a Batobus. If possible try to do it at night so you can see the "City of Light" in all her glory.

One of the oldest bridges in Paris "Pont de Neuf"

The beautiful Alexandre Pont III Bridge (above and below) is perhaps the most ornately decorated of all the Paris bridges. The beautiful detail took my breath away. The bridge was built to commemorate the friendship between France and Russia and was named after Tsar Alexander

"Love padlocks" on the Pont des Arts Bridge (one that links the Notre Dame to the Left Bank). Each of these locks bears the name of a couple in love..it was really fun to see some of the names and read the messages of love eternal! :) When your river boat passes under this bridge you will be asked to make a wish and to kiss the person to the right of you....apparently your wish will come true if this is your first visit to Paris. Needless to say I did it!!!

I once read that every Parisian is in a relationship. To be single is to be a loser. I guess that tells me every Parisian is an eternal romantic...perhaps that also will explain why it is so common to see so many kissing couples all around the city!

Getting ready for the night cruise on the River Seine...Paris is absolutely gorgeous at night with just about every building all lit up.

La Conciergerie: The building where Queen Marie-Antoinette was imprisoned while she awaited execution.

The Notre Dame at night and a group of Parisians spending their evening on the Seine. Look

to the left of the picture and you will see one of them waving to us. Little groups of people hang out

by the Seine all through the day but it is at night when the area comes to life with little bonfires, guitar playing, cook outs....we even saw a Tango dance competition taking place. This is where all of Paris seems to come to for a little R &R.

The Notre Dame from the Pont des Arts Bridge. Of all the buildings in Paris I was most excited to see the Notre Dame ( I suppose you could blame Victor Hugo and his "Hunchback of Notredame" for that). The day we visited this ornate church was a very rainy day. The sky was perpetually overcast and grey and the colours of the pictures reflect the weather...sadly.

The famous South "Rose Window" facade of the Notre Dame...the darn thing is 43ft high!

Notre Dame detail...can you spot some of the gargoyles? These gargoyles are actually rainspouts! Stay tuned for the gargoyles made famous by the Hunchback of Notredame.

Voila, here are the famous Notre Dame gargoyles (some of them at least). I must be honest and tell you this not my pic (courtesy Euro travelogue) but I borrowed it because what is a photo blog about the Notre Dame if you don't have gargoyles in them? I could have had my own picture if I was prepared to walk up the 387 steps to the top of the South Bell tower but after walking 10 kms all around Paris on a daily basis,believe me I had no energy for the climb. They are beautiful, aren't they? The next time I will get up close and personal with them!

Well, this concludes page 2 of my Paris Diary. I hope you're enjoying the walkabout through Paris with me. Most of the photos were taken by my daughter but with two different cameras. One was a regular 'point and click' and the other, a Nikon D5000.

Paris Diary Aug-Sep 2011 (Page One)

2011-09-14T11:29:00.000-04:00

This year I thought I'd do something different with my vacation photos. Instead of cramming them into an album and posting them to FB which is what I usually do, how much better to write a blog post and post some of them here instead.

Like most of us do, I read a lot of books in preparation for our trip to Paris and each one left me feeling more despondent than the other. No, it wasn't the food and it certainly wasn't the fashion that had me troubled...what left me quaking in my boots was dealing with the Parisian!!! You see, in almost all the books I read, the Parisian was made to sound like an evil character from a Grimm's fairytale. Over and over I'd read about their rudeness, their impatience with foreigners, their agile ability to jump queues and then pretend to be deaf when you protest. Also, I wasn't looking forward to shopping in Paris because I had been warned that once you touch something in their exquisitely-laid out stores you may as well have bought it. I wasn't even looking forward to eating in one of their drool-worthy restaurants because the rudeness of their waiters is legendary. However, the appeal of the land of Rodin, Toulouse-Lautrec and Claude Monet was strong enough to overcome any trepidation I might have had an off I went, the brave little soul that I was!

As we arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport I noticed a plane-load of chic, scarf-wearing French students who were apparently just returning from a weekend trip to London. They seemed no different from teenagers anywhere else in the world...or so I thought, but as I continued to observe I realized they seemed friendlier and more touchy-feely than most other groups of teenagers that I have watched, and when they were ready to part ways, all the French boys gently kissed the girls three times on their cheeks and said goodbye. Ofcourse, this is the City of Love, and so I shouldn't be surprised, but hadn't I read that Parisians were impatient and rude, I was certainly seeing no sign of that here.

I booked our family into an apartment in the heart of the Marais district. This was the first time we were opting for an apartment over a hotel and I was both nervous and excited. Most apartment buildings in the heart of the city are built around a courtyard the entrance to which is usually a big brightly-coloured door on the main road like in the picture below.

I cannot recommend apartment living in Paris nearly enough...it's the closest thing you'll ever feel to being a real Parisian!

I'm glad I chose the Marais arrondisement to live in....we found it to be a chic, fashionable district with lots of upmarket clothing stores, parks, boulangeries and restaurants. It is known to the center of Parisian gay life and is also home to one of the oldest Jewish Quarters in Paris.

Rue de Rosiers, in the Jewish Quarter of Le Marais is well worth a visit for its marvellous falafel shops. As you walk along the famous cobblestone paths of Rue du Rosiers, you will be called out to by the falafel shop owners asking you to taste their wares. Oh, and speaking of cobblestones, the French seem to love them, they're EVERYWHERE, even their new roads seem to be built like the roads of medieval Paris. How do the women of Paris walk these roads in their high heels? I tried and failed miserably!

At a Cafe/Brasserie in La Marais. Sitting at a cafe with a cafe creme and a brioche watching people as they go by is probably one of the nicest things to do in Paris and believe me, with the amount of walking we did, I made sure to make a cafe stop once every 3-4 hours. Wish the coffee was worth the stop though. We've travelled almost everywhere in Europe and take it from me, Paris has the worst coffee!!!

The Fred Perry store in the Marais. I took a picture of the store simply because it had at the window the clothing line that Amy Winehouse had finished designing for them just before her unfortunate demise. Seeing her designs in the window was a poignant reminder of the great talent she was.

Shopping in Paris is a great experience and NO you do not have to buy anything you touch! This is one city where window shopping is a real treat because people go to great lengths to make their display windows fun, quirky and a work of art! By law shops are required to display the prices of everything displayed at their windows, so it's easy to get a sense of whether you want to step inside or not. The picture (above) is of the flagship Louis Vuitton store on the Champs Elysses. I did step inside only to be shocked at the number of Chinese customers!!! They seem to be on a buying spree in Paris. I also saw a whole lot of them lining up to buy Longchamps bags at Galeries Lafayette.

But don't let your fondness for window shopping stop you from going into the department stores. Here we are the Galeries Lafayette...it has got to be one of the most beautiful department stores I have ever been in, so eat your heart out Dubai, your malls don't hold a candle to this classy store! And, surprise, surprise, the shopping was pretty good too (price wise). Galeries has an excellent epicerie on the topmost floor and after you have bought French mustard, pate and bon bons, you can walk up to the roof top terrace for a breathtaking view of Paris!

Oooh, that lovely Belle Epoque style! Apparently the store was modeled after a Middle-Eastern bazaar. Wish I had more details.

The beautiful dome at Galeries Lafayette...it's truly worth a visit.

And the lovely view from the roof top. Spot the Eiffel Tower in the distance.

This is the first page from my Paris Diary 2011....I hope to have a few more pages before we head for Barcelona, I hope you will stay with me.

Beautiful Thing: Inside The Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars by Sonia Faleiro

2011-09-12T18:22:00.001-04:00

Publisher: Penguin House, India

Genre: Non-Fiction

Published 27 OCT 2010

In 2005, as part of a "Morality Drive", the government of Maharashtra (India) banned bars from featuring dancing girls. As a result of the edict some 75,000 girls lost their jobs. The government accused the bars of being "brothels" and the girls of prostituting themselves, however, in reality

while the girls did sell sex, they didn't do so inside the bars. On the bar premises the girls always danced fully-dressed and customers were never allowed to solicit the girls while they were working. They could watch them dance and throw money at them, but that was all. If the girl did want to service a customer she was to do it outside the bar premises and in her own time.

The ban, instead of being a move for the good, actually deprived the women (many of them single mothers or victims of rape)

of a regular job, one in which they felt protected, and threw them into the clutches of unscrupulous brothel owners or pimps. Some ended up having to walk the sidewalks alone, with no protection - a surefire way of getting raped, kidnapped or even killed.

I'll be honest, like most people, when I read about the ban I wasn't too perturbed as I bought into the "reasons" given for shutting

down the bar, but I had always wondered about these dancers - who were they? Where did they come from? Why did they choose such a career? Did they ever fall in love? Get married?

So when I read Sonia Falerio had written a book on these bargirls, I knew it would satiate my curiosity and I asked my sister to send me a copy from India ( I don't think the book has had its US release yet).

Leela, the protagonist of Faleiro's book "Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars", like most of the other bar girls, had been sold to the local policemen for sex by her own father when she was only 13. Uneducated and young she many have been, but she was smart and she soon

figured out that for as long as she stayed in her father's house her body

would be his to do with as he pleased. Since she had already been "defiled" she reasoned she could continue with the same occupation but keep her

earnings for herself and so she ran away from home and

ultimately made her way into one of Bombay's famous dance bars.

Again, at the bar she lived by her wits, she befriended the bar owner and enjoyed quite a cushy means of existence thanks to him. As long as she made money for the bar and kept an eye on the other girls, he was prepared

to turn a blind eye while she solicited the occasional customer outside of the bar. The relationship seemed to suit them both

But after the ban came into force, even her bar-owner boyfriend could do nothing to save Leela who was 19 at the time and she soon found herself on the streets and at the mercy of people who exploited her. This continued

until she was able to get to a shelter.

As I read the book, I kept looking for Leela to curse her fate..I kept waiting to hear her cuss her mother and father for the predicament she found herself in, but I don't think I ever saw her do that, infact, she was a great believer in destiny:

"Bad luck is in my blood. It is true what they say - destiny us as strong as iron, it is tougher than steel;

nothing can change what is written for you"

Perhaps that is what purged her of any bitterness and gave her the will to go on. Also, a lot of the bar dancers came from families that has always been

involved in the business of dubious entertainment - like street dancers or acrobats, trapeze artists in the circus, dancers at private parties and so on,

so in Leela's mind, she actually believed she had done quite well for herself.

I kept reading to see if the book would reveal what Leela wanted for her future for while all the girls hope to get a good man/boyfriend who will be their ticket out of that profession, the truth is, few ever get away.

In the end, the most lofty goal a dancing girl can have is getting a job at a Mujra bar in Dubai where she can hope to make more money and receive more gifts. Youth is highly prized in this industry and once the girls

reach their prime (early 20's perhaps) many will move on from dancing to keeping dancers (if they have saved up enough money), or if they have a daughter they will probably introduce her to the profession and live off her earnings!

"Beautiful Thing" puts a very human face on a profession most of us wouldn't touch with a disinfected bargepole. Sure, these girls are seducers, liars, cheats, addicts and everything else we have read about them in the media,

but this book helps us see why they are that way.

Most have been sexually abused as children and exploited beyond belief as young adults and, as a result, have developed these coping mechanisms to ensure they don't get hurt over and over again. The book also reveals to the reader how much crime and corruption envelope the industry

and how close the link between bargirls and the underworld dons are.

Faleiro gives centre stage to her subject Leela, unobtrusively asking questions of her and letting her speak - hallmark of a good reporter. The novel has a lot of dialogue and I enjoyed the author's reproduction

of Leela's Bombay vernacular full of bawdy wit, cuss words and a rough tenderness that may make some readers blush!

In order to write this book Faleiro had to spend a lot of time, not only with Leela and her friends but also with the other groups that make up this industry, like the hijras (eunuchs), the pimps, brothel owners, bar owners, men who frequented the bars and last, but not least, the thugs that bought and sold these girls to the various bars and clubs - I salute her for being so brave!

Even though this is a book is a work of non-fiction, it is a breezy read and in this day of "India Shining", where never a day goes by without reading a newspaper article wax lyrical about India's booming economy, this book is a good reminder of those sections of society which have been totally left out of India's economic miracle.

Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away by Christie Watson

2011-09-09T19:28:00.002-04:00

Publishers: Other Press

Genre: Literary

After a long drought where the only books I read were about Paris, in preparation for our vacation in the City of Light, I was finally able to sink my teeth into a novel that gripped me right away and refused to let go. I'm sure as readers we all go through a non-reading phase, but mine was particularly painful because I cannot remember going a day without reading a book since I was six years old! At first, when I found myself having difficulty concentrating on a book, I didn't let it worry me too much, I thought my reading mojo would return in a few days...it's been close to six months! Phew!

Anyway, back to the book. I'm not attempting a review here, but I cannot let the book that saved my reading life go by without a mention. "Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away" by Christie Watson is set in the Niger Delta, the oil-rich region of Nigeria. Its protagonist is a 12-year old girl who has to move from the big city of Lagos to her grandparents' house in the Niger Delta after her parents got a divorce. Not only was it difficult for her and her brother to come to terms with the change in their geographic status, but also, they went from being considerably well off to hovering just above the poverty line and from a Catholic household (their father was Catholic) to having to pray in the mosque as her mother's family were (Ijaw) Muslim.

Blessing, our protagonist, soon gets caught up in the politics of a big family: a polygamous and patriarchal grandfather; a grandmother who practises midwifery; a brother who gets involved with the Sibeye boys (young, misguided local boys who are given arms with which to sabotage an oil pipeline or to kidnap a foreigner working with one of the large oil companies.) Central to the story is how oil (first discovered in 1956) is ruining the lives of the people of the Delta. Where it should have been a blessing, it is now a curse. Read this article in the National Geographic for greater insights into the curse of the black gold.

This book has a lot to recommend it: not only is the storytelling spectacular but also, it's set in an area most of us rarely get to read about (sure, there is a lot of literature coming out of Nigeria these days but not too many stories are based in this volatile area of the country which is rich in oil-deposits and yet its people are among the poorest in the land. Casting Blessing's grandmother in the role of a midwife was a clever strategy because the reader gets to learn all about female circumcision, another evil that plagues Africa. The medical details are interesting to read and let me tell you why: Ms. Watson is a nurse by profession so she certainly knows how to keep it accurate and at the same time her lyrical storytelling ensures we are never bored. All is not gloom and doom however. Her novel celebrates the happy and gregarious Nigerian spirit in a way few books have done before...it was a delight to read.

Blog Hiatus

2011-03-05T07:39:00.000-05:00

Hello everyone! This blog is going on a short holiday...hopefully I will have some reviews to share after the 19th of this month. Many thanks and see you soon!

On Black Sisters' Street by Chika Unigwe

2011-02-15T14:44:00.001-05:00

Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Vintage

That Nigeria is a failed state is no longer in question. However, a major consequence of that is the organized exodus of Nigerian girls and women to Western Europe, where they are promised exciting jobs but end up trapped in brothels run by their own nationals - Nigerian “Madams”.

"Black Sisters' Street" by Chika Unigwe is a fictional account of four such women - Sisi, Efe, Ama and Joyce - each of whom left Nigeria for Belgium, with dreams of a better tomorrow, only to find themselves working as prostitutes in the red light district of Antwerp, or "Black Sisters' Street" named for the inordinately large number of African woman that work the street. To tell you that none of the four went to Belgium voluntarily or that they didn't expect to be prostitutes would be to mislead the reader...however...what makes one angry is the fact that these girls felt it necessary to leave their homes, parents (in some cases, children) and enter this sordid industry only because they could barely make ends meet in their home country. It is sad these girls had to take up a job that stripped them of all self-respect just so that they could be respected back home in Nigeria.

The character sketches of the four girls are detailed and intimate and yet, at the end of the book, none of them feels like a 'best friend', for despite the tiny details - how they dressed, their family lives, their thoughts, dreams and so on - one really doesn't get to "know" them well. For that matter, even though the girls live togther, they are strangers even to each other until one tragic event brings them together.

Unigwe's prose is clear and calm - although some terrible things take place in the book, the reader doesn't feel weighed down by it. Unigwe is also skilled at introducing into the narrative issues that are typical to Nigerian society like polygamy,sexism, belief in superstitions, tribal divisions and so on, using just a single reference or a passing comment, leaving the reader with a fleeting but precious sort of cultural snapshot.

I also love her descriptions of Nigeria - from the chewing-gum pink walls of the sitting room in Ama's house (and yes, I know they have them, I've seen them in just about every Nigerian house in a Nollywood movie!) to the streets of Lagos in Joyce's story- her writing with its rich detail, truly entertains and informs.

"Lagos streets were rutted,gutted and near impassable,yet they were jam-packed with cars: huge air-conditioned jeeps driving tail to tail with disintigrating jalopies whose fault exhaust pipes sentout clods of dark smoke making the air so thick with pollution that a constant mist hung over the city and the bit of sky that one could see was sullied with dirt."

We get to know some of the girls better than the others. The story mostly revolves around Sisi, a college graduate who was unable to find a job in Nigeria because she didn't have the right "connections", however, it is Joyce's story that moved me the most, perhaps because it was the saddest and also, of the four girls, she was the only one tricked into going to Antwerp. To tell you more would be to give much of the story away and I certainly don't want to do that.

When Chika Unigwe was asked why she wanted to write about Nigerian prosititutes in Antwerp, she had this to say:

Curiosity. The first time I saw the girls in lingerie behind their windows, I was stunned. Coming from Nigeria where prostitution is very much underground, it was a cultural shock on a massive scale. I had never seen anything like it before. Then when I was told that a great majority of the African prostitutes in Antwerp were Nigerian girls from Benin City, I knew I had to write about it. The statistics are mind boggling. There is a new crop of middle class families cropping up in Benin City, mostly headed by women whose daughters are in Europe

I'm so glad she did (write about it), the novel does much to make us pay attention to that society that we do everything to ignore, also, it was interesting to see Europe - the destination for so many people's hopes and dreams - through the eyes of these four Nigerian girls. I appreciated that while Unigwe reveals to us that three of the girls did indeed travel to Antwerp while fully aware of what the job entailed, the background stories ensure we don't blame them...it's easy to see how girls like Ama, Sisi and Ete are pressured into taking up these jobs, if anything. it makes you angry at a society that sits back and allows these girls to sacrifice their bodies in order to put meals on the table.

Lastly, but not importantly, I noticed a few digs against Ghanaians in the book...would someone be able to tell me if there is friendly rivalry between the citizens of these two countries?

"Ama spied two Ghanaian guests going back for a second helping rice and smirked to Sisi that surely, surely Nigerians cooked better, made tastier fried rice than Ghanaians. (People who threw whole tomatoes in sauces couldn't really cook, could they?) And both women agreed that Ghanaians were just wannabe Nigerians."

An award-winning short story writer, Chika Unigwe, 34, was born in Enugu, Nigeria, and now lives in Belgium with her husband and four children.

Chinese Literature Challenge

2011-02-03T07:27:00.001-05:00

Hello fellow-readers and bloggers!

Just signed up for the

So excited!

Please click on the button to read more!

"TheJapanese Lover" by Rani Manicka

2011-01-29T19:53:00.002-05:00

Paperback, 328 pages

Published May 13th 2010 by Hodder &Stoughton

"The Rice Mother", Rani Manicka's fabulous debut novel was one of my favorite novels for many years and still is, and so,it was with great excitement and expectation that I picked her third novel, "The Japanese Lover". The novel started nicely enough with the birth of a daughter in a poor man's home in Vathiri, North Ceylon in 1916. Because the man was extremely poor, but cunning and lazy too, when the astrologer predicted that this newly-born daughter would marry a fabulously wealthy man, he decided that "Parvathi" was his ticket out of servitude and into comfort.

When the time came for Parvathi to marry her father deceived the prospective groom by sending him a picture of a beautiful maiden, not Parvathi, and in this way managed to secure an alliance between his daughter and the wealthy Kasu (Money) Marimuthu, a 42-year old widower of Sri-Lankan/Tamil origin in Malaysia,then known as Malaya. However, when Parvathi arrived in Malaya after her arduous journey from Colomba and the bridegroom realized he was cheated,he is determined to send Parvathi back to her father's home, but that night as he lay spent and drunk, an apparition came to him instructing him never to get rid of his wife.

"If you could see what I see in your wife," the vision said quietly, "you would fall to your knees in awe. Know that she is an aodred soul who has incarnated to experience love in the most unlikely circumstances" pg 31

It is at this point in the novel that I realized that Rani Manicka's new novel, has, at the heart of it, characteristics and characters that would fit very nicely in the genre of magical realism - a similar theme ran through "The Rice Mother".

Anyway, although her husband decides to keep Parvathi, their marriage, while civil, is without passion or excitement. Parvathi works hard to become the sophisticated woman her husband wants her to be,but in her heart she is deeply unfulfilled...until, on page 183, when the Japanese invade Malaya (1941) the Japanese lover, which is also the title of the book, comes into her life.

Although this novel is nowhere near as enjoyable as "Rice Mother", it is immensely readable in parts. Manicka is still a wiz at describing both, the exotic and the mundane and I absolutely devoured the pages where she describes marriages and deaths and even everyday scenes like lunch at her daughter's place or even a regular coffee morning with the mamis (Sri Lankan women in Malaya). One of the most fascinating characters in 'The Japanese Lover' is the wise medicine woman, Maya, who while she prophesises and dispenses medicine to the people in the neighbourhood also looks after Parvathi's kitchen. Manicka uses Maya as a vehicle for her metaphysical musings and while I found them wise and ponderable at first, they diffuse into airy pulpiness after a while - because it overstretches the reader's concentration.

The personal tragedy of Parvathi's family plays out against a backdrop of the Japanese invasion of Malaya, the local communist insurgency, the anti-Chinese riots and then the inevitable loss of Malaya when British colonies of Sabah, Sarawak and Singapore join the Federation of Malaya to form the Federation of Malaysia. As the geography of Malaya changes so does Parvathi's life. The high society she was used to, no longer exists in which they live was at a dead end, and the lives they are leading seem to have run similarly out of road.

It seems to me that "The Japanese Lover" attempts to do too much -- combining geopolitics with the everyday life of a plantation owner's wife and telling a human story of loss and recovery whilst throwing in a lot of new ageypreachings and philosophes -- making it a hotch-potch of a read.

Oh, and I almost forgot...towards the end of the book, Manicka allows Maya to rant against the Indian and how they suffer from an inferiority complex owing to their colour, but yet she makes a prediction that one day they will rise above it all. When Manicka was quizzed about why she included that chapter, this is what she said in an interview:

While Parvati’s father – and her husband – never thought she was beautiful enough, other men such as the American Sam, the Japanese general and also the estate worker Kupu saw great beauty in her. In fact, dark-skinned women were looked down upon at that time.
"For me, this is a message to Indians in this country because they really do have a self-esteem problem and they deny it whenever I speak about it. It is so ingrained in them.
"With this book, I am saying it is okay if you are dark skinned."

A Week At The Airport by Alain de Botton

2010-12-08T14:41:00.004-05:00

Category: Travel - Essays & Travelogues; Philosophy; Social Science - Popular Culture

Format: Trade Paperback, 112 pages

Publisher: Emblem Editions

Pub Date: September 21, 2010

Price: $18.99

As I write this I am at London Heathrow's Terminal 5 on a transit stop between Toronto and Bangalore. I have 6 hours before my flight to Bangalore and under normal circumstances such a long wait would have sent me over the edge but today I am actually looking forward to it as I get to explore Terminal 5 with none other than Alain de Botton.

Taken from British Airways Lounge at LHR's Term 5 (photo credit Lotus Reads)

In the summer of 2009, at the invitation of the airport’s owner, BAA, which wanted to showcase its new terminal, Alain de Botton spent a week at Term 5. He was told he could write about anything in the four-football-field-long terminal. Infact, he was even given “explicit permission to be rude about the airport’s activities.’’ The result is a slim volume titled simply, "A Week At The Airport: A Heathrow Diary"

So, book in hand I set out to discover Term 5 along with de Botton. The book begins with a brief introduction, called Approach, which describes de Botton’s decision to accept BAA’s offer to be the “writer-in-residence,’’ and the remainder of the book is divided into three larger sections: Departures, Airside, and Arrivals. Since I can't access "Departures" and "Arrivals" I am going to have to stick with "Airside".

But fortunately De Botton's book touches very little on the physical geography of the airport and instead devotes a lot of ink to passengers at the airport. Being in an airport, he writes, is an opportunity to observe people, "to forget onself in a sea of otherness and to let the imagination loose on the limitless supply of fragmentary stories provided by the eye and ear"

Meeting passengers posed no problem for de Botton as most travellers thought he was an airline employee and therefore a potentially useful source of information on where to find the customs desk or the ATM machine. However, those that took the trouble to read his name badge came to regard the desk as a confessional. Each new day brought a density of stores and soon his little notebook was entirely full with anecdotes of loss, desire, expectattion, "snapshots of travellers' souls on their way to the skies."

Passengers "Airside" at Term 5 (photo credit Lotus Reads)

One particularly poignant story was of a man embarking on what he (the passenger) wryly referred to as a "holiday of a lifetime" to Bali with his wife who was just months away from succumbing to incurable brain cancer. She was only 49 years old. Another traveller that de Botton encountered revealed that he had two families, one in the UK and the other in Los Angeles and that neither knew about the existence of the other! De Botton muses that the reason he managed to get such personal and moving stories out of passengers is because when we (essentially land creatures) are about to defy gravity and take to the sky it makes us particularly anxious, thoughtful and prepared to share stories about ourselves we may, under normal circumstances, not discuss with a stranger.

De Botton rues that most passengers rush through an airport, their only intent and focus being to complete formalities and to catch their flight. He thinks it's a pity that more travellers do not stop to enjoy the architecture of the airport building and more importantly, the potential and possibilities that being in an airport can evoke. For instance, take the departurescreens with their long lists of destinations. These screens imply a feeling of infinite possibilities and longing. Where should we travel to? Casablanca in Morocco? Phnom Penh in Cambodia? Anchorage in Alaska? The ticket desk is only a few short steps away and they suggest an ease with which we might buy a ticket for a destination "where the call to prayer rang out over shuttered whitewashed houses and where no one knew our identities". There is such potential for dreaming and for our imaginations to take flight (pardon the pun) when we're at an airport but most of us are so frazzled from all the airport formalities that we barely have time to relax and ruminate, or so the author concludes.

Departure Screens LHR Term 5 (photo credit Getty Images)

I loved de Botton's musings on Airline Security. The training of security personnel is so arduous - they are trained to look at every human being as though he or she might want to blow up an aircraft! They have been trained to overcome all prejudices as to what an enemy might look like: the enemy could be a six-year old with a cute smocked frock and with a juice box in her hand or an eighty-year old grandma with a bunch of Christmas stockings for her grandkids. The levels of alertness that security guards need to maintain is so grueling that they were granted more frequent tea-breaks than any of the other airport employees.

Security at London Heathrow's Term 5 (credit Lotus Reads)

And then no book about an airport could be complete without mentioning the shops and goodness knows, Heathrow's Terminal 5 has an abundance of them...infact, many people initially complained that Term 5 was more like a mall than an airport. De Botton muses that those people that objected to too many shops had probably considered that in the event of a catastrophe, they wouldn't have liked to have spent their last few moments on earth indulging in a vice like consumerism! :)

Shopping at Term 5 (photo credit Lotus Reads)

Duty Free at Term 5 (photo credit Lotus Reads)

The book is dotted with many philosophical musings and makes for a truly enjoyable read. Let me leave you with one last thought of a passenger named David who was taking his family to Greece on a vacation. David had confided in de Botton that his wife was upset at him for putting work over his family. But in David's mind, he worked hard so that he could give his family vacations abroad and other good things. De Botton then observes the very true Jewish saying "Wherever you go, there you are"...in order words, David will be bringing himself with him on this vacation, would he be able to leave his irritation with his wife behind and enjoy the holiday? Unlikely. One's surroundings might change but unless we change the way we think and feel nothing truly changes. This is an important truth of travel.

Christmas Tree in Term 5 Departure Lounge (photo credit Lotus Reads)

Literary Tattoos from Bookworms Worldwide. Edited by Eva Talmadge and Justin Taylor

2010-11-27T16:20:00.001-05:00

Paperback, 224 pages

Published November 1st 2010 by Harper Perennial

"It's not the word made flesh we want in writing, in fiction, and in poetry, but the flesh made word."

- William Gass, On Being Blue

What a great quote to use as an introduction to a book featuring atleast 100 images of tattoos inspired by works of literature.

According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, 36 percent of people in the United States between the ages eighteen and twenty-five, and 40 percent between the ages of twenty-six and forty, have at least one tattoo. From what I see around me, they (tattoos) appear to be mainstream now and are as acceptable/common as pierced ears, in other words, tattoos have lost their "badass" image!

When people pick tattoos they generally try to pick something that is meaningful to them or something that celebrates a milestone in their lives. So is it then logical to suppose that a lover of literature would pick a word, quote or phrase from a favourite work of literature? I think so and so did Eva Talmadge and Justin Taylor, for they set about trying to compile a catalog of bookish tattoos which then came to be known as "Literary Tattoos" from Bookworms Worldwide." Bookworms Worldwide refers to the group of people who submitted tattoos - photos, testimonies and the stories behind their particular tattoos - to the book.

In these pages you'll find favourite lines from novels, illustrations, portraits and passages of verse; you'll also find the inspirations behind the tattoos: favourite childhood books, commemorations of triumphant (or tragic) moments in lives; affirmation of friendship; drunken whims; a phrase or an image that were just too cool not to keep forever and so on.

Here are some of my favourites:

Tess Adamski : Toronto, Ontario

Kerouac at his typewriter with the closing lines of "On The Road"

Stanza from "Auguries of Innocence" by William Blake

I guess all that remains is for me to ask: if you planned to get a literary tattoo, what would yours say?

Little Princes: One Man's Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal by Conor Grennan

2010-10-23T08:04:00.003-04:00

Publisher:

HarperCollins

Imprint:

William Morrow

Pub Date:

01/25/2011

URLs:

Author Website : click here

Publisher's Website : click here

Category:

NONFICTION - ADULT: Biography/Autobiography

Of all the countries in the sub-continent Nepal is probably one that impinges least on world consciousness. You would have thought that being the proud keeper of the Everest , it would be better known, but statistics show that a large majority of people wrongly perceive the Everest as belonging to India ,or even China! Very little Nepalese literature has made it into English, nor is there a good selection of travel or memoir writing set in the country, so when I chanced upon "Little Princes: One Man's Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal" by Conor Grennan, I knew I had to read it.

Twenty-nine-year-old Conor Grennan left his secure home and job in the USA in Nov of 2004 intending to travel the world. He decided to make Nepal his first stop and chose to volunteer at an orphanage during his stay, which, by his own admission was engineered to impress people. When he arrived in Nepal the mountain kingdom was in the middle of a civil war with the Maoists vowing they would not drop their arms until the King abdicated his throne and a People's Republic of Nepal was established.

The Orphanage was called "The Little Princes Children's Home" and had come together under the watchful and caring eye of a young French woman called Sandy. Sandy was a keen hiker and once, trekking up in a mountain village in Nepal, she learned that the Maoists were kidnapping children who lived in remote and isolated mountainous villages and putting them to work in the rebel army. Parents terrified that they might lose their kids to the rebel army, fell prey to a man called "Golakk" who promised these parents that for a fee he would take their children to Kathmandu (the capital city of Nepal) where he would feed, house and send them to school. The gullible parents sold everything they had so that their children could leave with Golakk to what they naively presumed was a "better life". Instead, Gollack pocketed the money and dumped these kids on the streets to fend for themselves. Sometimes he sold them to rich Nepalis to work as domestic servants and sometimes these kids were trafficked across the border into Nepal as sex slaves. Sandy was so distraught upon hearing this, she immediately set out to establish a shelter for these abandoned kids which she named "Little Princes" after Antoine de Exupery's novel titled "Le Petit Prince".

An armed Maoist soldier

When Conor arrived at "Little Princes" the eighteen kids were so delighted to see him they completely swarmed him. They used him as a human jungle jim, hanging from his neck, his shoulders and wrists. Any trepidation that Conor felt about not having any experience with children completely dissipated in that moment and over the next few days he actually enjoyed waking up to them, helping them to get ready for school and looked forward to playing soccer and carom with them in the evenings.

The children often shared stories of their remote and mountainous village home, Humla, with Conor and he in turn told them much about the outside world - about submarines, the solar system and how man had walked on the moon. Sometimes his stories could get him into a little trouble like the time the boys wanted to know what sort of food Americans ate. "Pork, chicken, beef" replied Conor to which the shocked response was "Americans eat God?" Nepal is a predominantly Hindu country where the cow is worshiped and never, ever eaten!

Soon it was time for Conor to leave Nepal and set out on his world trip. Every one of those kids asked Conor if he was going to return to the "Little Princes" home and although he was advised against answering in the affirmative he gave them his word that he would be back.

And he DID return! Not only did he return to the orphanage but he vowed to set up another orphanage where other trafficked kids could have a chance at a normal life, he also vowed to travel to Humla to find the kids' parents so that they could be reunited with each other. With his few savings and some small donations from friends and family he set up a home which they called "Daulagiri" (after the seventh-tallest mountain in Nepal) and he set off with a translator and two porters (carrying rice and supplies) for Humla to look for the parents. It is this mission to Humla that predominates the second half of this fine book.

HUMLA (Nepal's Back of Beyond)

Humla, the region the Little Princes came from, is an impoverished village on the border of Tibet. You could say it is a remote region in the remotest part of Nepal.

In his own words:

"Humla is the most remote part of the country, and one of the poorest, which is saying something in Nepal. There are no roads, and the guerrillas (Maoists) had blown up all the bridges. You had to cross the river on rope pulleys, with people on either side pulling you. Trekking in this region meant "climbing straight up and straight down" jagged peaks and pinning yourself against cliff walls when a herd of sheep or water buffalo came barreling around a bend"

As Conor entered the hard-to-reach villages he gave village elders the names of families they were looking for and as the families were brought out to meet him, he presented them with photos of their children. Grennan's beautiful narration of the parents' reaction to finding out their kids were alive is so beautifully rendered, it will make you cry, I know I did! The first parents to arrive brought a bag of walnuts and honey to give to the stranger who had news of their son. Knowing that they were dirt poor and that a gift of walnuts would have set them back quite a bit, brought a lump to Conor's throat and it made him even more determined to facilitate more such reunions.

Conor interviewing a family with the aid of a translator. Later he would read back all his notes to the children at "Little Princes" so they each knew exactly what their parents had said.

So Conor Grenan ended up being an "accidental altruist" as one article fondly calls him and I would say he is an accidental writer too and I mean that in the nicest possible way. He hadn't set out to write a book on Nepal, heck, he only intended volunteering for a few months in order to justify his hedonistic trip around the world, and yet, here he was three years later setting up orphanages and rescuing children from the clutches of child traffickers.

I see this book as being an inspiration to many who might have thought of volunteering in impoverished countries but didn't feel like they had anything to offer - as Conor himself says,

"Volunteering, whether it is in an impoverished third world nation or in your hometown, requires only that you show up. Don’t worry how little of your time or resources you may have to offer—just offer it, and see what happens."

I loved the narration...it is like a breath of fresh air. Conor's writing style is informing but oh so companionable. Each of those kids had a story that read like a tear jerker, but there's also plenty humour and a dash of silliness, for that's what happens when you work with kids! For the lover of culture, there is a lot of Nepal in there...you read about its scenic beauty, its lovely and warm people, its festivals, food and so on, but he also talks about the issues that hold the country back - the poverty, corruption, the caste system, the trafficking, but to his credit at no time does the narrative degenerate into a "woe is Nepal", instead, he seeks gently to draw from the reader a sympathy for the poor and destitute villagers caught between the rebel army and the government.

Today Conor Grenan lives in the US with his wife and young son but he continues to oversee the Nepal Next Generation organization which he founded. If you desire to know more about the foundation or want to assist Conor Grenan in his work, do visit their site.

This book will be released by Harper Collins in January 2011. According to the author a portion of the proceeds from the sale of the book will go towards buying food, provisions, educational supplies for the orphanage and for finding more families of trafficked children in Nepal.

'My Favourite Female' contest

2010-10-13T18:06:00.000-04:00

Like to read? Enjoy books with strong, interesting female characters? Women's Web 'My Favourite Female' is just the contest for you!

Welcome to the Women's Web's 'My Favourite Female' contest, where all you need to do is write about a fictional female character that really appeals to you. (For purposes of this contest, we're defining 'fictional' as a character from a novel).

What? Pick any female character from a novel, that made you sit up, that made you go wow, that made you laugh or cry, that got you angry, that got you thinking, that made you fall in love - in short, a character that made you feel, 'I wish I had written that!'

How? Tell us what you liked about this character in a blog post. If you don't blog - drop a note in the comments here, or mail us at contests@womensweb.in . Remember, the character herself doesn't need to be likeable, so long as you can talk about why the character appealed to you - actions, qualities or anything else.

Rules
- Stick to 500 words or below
- Choose a fictional character - in other words, someone from a novel, who did not exist in the real world (sorry, historical novel characters based on actual people won't qualify!)
- Your entry must be dated between 12th Oct and 22nd Oct, 2010 (or reach us between those dates)
- If you're submitting a blog post, include a link to this page - we'll track your entry that way. (http://womensweb.in/top-level-documents/favourite-females.html)

THE PRIZES
The best written entry a.k.a 1st prize wins a Rs. 500 Flipkart voucher (or a $10 Amazon voucher if you happen to live outside India). The next two best written entries (2nd and 3rd prizes) get Rs. 250 worth Flipkart vouchers each (or a $5 Amazon voucher if you live outside India).
All 3 winning entries will also be published on the Women's Web blog.

And the Judges?
We have two people from the world of words, who've very kindly agreed to act as judges for the My Favourite Female contest. They are: Devaki Khanna, Freelance Writer and Editor, who is fascinated with literature and history and Nivethitha Kumar, who, along with two friends, runs The Banyan Trees, a literary magazine featuring a variety of creative content. Nivethitha is passionate about writing and blogs at Nivispace. (A preliminary evaluation of entries may be done by Women's Web, if we have a whole of entries - which, we hope we do!)

Go on then - remember, entries close on 22nd Oct 2010, so get your entry in before tha

OUTLAW: INDIA'S BANDIT QUEEN AND ME by Roy Moxham

2010-10-10T15:44:00.000-04:00

Format:Hardback
Publisher: Rider
Published: 3/6/2010

India has seen any number of truly remarkable women over the years - Rani of Jhansi, Indira Gandhi, Kiran Ahluwalia - just to name a few, but none have been so fiercely loved or hated as Phoolan Devi, India's Bandit Queen.

Phoolan was born into the lower mallah (boatman) caste, in the small village in Uttar Pradesh, India. When Phoolan was ten years old, her cousin, Mayadin, became the head of the family. Mayadin arranged to have her married to a man 20 years her senior and who was already married. Phoolan, as the younger wife, was relegated to household labour. It all became too much for the 11-year old when her husband sexually molested her even though she had not yet reached puberty and she ran back to her village. Sadly, because she left her husband, she was forever treated as a social outcast and even her family was forced to reject her.

A few years down the road Phoolan became embroiled in a conflict with some richer relatives over family land. The relatives arranged for her to be kidnapped by dacoits that lived in the local ravines around the village. The gang was led by one Babu Singh who raped Phoolan, but he in turn was shot by his deputy, Vikram Mallah who then became Phoolan's lover. Together, Vikram and Phoolan participated in the gang's activities, which consisted of looting high-caste (Thakur) villages and kidnapping landowners for ransom.

Sadly, the Vikram, Phoolan partnership was not to last. Vikram was shot dead by a Thakur member of the gang (who wanted Phoolan for himself) . They (the Thakurs) locked Phoolan away in a place called "Behmai" where she was gang-raped mercilessly. After three weeks, she managed to escape and gathered together a gang of Mallahs (men from her own caste) that she led with Man Singh, a member of Vikram's former gang.

In 1981, seventeen months after her escape from Behmai where she was raped, Phoolan and Man Singh returned to the village, to take her revenge. The Thakurs in the village were preparing for a wedding. When Phoolan's gang failed to find all the kidnappers/molesters even after an exhaustive search, they lined up twnety-two Thakur men in the village and shot them. Sadly, most of the men shot and killed were not involved in her kidnapping or rape. Later, Phoolan Devi claimed that she herself didn't kill anybody in Behmai – all the killings were carried out by her gang members.

After the killings the police launched a huge manhunt using helicopters and thousands of men, but Phoolan Devi' evaded capture by hiding out in the ravines. Finally Prime Minister Indira Gandhi authorised the Madhya Pradesh government to negotiate a surrender deal. In February of 1983, with most of her gang dead and her health failing, Phoolan surrendered.

Phoolan Devi at her surrender with her lover, Man Singh

The agreed terms were that her family be given a plot of land; that she not be hanged; her gang must have prison quarters that were separated from the rest and that all charges must be dropped once they had served eight years in prison. Sadly, the Indian government reneged on all deals. Instead of eight years, Phoolan served eleven years and would have languished in prison longer had a mass movement by the coalition of socialists and "Untouchables" in Uttar Pradesh in 1994 not forced her release.

It is while Phoolan was serving prison time that Roy Moxham, first contacted the Lady Bandit.

In his own words:

“In June 1992, I did a very strange thing. I wrote to a bandit in an Indian jail,”

After reading an article in the British newspapers about Phoolan Devi and her troubled past, Roy Moxham ( a book and paper conservator living in the UK) was moved to write to her. Initially he just wanted to lend her a listening ear, but as he got to know Phoolan better he was also compelled to send her a little money, dole out advice, and given that Phoolan spoke no English, write to influential people on her behalf...you could say he was to Phoolan, both, a kindly friend and an agent. As the years went by he and Phoolan got even closer and she referred to him as her brother.

Phoolan Devi with Roy Moxham, Holi 1994

Whenever Moxham made his annual visit to India he would stay at her house in Delhi. Sharing such close space with Poonam and her family allowed Moxham to see and share a side of Phoolan that most of us had never seen. He tells us how she was loathe to hire househelp and loved to cook and clean the floors herself. Also, she was passionately fond of kids and spent any number of hours looking after her sisters' children, but that same family also tried to use her - wanting a share of her new-found wealth and prosperity. He also shows us what life was like for her when she joined politics, how she almost embraced Buddhism and how, as she got wealthier, she simply gave stuff away to people. She barely tolerated the security that was given to her and as the years went by she used fewer and fewer bodyguards. Moxham is sure that had she had more security she would not have lost her life prematurely.

When Moxham was asked why he wrote this memoir, "Outlaw: India's Bandit Queen and Me", he claimed it was to set to the record straight on Phoolan. According to him, people's impressions of Phoolan have been shaped mainly by Shekhar Kapur's movie "The Bandit Queen" (based on the book by Mala Sen). Now while the movie is sympathetic to Phoolan, there are scenes in the movie that she vehemently protested. One was the depiction of the brutal rape scene and the other was how Kapur had the actress that plays Phoolan, paraded naked around the village well. Phoolan thought it was cruel and insensitive to depict her that way. She made Moxham write to Channel 4 several times to stop the movie from being released in the UK, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. Moxham, the true friend that he is, supported her dislike of the movie and could never bring himself to watch it, until he set out to write the memoir, that is.

Another reason Moxham wanted to write this book is because it's the only account of the former MP's life after her release from jail in 1994. The book is based on extensive correspondence between the two, even though Devi did not know English. The correspondence led to an unlikely friendship that lasted till the time Phoolan Devi was assassinated in 2001.

What can I say about Moxham's writing? Well, it's basic to say the very least, but this is an entertaining read and you can tell, right from the get-go that his interest in Phoolan's welfare is kindly and honest. When he's not visiting her in India he is travelling the country, usually little towns and villages in the North and his descriptions of these little towns made for welcome reading. More importantly, reading about Phoolan's life drives us to ask: would she have become a bandit had she not been an uneducated woman, in a backward village with so few choices? I think the answer is NO!!! She was spirited, charismatic, but poor and uneducated. To make matters worse she was born into the wrong caste and in the wrong gender. All these factors conspired to make her who she became. Her story is truly one worth reading.

The Beauty of Humanity Movement by Camilla Gibb

2010-09-25T16:28:00.000-04:00

Category: Fiction
Format: Hardcover, 304 pages
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
ISBN: 978-0-385-66322-9 (0-385-66322-6)

Pub Date: August 17, 2010
Price: $32.95

The Beauty of Humanity Movement by Camilla Gibb takes its fictional name from an actual group of idealistic communist writers and artists in Hanoi. In the early 1950s, this group wrote and spoke out against the excesses of Ho Chi Minh's policies, in particular, the Land Reform Act in which hundreds of thousands of people (peasants mostly) accused of being landlords were executed or tortured and starved in prison.

Because they were vocal in their denouncement of this "land reform," and also because they refused to act as a mouth-speaker for government propaganda, the artists and writers of the Beauty of Humanity Movement suffered a fate similar to the unfortunate peasantry. Sent to so-called re-education camps, they were tortured, indoctrinated, killed or maimed. Punishments meted out were cruel and usually specific to the occupation of the prisoner. Artists lost their hands, poets their tongues.

The pivotal character in this novel is Old Man Hung, who formerly owned a restaurant famous for its pho and frequented by some of the country’s leading poets and visual artists (this while the French were in power). After angering the newly-formed Communist regime (the French were defeated in the early '50's), who withheld a restaurant license from him he was forced to operate outside of the law, selling pho illegally from a cart he pushed around the city. He'd have to find a new spot almost every other day and yet the crowds would throng his stall, bringing their own bowls for a taste of his magnificent Pho. Among his customers were Binh and Tu, the son and grandson of his best friend, Dao, a poet and member of the artist group the Beauty of Humanity Movement who was killed by the Communists on his way to a re-education camp.

Pho may just be a humble soup made from beef broth, but it is the blood that flows in the veins of the streets of Vietnam. Infact, Old Man Hung says that the history of Vietnam can be found in a bowl of Pho bac (the pho that Hanoi is famous for). The rice noodles it contains is symbolic of the thousand years of Chinese occupations and the beef is symbolic of the French occupation that came later (the taste for beef was introduced by the French who turned the people's cows away from ploughs and into 'bifteck" and pot-au-feu.) The clever Vietnamese took the best the occupiers had to offer and made something uniquely Vietnamese from it.

One day a Vietnamese-American curator, Maggie, visits Old Man Hung at one of his mobile stands. Maggie was five years old when she was rescued by the Americans at Saigon airport (after the fall of Saigon) . She wants to learn more about her artist father, who also disappeared during the war. She asks Hung if he can help her (after all when Hung had his Pho shop in the '50's it was the meeting place for a lot of radical artists and writers) . Hung's memories are the perfect vehicle to take the reader through Vietnam's past - from the intellectual age of the 1930's when Hung was sent to the city to work in his uncle's pho shop (he was an unwanted child...the ninth child...so unwanted his parents didn't even give him a name, calling him simply, Nine), through to French colonization, Japanese occupation and, of course, the Vietnam War.

While Hung provides a look back into Vietnam’s past, a 22-year-old tour guide named Tu offers readers a glimpse into the country’s current era of economic freedom and its entrepreneurial youth, so many of which were born after the war, so it's not a direct memory in their lifetimes. Tu' specializes in offering guilt-ridden American veterans "war tours" through his city, but he soon starts to realize their version of his country's history is deeply flawed. There is an encounter with Tu' and an American Vet at a Buddhist temple which is especially poignant.

Camilla Gibb's novels fall in the sub-genre of literary fiction that I like to call Anthropological fiction (her previous novel was "Sweetness in the Belly" which was set in Ethiopia.). These are novels set in different countries and whose readers relish learning about foreign cultures (their history, diet, traditions, rituals and so on) in a fictional setting. Reading novels like these makes one realize how different and yet how similar we all are. No matter where the characters come from or are based, there are certain human traits that are universally recognizable and this is why these books resonate with us so much.

Gibb's writing is very clear, clean and precise. In this novel she explores both,present-day Vietnam and the forces that shaped it. Many novels on Vietnam focus mostly on the war and the aftermath but in doing so one neglects the vibrant, bustling Vietnam of today. I think Gibb's novel gives the reader a very balanced and overall view of the country and I appreciate that.

What was interesting to me was Maggie's reception in Vietnam. The Vietnamese are very hostile to foreign-returned Vietnamese "Viet-Kieu", and she was greeted suspiciously wherever she went. Her morals and intentions were questioned and I am sure her loyalty was too. I have never found this in India...I come and go as I please and yet my countrymen will always treat me like one of them. However, I have a Korean friend who tells me such a thing is very common in Korea too.

To sum up, the book plunges the reader into the borderlands between opposing forces: youth and age, exclusion and privilege, war and peace. Hanoi's 1000th anniversary is to be celebrated from October 1 to 10, this book would be a perfect celebration of it.

Tishani Doshi's "The Pleasure Seekers"

2010-09-13T14:09:00.002-04:00

September 2010
$15.00
320 pp

Bloomsbury USA

From the Publishers:

Meet the Patel-Joneses—Babo, Sian, Mayuri, and Bean—in their little house with orange and black gates next door to the Punjab Women's Association in Madras. Babo grew up here, but he and Sian, his cream-skinned Welsh love, met in London. Babo's parents disapproved. And then they disapproved unless the couple moved back to Madras. So here they are. And as the twentieth century creaks and croaks its way along, Babo, Sian, and the children navigate their way through the uncharted territory of a "hybrid" family: the hustle and bustle of Babo's relatives; the faraway phone-line crackle of Sian's; the eternal wisdom and soft bosom of Great-Grandmother Ba; the perils of first love, lost innocence, and old age; and the big question: What do you do with the space your loved ones leave behind?

I have been waiting to read Tishani Doshi's "The Pleasure Seekers" ever since it first came out and now that I've read it, I would love to be able to wax poetic about it, I'd love to be able to tell you to rush out and pick up a copy, but sadly, the book did not live up to the publishers' message, nor did it live up to Salman Rushdie's gushing blurb on the front cover. I wouldn't call it a bad book, no, far from it, it's just a pleasant read...nothing to get excited over and definitely nothing to write home about.

You may ask me why I was so excited to read this book...well, it's a book set in Chennai (one of the places I have lived in) and focuses on a large Gujarati family. Those of you who know me well know that even though I am a Punjabi by birth, culturally I am a Gujarati because I grew up amongst them. Also, Babo, one of the sons in this large family marries a Welsh girl (Sian) who comes to live with him and his family in Chennai and I was very curious to see how this interfaith, interracial marriage plays out in the book (incidentally, Doshi has a Gujarati father and a Welsh mother and has called her book "a love letter to my parents")

This is a novel about family and about home, or more precisely it asks the question, where is home? It is also about identity, love across the seas,displacement, family bonds and so on. I guess these are all themes that have been used often in Indian immigrant stories and it could be one of the many reasons the story didn't quite worm its way into my heart.

The prose is flawless, but a little too "cutsie" for me in parts. Intercourse is referred to as "shabang shibing" and sex is described as as a boy putting his “Whatsit” into a girl’s “Ms Sunshine”! Fortunately for the reader however, Doshi is a poet, so every now and again we are treated to bursts of poetry in the writing, but despite those sunshiney bursts of poetry I found the narrative structure too ordinary and the characters, pleasant, but cozy caricatures at best. Also, in the first half, you are given a tour of almost everyone in Prem Kumar's family (he's the patriarch), and then in the second half, Doshi seems to dismiss most of them as she settles down to only Babo's story along with his Welsh wife,his younger daughter Bean and Ba - Babo's esoteric grandmother who “smells” people approaching her house “from over the hills” - . Ofcourse, that doesn't take away from the novel being a good read, just that some characters seemed to show promise and then they were dismissed.

And then, there's this unpardonable sin of using oh too many cliches - especially the caricatures of Indians abroad and a reliance on stock cultural jokes and scenarios. But aside from these quibbles I've listed "The Pleasure Seekers" is a pleasant enough read - not memorable by any means - but a nice diversion.

The Ghost Brush by Katherine Govier

2010-09-02T15:16:00.001-04:00


On Sale:	05/05/2010	Publisher: Harper Collins

Today I place in your cupped hands Katherine Govier's sumptuous novel, "The Ghost Brush", set in 19th century Japan or Edo as it was called then. Edo was under the rule of the Shogun, or more specifically the Tokugawa Shogunate. Society in the Tokugawa period, unlike the shogunates before it, was based on a strict class hierarchy. The daimyo, or lords, were at the top, followed by the samurai (warriors), with the farmers, artisans, and traders ranking below. Outside the four classes were the eta and hinin. Eta were butchers, tanners and undertakers. Hinin served as town guards, street cleaners and executioners. Other outsiders included the beggars, entertainers, and prostitutes.

Although prostitutes and entertainers were considered "Outsiders", an art emerged during this period that focused on the lives, fashions and aesthetics of courtesans and entertainers. So, ironically, although prostitutes and their craft was looked down upon, people were interested in what they wore, how they spent their leisure time, their mannerisms etc. hence all the leading artists of the day could be found in Yoshiwara (the Pleasure District) painting away like their lives depended on what the courtesans did and indeed such was the case.

One of those artists was Hokusai ( best known for his woodblock print series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji which includes the internationally recognized print, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, created during the 1820s. Ofcourse, these works came later and when the book opens Hokusai is a simple painter and a frequent visitor to the red light district where he takes his 10-year old daughter Oei for company and also to help him mix the paints he needs.

Growing up in adult company Oei grows to be a precocious (but not unlikeable little girl). She soon strikes up a friendship with one of the courtesans (Shino). Shino is a Lady that has been sent to the brothel as a punishment for insulting her husband. It is through Oei's evenings with Shino that the reader is treated to what brothel life was like in Edo and the traditions, rituals and ceremonies that were a part of a courtesan's life. Reading Katherine Govier's colourful and rich descriptions of life in Yoshiwara took me back to movies by the old Japanese master Kenji Mizoguchi, especially his movies "Osaka Elegy", "Sisters of the Gion" and "The Life of Oharu".

Anyway, so under her father's tutelage, Oei started to work on drawings of women. She illustrated manuals for female behavior-- etiquette, housekeeping, fashion, even childbirth. But even though she did all of that, she herself was a rebel and refused to conform to "appropriate" female behavior. Although she was plain with a rather prominent jaw (not considered beautiful at all), she managed to have a lot of lovers as many men were attracted to her strong spirit. She drank and was addicted to her tobacco pipe, but no matter her flaws, she always remained Hokusai's dutiful daughter, helping her father with his commissions but never taking credit for any of them. This is where the title originates from, Oei was Hokusai's "Ghost Brush".

Oei married one of Hokusai's students, and even though her husband doted on her, he just wasn't bright or intelligent enough for Oei. One day she happened to laugh at one of his paintings and he "showed her the broom" which meant, he asked her to leave his home. Oei wanted her freedom back but the only way she could get a divorce was to seek refuge at Tokeiji Temple aka the "Run-in Temple". It was said that when you saw a woman running in the area, you knew she was on her way to Tokeiji, likely being chased by her husband. When Oei returned home from the temple, a newly-divorced woman, she took over her father's studio because an attack of palsy rendered him unable to communicate via speech.

The only foreigners in Edo at that time were the Dutch. Xenophobic as ever, Japan took a lot of pains to keep foreigners away. Only a few Dutchmen (from the Dutch-East India Company) were allowed to trade and they were confined to Dejima in Nagasaki Harbor - a de facto prison for the dozen or so men permitted to live and work there. (It is rumoured that the Dutch were the only foreigners chosen to work in Japan because they were the only ones that agreed to stamp on their Holy Book). Coincidentally, the hero of David Mitchell's new book "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet" features one such Dutchman from Dejima. The book has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2010, it will be interesting to see if it wins.

With Hokusai's speech affected by palsy it was left to Oei to meet with his patrons. So when a Dutchman showed interest in buying some of Hokusai's art, Oei went to meet him and Govier cleverly uses their conversations as a narrative tool to share with the reader how the east and the west perceived each other at that time.

As the story moves on the reader will find herself or himself rooting for Katsushika Oei to come in to her own...with talent like hers it is unfortunate to have her hiding in her father's shadow and yet that time in Japan demanded that women be completely servile to the men. Perhaps the most puzzling thing is that there was no coercion, women seemed to be willing partners in their own invisibility.

When a novelist will pluck a hero out of obscurity and tell the world about him or her, I feel as readers we owe them a debt of gratitude, so, Katherine Govier, here's a very big thank you to you! Your novel on the immensely talented Katsushika Oei is a work as exquisitely rendered as it is irresistibly readable.

If historical fiction, art or 19th century Japan is your thing, please pick up a copy of "The Ghost Brush"... it is a captivating and beautifully-rendered saga of Japan, also, it is so rich with period effect that it makes a great candidate for a screen drama. While it may be historical fiction, let us also not forget that at the heart of it all is the story of incomparable love between a father and daughter.

Go here for a companion website to the novel, historical background, source material, and images from the work of Japanese printmaker Hokusai and his daughter Oei.

Saraswati Park by Anjali Joseph

2010-08-24T09:51:00.000-04:00

On Sale: 10/08/2010; Format: Trade paperback; Publishers: Harper Collins; Fiction (South-Asian)

Mumbai with its chaos, complexities, concrete blocks housing hundreds of people, cosmopolitan population and where the richest of the rich and poorest of the poor live side by side, continues to be a very popular city to write about. Infact, in the last decade or so, there's been a spate of books about the city, "Maximum City" by Suketu Mehta, "Shantaram" by Gregory David Roberts, "Sacred Games" and "Love and Longing in Bombay" by Vikram Chandra...the more recent one to join the list is Anjali Joseph's "Saraswati Park".

Just the title was enough to draw me to this book. Saraswati is the goddess of knowledge and the Arts in Hindu mythology and she has always been my favourite deity. In the book, "Saraswati Park" is the name of a housing complex in a suburb somewhere deep in the heart of Bombay. The story revolves around empty-nesters, Mohan and Laxmi Karekar, whose lives are pretty humdrum and unremarkable. Mohan is a letter writer ( one of those quaint jobs which is almost non-existant today) and from his seat under some tarpaulin near the main Post Office he sits and writes letters for those who are illiterate - anything from heartfelt letters to the completion of bureaucratic forms, while Laxmi is a homemaker.

When we first meet Mohan and Laxmi their days are mundane with set routines and nothing much happens to alter it. Both seem frustrated by this mundane existance. An avid reader, Mohan wishes he could do more than just write letters....his secret desire is to write stories worthy of publication and Laxmi, frustrated by how his dreams make him distant from her turns to the television for company.

I love how Joseph details Laxmi's frustration with their emotional detachment in this nicely-written excerpt:

"Four of Mohan's shirts, collected this morning from the ironing boys, lay on the bed. She looked at them in exasperation. It was still there, the mild ring of dirt inside his collars, like a smudged pencil line. It wasn't his fault; nothing could be done. She had scrubbed at some of them to remove the mark, but it had been the collar, not the stain, that had begun to despair and fray. It was in these things, which didn't talk or, strictly speaking, have lives, that her days played out: her relationship with the shirts, neatly ironed and folded, was so much more direct that any other interaction these days."

One day the couple receive a call from Mohan's sister lamenting the fact that her son Ashish failed his college exams (due to poor attendance) and would have to retake them (unknown to the family, the poor attendance was due to Ashish's dalliance with a fellow classmate called Sundar). Since they (Ashish's parents) were being transferred to a city to the north of India, would it be possible for Ashish to stay with Mohan and Laxmi for the year? Mohan and Laxmi readily agree and soon the focus of the story moves to 19-year old Ashish - his life, his friends, his fears, his relationships, his secrets. Despite there being "secrets" in this novel it has a very calm tone with a quietness and melancholy that emanates like faint perfume from every page, making it linger on with the reader long after the last page has been read and the book closed.

For those of you who grew up in Bombay (mid '80's) this novel will be especially precious because of the author's wonderful observations and descriptions of this wonderful city I call home. The strength of this novel is its everyday observations of a couple approaching their twilight years; of a youngster just starting to find his feet in this world and discovering his sexuality and last, but not least, of a city that is home to atleast 14 million people and who expands (like a rubberband) to accommodate thousands more everyday.

It is also a book about family love and obligations; growing old together, about love and loss and goodbyes. All these may seem like heavy topics but they are handled deftly and delicately by Ms. Joseph and there is none of that masala or twists and turns that we have come to associate with other Bombay novels - just an initmate journey into the lives of everyday people who happen to live rather quietly in this bustling metropolis. As much as I liked the other Bombay novels mentioned above, none of those plots seemed real to me. My Bombay was like the Bombay one finds in Saraswati Park...of trees and birds; ordinary people, school, college, the market, weddings, neighbours, old books, corner shops and so on. This novel is a celebration of everyday life and seeing some beauty in it.

I'd like to close with a beautifully written passage found on page 253. This is when Ashish is getting ready to leave for California for his future studies. This passage resonated so much with me because, I, too, had to bid Bombay farewell around the same age Ashish did and it hurt so much:

"...he felt melancholic; finally he understood what life was like, the meetings and partings it entailed. It was a thought that only made him more attached to his life and the people in it.

From his window seat he looked with hungry eyes at the dirty worlds next to the tracks: the brigtly painted shacks, the grubby faced children, the ugly concrete tower blocks, the smells...

It was his city, his world; it might be imperfect but it was home. Yet he knew that only his imminent departure nurtured this sudden passion for Bombay which sometimes was a neutral environment in which he existed, and at other moments felt like a trap he'd never escape."

Pearl of China by Anchee Min

2010-08-17T18:14:00.000-04:00

The month of May coincidentally saw the publication of two books, both of which tell the story of the much-loved American writer, Pearl Buck's life. Anchee Min's "Pearl of China" is the lighter one of the two and an excellent novelisation of Buck's early- to- mid years in China, but those wanting a more indepth version of Buck's life would likely be satisfied with Hilary Spurling's biography "Burying the Bones".

The story of how Anchee Min came to write this fictional account of Nobel Prize-winning author Pearl S. Buck’s persecutions during Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution, is very touching. When Anchee Min was still a school girl in Shanghai, China, she was asked to denounce Pearl Buck. Anchee Min had no idea how to go about denouncing someone she had never met or whose books she had never read (her request to read Buck's "The Good Earth" before writing the denouncement had been turned down). Fast forward to 25 years: at one of Anchee Min's readings in a bookshop in the US a lady pressed a copy of "The Good Earth" into Anchee Min's hands and stated that Pearl Buck had made her love the Chinese. In her hotel room that night, Anchee Min finally got a chance to read "The Good Earth" and was so moved and felt so guilty for denouncing Buck all those many years ago she decided to write this biography as a means to atone for that sin.

I have always enjoyed anything written by Anchee Min. This lady has such a flair for historical fiction, she makes it fun, informative and so,so real, you never forget a thing. Also, she is a meticulous researcher, so although her work is labeled fiction, chances are that a lot of the details are true. For instance, in the case of Pearl Buck's life, Anchee Min, apart from pouring over public records and Buck's personal correspondence, she also visited Pearl Buck's family home in Chin-Kiang, China and interviewed families that had contact with Pearl's family.

The character, Willow, also the narrator of this story, is an amalgamation of the friends that Pearl had in China. Through Willow we learn that Pearl's father Absolam was a missionary to China and that his whole life was spent trying to convert Chinese people to the Christian faith. His long-suffering wife Carie was terribly homesick for America but because Absolam refused to leave China she stayed on too and her work with the Chinese people made them so indebted to her that many of them converted to Christianity just to show Carie their gratitude.

Ever since she was very young Pearl wanted to be Chinese and not American, so much so, she had her Chinese nanny make her a crocheted, black cap which she would wear all of the time to keep her blonde hair covered. She spoke Chinese like a native and even preferred to eat Chinese food over anything western. Pearl and Willow became friends after Willow's father, a beggar, decided to join Absolam's church for the free food. Later, he was genuinely converted and became a Christian.

Pearl and Willow remained good friends despite Pearl's various long trips to the US and Willow's unhappy marriage to a man who was several years her senior. When Pearl came back for a longer stay (married and with a mentally-disabled child, Carol) their friendship became even stronger although it was not without its trials. You see, for a while both Pearl and Willow were in love with the same man: Hsu Chih-mo who was considered to be China's Shelly. When it was obvious that Hsu Chih-mo loved Pearl, Willow decided to let go of him. Part of Pearl's attraction to Hsu Chih-mo was the fact that he was a Chinese man who was unafraid to speak his mind...his passion for poetry and life really appealed to her, but also, her American husband Lossing Buck didn't seem at all interested in their marriage and soon deserted her for a young Chinese woman called Lotus.

Willow in turn married Hsu Chih-mo's friend and admirer who worked in the Communist party. Those were very trying times for Willow as Mao and especially, Madame Mao seemed to have made it their mission to dishonour Pearl Buck and turn her into an enemy of the Chinese people. Knowing Willow was Buck's friend they asked her to denounce Buck as a cultural imperialist, something Willow refused to do and was imprisoned, tortured, starved and set to cleaning sewers (something that is very believable if you've read historical accounts of lives during Mao's rule of China)

"Pearl of China" provides a quick glimpse into Chinese history in the 20th century. We are taken through 80-plus years of China's history from the Boxer Rebellion to the Japanese invasion; the war between the Nationalists and Communists and the establishment of the Mao era and on to the Cultural Revolution and China's opening to the West and surprisingly none of it feels rushed...I guess that is a testament to the great skill of Anchee Min as a fictional writer of history. Her descriptions of places, people and time are always so engaging, you hardly notice the passing of the years!

Pearl Buck's life has been the subject of many books but most of her biographers have been Westerners. Anchee Min hopes her book will allow readers to see how Pearl Buck is viewed in China by the Chinese people. You come away from this book realizing the extraordinary hold China had on one of the most influential women of the 20th century, and how much she empathized with the Chinese people (especially the peasants). She was the first author to write about the Chinese peasants and anyone who has read "The Good Earth" knows she did so movingly, empathetically and powerfully. Not only is "The Good Earth" a very moving read, but one could say it was a very powerful force in helping Americans move beyond the bigotry, contempt and ignorance with which they had long viewed the Chinese.

Had Pearl Buck not been forced to leave China for the US during the Boxer Rebellion I feel certain she would have lived in China for the rest of her life. She always, always wanted to return to China and forty years later she came close to returning (as part of Nixon's entourage on a State visit to China in 1972) but Madame Mao saw to it that Pearl was refused a visa. Pearl died the next year at home in Pennsylvania. I wouldn't be at all surprised if she died from a broken heart.

If "Pearl of China" whets your appetite for more of Pearl Buck (and I have no doubt it will), I would highly recommend reading Hilary Spurling's " Burying the Bones"....I heard an audio version of the book and was very satisfied.

Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok

2010-08-06T15:57:00.001-04:00

Read by Grayce Wey
Category: Fiction
Published by: Penguin Audio
Format: Audiobook
On Sale: April 29, 2010

Synopsis provided by Publisher:

Introducing a fresh, exciting Chinese-American voice, Girl in Translation is an inspiring debut about a young immigrant in America, a smart girl who, living a double life between school and sweatshop, understands that her family’s future is in her hands.

When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn squalor, she quickly begins a secret double life: exceptional schoolgirl during the day, Chinatown sweatshop worker in the evenings. Disguising the more difficult truths of her life—the staggering degree of her poverty, the weight of her family’s future resting on her shoulders, her secret love for a factory boy who shares none of her talent or ambition—Kimberly learns to constantly translate not just her language but herself, back and forth, between the worlds she straddles.

Through Kimberly’s story, author Jean Kwok, who also emigrated from Hong Kong as a young girl, brings to the page the lives of countless immigrants who are caught between the pressure to succeed in America, their duty to their family, and their own personal desires, exposing a world we rarely hear about. Written in an indelible voice that dramatizes the tensions of an immigrant girl growing up between two cultures, surrounded by a language and a world only half understood, Girl in Translation is an unforgettable and classic novel of an American immigrant—a moving tale of hardship and triumph, heartbreak and love, and all that gets lost in translation.

My thoughts:

It's been so long since I've read either an immigrant or a coming-of-age story and this sweet little book by Jean Kwok more than made up for the long wait. Our little heroine, Kimberly or Ah Kim as her mother calls her, has to endure a lot: a roach and mouse-infested home without any heating in Brooklyn; dire poverty; the embarrassment of being a "FOB" and not knowing a word of English; having to work in a factory/sweat shop after school and having the responsibility of guiding her Chinese mother through an English-speaking world. What makes this even more complicated is she has to tread the tightrope between the two cultures and balance the Chinese desire for filial devotion and obedience with the American spirit for independence with the proficiency of a professional tightrope walker, and all this at the tender age of eleven! But she possesses such spirit, such earnestness, you fall for her immediately.

Some reviewers have complained that the writing is too plain, but really, I think the "plainness" suited the story. After all, this is an immigrant 11-year old girl, a non-speaker of the English language, surely one can't expect her to employ literary acrobatics? The simple speak provides an air of authenticity to the story....what also provides authenticity is the fact that the author herself had a similar childhood. In an interview with The Buzz, this is what the author had to say in answer to the question, "To what extent is the book autobiographical?"

It was certainly inspired by my own life, and by the worlds I had seen. My family moved from Hong Kong to New York when I was 5 years old and we, like Kimberly Chang and her mother, needed to start all over again. We began working in a sweatshop in Chinatown, which was filled with small children like myself. And we did live in an apartment without central heating, where we needed to keep the oven door open in order to have a bit of warmth through the bitter New York winters. Like Kimberly, I had a talent for school. I was also tested by a number of exclusive private schools and won scholarships to them, yet I was also accepted by a public high school for gifted children, which is where I went. After that, on a similar path to Kimberly’s, I was accepted to Harvard.

This story opened my eyes! I didn't know for instance that so many people from Hongkong moved away when the take over by China was imminent. Infact, we (my family and I) were in Hongkong during the transition (1997) and we did notice a huge influx of peasants from the mainland but we didn't hear of anyone (except for the British, some expats and Chinese with British passport-holders) leaving the colony. Also, I didn't know New York had sweatshops that employed children especially as recently as 1997!!! That came as a huge shock to me. Something we don't talk about a lot, but which a lot of immigrants experience, is the exploitation by a family member. In the novel, Kimberly's aunt, Paula, gets Kimberly and her mother to work for peanuts at her garment factory to pay off the money she (Paula) spent on bringing them to the United States. I know of people here in Canada who are sponsored by relatives and then the very same relatives make them work in the home as cooks or nannies for little or no pay. Makes me realize that freedom is relative, you can be as much of a slave here in North America as in the country you are running away from.

What I did know and what the author reiterates in her story is that in the early '90's, racism due ignorance was alive and thriving. Kimberly, was picked on constantly for looking and sounding different. I am so glad that a "zero tolerance" dictate on bullying and racism has been put into place now. About time!

Kimberlee was an extremely bright student. One might be tempted to think of that as an Asian stereotype, but from what I see around me, Asian students are bright because they have such a wonderful work and study ethic. Many of my daughters' friends, the Asian ones, keep long days at school and even their extra curriculars involve some form of academics or music.

This is a beautiful coming-of-age story, one that will definitely touch your heart and has been compared to "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn". In the print version of the book Kwok cleverly employs phonetic spellings to illustrate Kimberly's growing understanding of English and wide-eyed view of American teen culture, the audio version (which is what I used) is performed by Grayce Wey, who is wonderful at giving a Chinese-American intonation to the character's voices thus bringing them alive for the listener! The book is written in the first person narrative from the point of view of Kimberly though at times I couldn't help wishing that I had her mother's perspective too. Kimberly's mother, who was a gifted violinist back in Hongkong was forced to lower her station in life once her much-loved husband passed away. It would have been wonderful to read about her life in the US and her crashed American dream from her perspective as well.

Finally, besides being a wonderful coming-of-age story this is also a beautiful love story, one that doesn't quite end with stars in the eyes, but which will burrow its way into your heart and stay there a long,long time.

The Lovers by Vendela Vida

2010-08-03T21:15:00.001-04:00



Formats: Hardcover		Publishers: Harper Collins Canada

I am always excited to hear Vendela Vida has a new book out. Her stories are usually set in exciting locales and her characters are strong women determined to navigate life on their own after a tragedy befalls them. In "And Now You Can Go", partly set in the Phillipines, a young woman talks a suicidal gunman out of killing them both; in Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, set in Lapland, the crime is rape; and in "The Lovers" it is an accident that drives our 53-year old protagonist (Yvonne) to return to Datcha, a coastal village in Istanbul. Spot the common link? Rage and violence and then a trip to a foreign land in search of oneself. Apparently, this is deliberate and Vida is very conscious of creating a trilogy of sorts with these three titles. Now, back to the story:

After Yvonne loses Peter, her husband and love of her life, to a "hit and run", she decides (after a period of mourning) to return to Datcha, a coastal village in Istanbul, which is where they had their honeymoon twenty-eight years ago. She was scheduled to stay there for a week until the cruise ship that her son and his wife were sailing on, picked her up from Datcha. Her reasons for returning to Datcha are clear: she wants to know if the grief she feels at Peter's death can be obliterated by the good memories of their honeymoon...
Like with most places, time hadn't been real kind to Datcha and everything she saw, the beach, the houses, the roads, just seemed shabbier and less vibrant..."the beach was filthy. Small plastic bags, gelatinous in the sun, had been deposited by the tide on the strand."

and

“Half the restaurants had been shut down. The remaining ones displayed sick-looking fish on beds of crushed gray ice. With soiled rags, waiters shooed away mangy cats trolling for food. A sprinkling of tourists speaking German sat outside the cafes, their skin sunburned to a peculiar shade of orange.”

Still, she stays on in a nice house that she rented from Turkish businessman Ali Celik and soon became friends with his wife Ozlem. Ozlem and Ali were in the process of getting a divorce and Yvonne soon became Ozlem's sounding board for all the wretchedness that was going on in her marriage. But it was a symbiotic relationship because in Ozlem Yvonne found someone who could show her the ropes and a non-judgmental curiosity about her life with Peter.

Along with Ozlem and Ali, other people that pass through Yvonne's life as she holidays in Turkey is a 10-year old boy who reminds her of her son Matt when he was small. Ahmet's grandmother is the owner of of one of the resorts in Knidos but because she is too busy for the boy, Ahmet spends all day on the beach collecting shells from the Aegean Sea....the lonely figure he cuts on the beach is what endears him to Yvonne and soon she is befriending him much to the dislike of some of the locals, until tragedy strikes and she is forced to face their hatred head on.

There is undeniably a very melancholic air to the book with a few menacing details, but one that is nonetheless uplifting. I will admit to taking a while to get into the book - I found the protagonist a little too gloomy with a penchant for navel gazing and/or looking backward - but once I was over that hump, I was able rediscover the Vendela Vida magic. Because it's more of a novella and has very interesting descriptions of Turkey, I will even recommend this as a great summer read!

What you take away from Vendela Vida's "The Lovers" will depend on what stage of life you're at. A young person reading this is likely to have a very different view of the book than a middle-aged woman. Regardless of the age, however, I feel quite certain that every reader will enjoy the book and the way it explores memories. The title might be a little misleading though, because although there are many "lovers" in the book, including an owl pining for its mate, you realize that Yvonne herself seems lost and unanchored and probably, saddest of all, she concludes that her marriage it not what she thought it was.

I am very grateful to Harper Collins, Canada for making a copy of this book available for me to read.

Hotel Iris by Yoko Ogawa

2010-07-27T19:51:00.002-04:00

Picador, March 2010

"Hotel Iris" by Yoko Ogawa is one of those novels you want to read with one eye closed. In other words, the subject matter can be bizarre and grotesque and at the same time, you cannot stop reading because the story, the plot and the mood is so compelling, it draws you in almost against your will.

Our protagonist is 17-year old Mari who works in her mom's rundown hotel, "Hotel Iris" at a seaside resort in Japan. (Well, atleast I think it's Japan but because the details of where the place is is so sparse it could be any seaside town, anywhere).

The novel opens on the cusp of Japan's hottest summer and also the busiest time of the year for Hotel Iris. One evening as Mari tends to the front desk a commotion breaks out in Room 202 and soon she sees a "lady of the night" bounding down the steps in fear and anger and yelling out to the occupant in the room who it seems was intent on having rough sex with her. Mari catches a quick glimpse of the middle-aged customer as he leaves the room and throws two bills on the reception desk on his way out.

Some days later Mari sees him again and to her great surprise she realizes he is not the commanding figure she thought he was when she saw him in the hotel that night, instead she sees he is a middleaged- to- old man (almost 50-years older than her), about her height and frail-looking. She has this urge to follow him for not only is she curious about him, but on page 11 she tells us her thoughts upon hearing the customer shouting back at the prostitute in the hotel "I was confused and afraid, and yet somewhere deep inside I was praying that voice would someday give me an order, too."

You know how they say, be careful what you wish for? Well, Mari's sinister wish came true. She meets the gentlemen (we are never told his name) in town again and finds out he is a translator of Russian pamphlets, medical documents and administrative papers and in his spare time he is translating a Russian novel whose heroine is named Marie. The translator lives in an old isolated house on an island which is only accessible by boat and it there in his house that these sado-masochistic trysts between him and Marie take place. Note the restraint in Ogawa's writing with the prose being refined yet penetrating:

"He had undressed me with great skill, his movements no less elegant for all their violence. Indeed, the more he shamed me, the more refined he became — like a perfumer plucking the petals from a rose, a jeweler prying open an oyster for its pearl."

The narrator describes himself as a widower; a rumor in town says he murdered his late wife. Mari does consider the thought that the narrator might be a murderer but the thought seems to excite her as much as scare her.

Although the reader might wish to feel sorry for Mari, it is a little difficult to do so given that she really seems to enjoy these torture sessions. One is not entirely sure why though. Could it be that it adds some excitement to her otherwise dull life? Or is it because in some twisted way these interactions with the narrator make her feel loved (something her mother seems incapable of doing?), or, does Mari feel this is what is due her because of her damaged sense of self? Really not sure what her trigger is. Perhaps it is none of the above and that she enjoys the pain purely for its physical sensation, after all, isn't pain supposed to release certain neurotransmitters, including natural painkillers like endogenous morphine?

Adding colour to this mouldy seaside resort story are a motley crew: Mari's mother (again nameless) whom I have already mentioned ( a thoroughly dislikable woman who works Mari like a slave without a single day off); a kleptomaniac maid; a blind guest and the translator's nephew who is tongueless and a student of architecture who Mari finds rather interesting.

This book was written in 1996 but was only recently translated from the Japanese into English by Stephen Snyder. Ogawa has won accolades in Japan for the two novels she wrote previous to this one, "The Housekeeper and The Professor" and "The Diving Pool". Ogawa's writing style is sparse and minimalistic, but she is so good at setting moods, providing a sense of place and manipulating a readers' senses with her spare words, that I almost want to say she is the writer equivalent of Alfred Hitchcock. Also, for all the torture, lust and obsessive behaviour that takes place between the pages of this book, the narrative tone comes across as being rather detached, even clinical, but because it is in sharp contrast to the behaviors it actually makes the read that much more interesting. This is a bleak novel but exquisitely imagined. I cannot wait to read Ogawa's previous two books.

Happy 75th Birthday Penguin Books (and a giveaway!)

2010-07-24T10:13:00.001-04:00

July 30th marks the official 75^th anniversary date for the launch of Penguin Books, and Penguin is going all out to celebrate this summer. For a list of festivities,stories and events, go here.

Penguin’s founder Allen Lane started the paperback revolution with that little flippant but dignified Penguin (his secretary came up with the name and he sent another colleague off to the zoo to make sketches). One year later, 3 million Penguin paperbacks had been sold. Today, the Penguin imprint alone has over 4000 books in print. To learn more about their history, see here and here.

Penguin has generously offered me the chance to give some lucky reader a Penguin book to commemorate their 75th anniversary. I was asked to pick two titles from a list of 75. One was for me to keep (thank you Penguin) and the other is to give away.

Choosing one title out of seventy-five choices was no easy feat indeed, but after a little deliberation I decided to go with "Tortilla Curtain" by T.C. Boyle.

I read "Tortilla Curtain" many years ago and the plight, misery and yet courage of the Mexican couple- protagonist, Candido and America, never ever left me. Today with Arizona's immigration bill on everyone's tongues I thought this would be a very topical read. If you're on the fence regarding this bill, believe me, this book is going to help you make your mind up, one way or another.

I include a synopsis of the book courtesy the publishers:

Topanga Canyon is home to two couples on a collision course. Los Angeles liberals Delaney and Kyra Mossbacher lead an ordered sushi-and-recycling existence in a newly gated hilltop community: he a sensitive nature writer, she an obsessive realtor. Mexican illegals Candido and America Rincon desperately cling to their vision of the American Dream as they fight off starvation in a makeshift camp deep in the ravine. And from the moment a freak accident brings Candido and Delaney into intimate contact, these four and their opposing worlds gradually intersect in what becomes a tragicomedy of error and misunderstanding

And here is a slightly more detailed run down of the book from Wikipedia.

And one from the Penguin Reading Guide.

In order to win a copy simply write a comment telling me you would like to be included in the draw. The draw will take place on 02 August and you will be notified here, so please check this space. Thanks!

******UPDATE********

And the winner is, "Sai Speak"

Congrats Sai, I will be e-mailing your for your address!!! Hope you like the book!

Stone in a Landslide by Maria Barbal

2010-07-22T17:43:00.000-04:00

Publication: Peirene Press (2010), Paperback, 108 pages
ISBN: 9780956284013

Today I place in your cupped hands a gem of a book titled "Stone in a Landslide" by renowned Catalan writer, Maria Barbal. The book, which was originally written in Catalan and translated into English by Laura McGoughlin and Paul Mitchell, narrates the story of a 13-year old Catalan girl, Conxa, who is sent to live with her childless aunt Tia in a different village on the Catalan Pyrenees at the beginning of the last century.

The story is not extraordinary, in that, she traces her life at her aunt's house (her aunt and uncle are farmers and although they are comfortably off, the work is physically grueling), her first love Jaume who she later marries, her children, the onset of Spain's civil war and how they were taken prisoners for a while for Jaume's involvement with the Communist revolutionaries and finally her twilight years as a grandmother in Barcelona, hardly needed, rarely listened to.

So like I said, the story itself is not all that different or remarkable, what puts this book at the top of my reading list (and you will thank me if you place it at the top of yours too) is the narrator herself...her voice..her ability to tell a tale and to mark a passage of time with so much credibility, muted emotion, an enviable conciseness (the novel is only 126 pages) and a surprising gentleness and yet, as you read, the story and her emotions are so fiercely felt, it leaves you deeply affected.

Also, Barbal writes the way most of us would write should we look back on our lives....she doesn't bother herself or the reader with the big events that went on around her, rather it is the little everyday events that fill her book. When I look back on my life, I find that I have forgotten so much and the events I do remember are the small, everyday things and if I were to recount those, I am sure I would find many who would relate to what I was saying. And that's what Barbal does...even though she is narrating the story of a woman who lived in a different century with a completely different background from most of us, her way of telling this tale has a certain timeless quality about it which I enjoyed very much.

"Stone in a Landslide" is published by Peirene Press in the UK who do a fabulous job of publishing contemporary (translated) European Literature. "Stone in a Landslide" was first published (in Catalan) in 1985.

Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India by William Dalrymple

2010-06-22T17:39:00.001-04:00

Format: Hardback, 304 pages, 234x153mm

Published: October 2009

Bloomsbury UK

"Nine Lives" is a collection of short esoteric stories by eminent travel writer William Dalrymple that explores how India's religious traditions are being affected by modernity. As a result, it is not about the Sai Babas, the Maharishis or the sants from the mainstream religions of India, or even about modern TV God Men like Sri Sri Ravi Shankar from the global spirituality empire called the "Art of Living", but about the tantriks and the sufis, godmen and saints from the fringes of religion and various cults or even the little village devis and devatas...for it is these people and their traditions which face a threat from modernization.

This wonderful book opens with "The Nun's Tale", a sensitive portrayal of a Jain nun....of why and how she became a nun, the rigors involved in living as a nun (or a monk) and some very interesting revelations on some of the practices of Jain nuns and monks that I was not aware of. Prasannamataji, the nun in question, is young, educated and attractive. She comes from a wealthy family but gives it all up for a life of asceticism. Jainism attaches supreme importance to "detachment" and every Jain, man or woman, but especially nun and monk, aspires to become completely detached from life. Unfortunately for Prasannamataji she develops a keen affection for a fellow nun. Her friend falls sick and eventually dies (Jains are not allowed to seek allopathic treatment), and Prassanamataji ends up not just breaking a rule and falling in love (for lack of a better term), but also mourning the loss of her beloved and wanting to take her own life. Incidentally, the practice of fasting unto death "sallekhana" is widely embraced in Jainism. Unlike with Buddhism, there is not a whole lot out there that describes for us the lives of Jain aesethics and I sincerely believe Dalrymple has opened the doors to many aspects of Jain living that were hitherto unknown. Fascinating...this first tale left me breathless, quite literally!

"The Dancer of Kannur", takes a peak into the lives of Theyyam dancers ( divinely possessed dancers) in Kerala. What is so fascinating about the account is that Theyyam dancers, being Dalits (untouchables) , are usually reviled by Brahmins on a regular basis and yet, when the Theyyam season comes around the Brahmins are prepared to touch the feet of the Dalit whom they believe is now possessed by a God. So also, in "The Daughters of Yellamma" we have the devadasis (women who are dedicated to a temple as children) but who are inevitably cast off after attaining puberty. Not a whole lot of options are open to them at this point except to prostitute themselves. Devadasis are supposed to be the incarnation of the goddess Yellama and such is the draw of Indians to religion that even though most of them (the davadasis) now come from the "untouchable" caste and most are prostitutes, Hindu families will seek their blessings on auspicious occasions like a wedding, the birth of a child and so on.

One of my favourite stories in the collection has to do with a Buddhist monk from Tibet who was temporarily released from his vows of non-violence to take up arms in defence of the Dalai Lama whom he then accompanied in his flight from Tibet to Dharamshala in India in the 1950's. He then spends the rest of his life atoning for the violence by hand printing the finest prayer flags in India. I thought I knew everything there is to know about Tibetan Buddhism but I was so wrong...I had no clue they were able to take up a call to arms if their religion demanded it!

Another notable story is "The Idol Maker", Srijet is the thirty-fifth of a line of sculptors going back to the Chola bronze makers who sees creating gods as one of the holiest callings in India, but unfortunately the line may just end with Srijet as his son has no intention of becoming a sculptor like his dad, instead, he has plans to study computer engineering.

And my review would not be complete if I did not mention, Manisha whose astonishing journey from a middle-class life in Calcutta to unexpected fulfillment living as a Tantric in an isolated, skull-filled cremation ground is told in a story with the beguiling title, "The Lady Twilight".

Whilst reading these fascinating stories, I was once again reminded just how very diverse India is. From these nine lives you realize there is a variety of Indias but that they are all seamlessly and beautifully connected. You also realize, albeit a little sadly, that ancient religious traditions are dying out as India marches towards global dominance. I am very grateful to Dalrymple for providing us a keyhole into the lives of these people who, if the current trend continues, might not be around too much longer.

"Nine Lives", unlike most travelogues which tend to focus on the author and what "he" is doing, focuses exclusively on these nine subjects,their lives and spiritual quests. Dalrymple has successfully managed to place himself in the background. The interest and the inquiring mind is very much there, but he is skillfully unobtrusive, allowing his subjects to tell their story in their own words. It is precisely that quality which makes this book such an enjoyable and unforgettable read.

Note: William Dalrymple is going on tour with the "real life" characters of his latest book. This is truly a unique way of showcasing the India Dalrymple's come to discover over the past twenty-five years. If you can catch a reading, I'm sure it will be money and effort well spent!

THE WORLD IS A BALL: THE JOY, MADNESS AND MEANING OF SOCCER by John Doyle

2010-06-19T23:06:00.000-04:00

Category: Sports & Recreation - Soccer
Format: Hardcover, 416 pages
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
ISBN: 978-0-385-66498-1 (0-385-66498-2)

Pub Date: May 11, 2010
Price: $29.95

This is not a review (for I am still reading it)...simply a recommendation.

With the World Cup upon us, I thought John Doyle's (Globe and Mail columnist)"The World is A Ball" would be a handy read. So everytime I sit down to watch a match I bring it to the couch with me to read during half time or a commercial break. I started off not knowing if I was going to enjoy it because (even though I enjoy soccer) I have never really attempted to read a book about the sport or any other sport for that matter, so what a pleasant surprise to find that the book actually reads like a cross between a love story (the love of a man for a sport) and a travelogue (for he travels all across the world for his love, catching games in different continents).

The book is divided into three main parts: The first part is a sort of introduction to soccer and how the author came to love the game in his native Ireland; the second and main chunk of the book deals with his travels to distant parts of the world to take in the World Cup of 2002/2006 and the Euro Cup 2004/2008 as a reporter for the Globe and Mail. The final part of the book includes short, incisive accounts of several of the keynote qualifying games for this world cup – including a wonderful roaming through Bari when Ireland went to play Italy.

Doyle has a great eye for everything that his happening around him. When he goes to Japan for the World Cup 2002 (held jointly in South Korea and Japan) he describes the dour- faced Japanese policemen who have been told to expect soccer hooligans from England, instead, they are confronted hoardes of Irish fans, dressed as leprechauns and priests and are cheerily greeting the policemen who don't know what to make of the spectacle unfolding before their very eyes. Japanese fans, in contrast, are fairly subdued, what's more, soccer seems to be the sport of the young and the very young. The older Japanese folk do not follow soccer and were actually up in arms with the government for hosting the World Cup. Many were just plain scared of the foreigners arriving into their cities in large numbers and went out of their way to avoid them.

Having never seen a professional soccer game, much less a game at the World Cup, I was riveted by Doyle's descriptions of what happens before the game begins (the little outdoor park parties where fans are entertained by local bands) and all the mayhem and celebration during the game. He even will describe what goes between the teams....most of which the TV cameras do not catch. Don't get me wrong, TV has some great coverage, but it doesn't quite capture the energy and atmosphere of a live crowd! This is how he describes the end of Turkey-Korea match:

“Turkey wins 3-2 and most of the Korean players, exhausted beyond imagining, fall to their knees. Then a remarkable thing happens: Some Turkish players begin pulling the Koreans to their feet, embracing them and tugging them into acknowledging the supporters in the stands alongside them. Both teams link arms together in one long line of players from two countries and bow to the crowd. Hakan Sukur, Turkey's greatest living player, walks from the field waving a Korean flag. … the spontaneity of the gesture makes it movingly authentic … both South Korea and Turkey know they are the true champions of this World Cup.”
I also found a lot of his musings on soccer quite insightful, like why the Americans make such good soccer players orwhy Canada will always be a hockey nation first, not soccer:

"I don't think we can realistically expect that Canada will become a soccer nation, I think that would be foolhardy. To begin with, the national game in Canada is hockey, as it should be.
Hockey represents this country's essence in some ways -- figures on the ice and playing against the elements is representative of the essence of Canada, that sense of survival against the elements.

"But soccer is growing in popularity -- it has more registered players in Canada than any other sport -- and I think that over the years, the children and grandchildren of people who came here from soccer counties will have a greater opportunity to play the game here, and that eventually soccer will become perhaps the second or third sport in Canada."

While it may seem ludicrous for a Canadian television reporter (at no point does Doyle ever call himself a sports writer) to be writing a book about soccer, it is exactly that kind of neutrality that makes his impressions, especially when it comes to soccer teams or individuals soccer players so important. Take for instance what he says about Zidane on page ...

“He has an artist’s cold, intense loathing for those who refuse to play soccer with the elegance and calm grace that he brings to it"; “a great artist’s unapologetic rage against mediocrity.” Looked at that way, Zidane’s epochal head-butting of Italy’s Marco Materazzi in the 2006 World Cup final may now perhaps be understood???

To be continued...

Ginger and Ganesh: Adventures in Indian Cooking, Culture, and Love by Nani Power

2010-06-11T16:07:00.003-04:00

“Please teach me Indian cooking! I will bring ingredients and pay you for your trouble.

I would like to know about your culture as well.”

So reads the Craigslist posting that foodie, single mother and indiaphile Nani Power places on the internet. Before long her inbox is flooded with messages from Indian people of all ages inviting her to come cook with them. Rather sensibly, she sticks with Indian women (young and old) but mostly married with families, and thus begins her adventures with Indian cooking and friendships with people who graciously welcome her like a family member and teach her Indian dishes "in the same patient and loving ways their own mothers had guided them through the years"

Our 46 year old author even finds love with the younger brother of a lady who had invited Nani over to learn some Punjabi cooking. “a sexy Indian boy-man, half sage meditator, half texting, hiphop loving, an odd mix for a forty-something non-cougar writer who loves to write and cook.” That the boy was 25 years younger than Nani perturbs for just a short while but then she shrugs it off as destiny speaking as she describes how at the age of 12 her favourite book, "Cheri" by Collette, happened to be the story of a woman and a man twenty-five years apart. She ponders fleetingly on page 193, "Was I so impressed (with Cherie) as to seek it out or was I privy on some level to my destiny? One can only muse."

So what did I think of the book? LOVED the premise! I think it's so cool that at the press of a button you can summon to you a veritable little India willing to teach and guide in the ways of their foods and culture. It had me wondering if I would have the same luck had I wanted to discover, let's say, Mexico and Mexicans in the same way? Somehow I don't think so, for the simple reason I am not as adventurous as Nani, I'd be too scared to visit strangers in their homes...I mean, what if some crazies decide to answer the advertisement and then set a trap for me?

What else about the book did I like? The recipes are nice (more than 50 and all vegetarian)....most of them are recipes that we Indians would call "everyday" dishes...I didn't notice too many exotic dishes except perhaps for "Saam Savera" and "Navaratna Kurma" which are more infrequently made because of the time and effort that goes into it and also because it requires deep frying. I was very touched by the author's love and interest in India, but at the same time, she acknowledges that try as she might she couldn't just slip in to the role of a traditional Indian woman. Instead she describes herself a DESBY (wanna-be Desi) and here is how she describes herself (and others like her) in relation to being Indian:

"We crave the pageantry, tradition, history , connection and spirituality of India, yet with our independent, willful, over educated backgrounds, we would no doubt explode if seriously involved in such a duty-oriented society. We prefer to do Yoga, mediate, wear a sari, eat dal and play the role. We DESBYS are stuck in between worlds, seeing balance and continuity while our attention spans are pretty short and we are very accustomed to our freedom"

I also thought it was nice to view India and Indians through the eyes of an outsider On page 17 she makes a good observation about American and Indian kitchens: she laments that while American kitchens have shiny, state of the art technology most Americans do not really cook and because they mostly consume convenience food, cooking has been stripped of it sensuality. "We do not need to touch food to make a meal. We open packages. Salad and vegetables are packaged, as well as meat. We tear these open, slide them on a place. Dinner is done without a hand actually touching it."
In contrast, an Indian kitchen is a bee hive of activity...although the floors and the stove may be slightly greasy with well worn tools like a cutting board, knife, pressure cooker, blender etc. and cluttered with a lot of little tins containing precious Indian masala, the kitchen has a life and soul to it that maybe many American kitchens do not.

Having said all of that however, I found the book rather light and frothy...just like the buttermilk, the recipe for which is on page 171. I don't think any of her observations on men, marriage and so on are new or profound and I think her loving explanations of the Indian foods, rituals, Indian deities etc. would perhaps be more interesting to someone new to India and Indian food than to the Indian reader. Also, although the book starts off really well with the reader invited to meet some of the lovely Indian ladies and are privy to some of their family stories and histories etc, however, I found that when Nani meets V, her much-younger suitor, the focus gradually shifts from the Indian ladies to herself and her longing to understand her wants, needs and emotions.

I see all the foodies and bibliochefs lapping up this one and so they should! Bon appetit!

Female Nomad and Friends (Tales of Breaking Free and Breaking Bread Around the World)by Rita Golden Gelman

2010-06-06T08:03:00.002-04:00

Category: Travel - Essays & Travelogues
Format: Trade Paperback, 352 pages
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
ISBN: 978-0-307-58801-2 (0-307-58801-7)

Pub Date: June 1, 2010
Price: $17.50

Six years ago I read a book, "Tales of a Female Nomad: Living at Large in the World" by Rita Golden Gelman which finally answered the question I had been asking myself ever since I can remember, "What do I want to be when I grow up?". Needless to say it is a book that actually changed my life. Funnily enough, when I was in the moment of reading it I didn't realize the power that this book was going to have over me, infact, I thought quite the contrary. I remember balking at the idea of traveling with no set plans which is what Rita does all the time. She takes advantage of opportunities as they come up, "It's my new credo: say yes to everything." My rational mind was trying to tell me that people don't just up and leave for a foreign land (long term) without knowing anyone there or without a job in hand....I found it impetuous and foolhardy but I also found myself envying her nomadic lifestyle.

What a blessing to have the freedom to decide where you want to go and when and to trust enough that the locals of your "for-the-moment" chosen country will look out for you. Rita never ever stays in hotels....she always stays with a local family found for her through organizations like Servas and Couchsurfing, and that makes for a complete and gratifying immersion in the local culture. It took me a few years to realize that his is exactly what I see myself doing after my kids have left home. I am going to travel the world, living anywhere I want and for as long as I want in my quest to become a citizen of the world and to connect with people from all over the globe.. How will I fund myself? Gelman did it by writing children's books...I'll have to find another way, but I have no doubt it can be done!

Anyway, I digress. I am here to talk about Gelman's new book an anthology titled,"Female Nomad and Friends". Here Gelman brings together 41 authors to tell their stories of adventuring around the world and the bonds they created while doing so. 100% of royalties will be donated to fund scholarships to vocational schools for kids from the slums of New Delhi. As if that isn't an incentive enough to pick up the book but the stories are something else too - captivating, inspirational, joyful, thoughtful and life-affirming - and, AND, the book includes 30 fabulous recipes!

To celebrate the anthology and the special bonding that happens when people share a meal and a book, Rita is hosting a 24-hour global dinner, Connecting through Food, on Friday, June 18th. To learn more about how you can be a part of the 24-hour dinner, go to www.facebook.com/femalenomad. Rita will be posting some recipes, suggesting others, and also proposing topics for discussion. I hope to be hosting one too!

The anthology holds a collection of some fifty-nine tales and while it may sound daunting I should let you know that most of the tales are just 2-3 pages long. While I commend them all, I did have my favorites: The one from Vietnam, "A Wet Shoe Story" by Carolyn Stoucy actually made me tear up and realize that humility is such an important quality, especially as I find that it seems to be the very thing many of us try to shrug off. We are told never to "sell ourselves short", never to "be vulnerable", what that has done has turned us into a nation of people who don't know how to help or even to ask for it. We can be a little selfish and individualistic. In the East, it can be a little different...guests are revered and the well being of the community is certainly more important than the well being of the individual.

I also enjoyed the story from Samoa, "In Search Of A Familiar Soul", by Catherine Buchanan, not just because it was a passionate love story but also because it is a lesson in creative visualization. What you envision, you really do draw to you. You will find this story on page 186. I thought there would be more from India but as far I can tell there is just one, but it is very well written and the author, Kelly Hayes-Raitt has done a great job of describing how India made her feel. Then there is Rita's story of how she came to attend the making of "Ho Mok" a Thai Fish Custard dish in Ban Krud, Thailand. I took particular interest in this story because I have a sneaking suspicion that Fish Amok which is a Cambodian dish and one of my favorite dishes ever is really a version of Ho Mok. If I do host that Global Supper, I will be making this!

Another story that touched me a whole lot is "Cajeta and the Spirits" by Maria Altobelli. Here we meet Mercedes, a terminally ill old lady who "just couldn't make up her mind to cross over". This touched me because I have a friend who works in a hospice and she said this is a common problem with some people close to death. It's as if they are waiting for one last thing to happen before they give themselves permission to die. In Mercedes' case, she passed peacefully after her son Arturo put a spoonful of "cajeta", a creamy, sweet, caramel confection made from cooked goat's milk inside his mother's lips. Then Altobelli goes on to share a recipe for Cajeta which I will have to try.

No doubt, like me, you will have your own favourite stories and I would love it if you would share them here. Also, find one of those global suppers to participate in, it's all for a good cause.

Chef by Jaspreet Singh

2010-06-02T08:01:00.001-04:00

Category: Fiction
Format: Trade Paperback, 256 pages
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 978-0-307-39933-5 (0-307-39933-8)

Pub Date: March 30, 2010
Price: $19.95

I have a confession to make: I picked this book purely because I loved the title and it's mesmerizingly-lovely cover, so, when it was Shortlisted for the 2009 Commonwealth Prize for Best Book and nominated for the 2010 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, I couldn't have been happier! Sadly, I had far too many interruptions while reading this book and that has affected my ability to write an insightful review, so forgive me if I just leave you with the synopsis and a review by Mary Whipple. If anyone of you have read the book and have a review to share, please do so in the comments.

In a nutshell: I liked the book. It's a tiny book with big themes, with dreamlike-lyrical writing in some places and hard-hitting realistic descriptions in others. Because two of the main protagonists are cooks, there is a lot of talk of food. I particularly enjoyed reading Chef Kishen's food preparation instructions to our protagonist:

"Before cutting a tomato, give it the reference it deserves and ask: Tomato, what would you like to become? Do you want to be alone? Or do you prefer company? Apricot, what would you like to become? Would you like to become more than yourself in the company of saffron? Saffron, who are you?"

"Fish, what would you like to become? Basil, where did you lose your heart? Lemon: It is not who you touch but how you touch. Learn from big elaichi. There, there. Karayla, meri jaan, why are you so prudish? "

I have never thought to have a conversation with food before but maybe I should try it. Don't they say that talking to plants makes them healthier? :)

Best of all the novel includes a recipe for a tomato/olive and feta cheese salad that I actually made (was very popular with my two girls!) There is also a recipe for the famous Kashmiri Rogan Josh on page 226 which I am going to try next.

Here is the Synopsis as promised:

Kirpal Singh is travelling on the slow train to Kashmir. As India passes by the window in a stream of tiny lights, glistening fields and huddled, noisy towns, he reflects on his destination, which is also his past: a military camp to which he has not returned for fourteen years...

Kirpal, Kip to his friends, is timorous and barely twenty when he arrives for the first time at General Kumar’s camp, nestled in the shadow of the mighty Siachen Glacier that claimed his father’s life. He is placed under the supervision of Chef Kishen, a fiery, anarchic mentor with long earlobes and a caustic tongue, who guides Kip towards the heady spheres of food and women. ‘The smell of a woman is a thousand times better than cooking the most sumptuous dinner, kid,’ he muses, over an evening beer. Kip is embarrassed – he has never slept with a woman, though a loose-limbed nurse in the local hospital has caught his eye.

In Srinagar, Kashmir, a contradictory place of erratic violence, extremes of temperature and high-altitude privilege, Kip learns to prepare indulgent Kashmiri dishes such as Mughlai mutton and slow-cooked Nahari, as well as delicacies from Florence, Madrid, Athens and Tokyo. Months pass and, though he is Sikh, Kip feels secure in his allegiance to India, the right side of this interminable conflict. Then, one muggy day, a Pakistani ‘terrorist’ with long, flowing hair is swept up on the banks of the river, and changes everything.

Mesmeric, mournful and intensely lyrical, Chef is a brave and compassionate debut about hope, love and memory, set against the devastatingly beautiful, war-scarred backdrop of occupied Kashmir.

The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives by Lola Shoneyin

2010-05-22T14:42:00.001-04:00

A couple of years ago I remember going to the TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) for my first ever Nigerian movie. The movie was titled "Abeni" and I remember being totally regaled by the spectacle: the colour, the melodrama and the sheer number of people cast in the movie! Nigerian films are very joyous things indeed....with a LOT of dialogue from which you get a sense that the Nigerian people are a very vocal lot...also, they are sentimental with a flair for drama and exaggeration and a healthy belief in superstitions...it is these traits which always make for very fun movies and/or books based in that wonderful country.

Anyhow, I digress, the only reason I brought up "Abeni" is because when I picked up Lola Shoneyin's book, "The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives" its big patriarchal family with the head of the household who thinks he's the big gun but whose strings are being subtly pulled by the wives ( yes,"wives", because Baba Segi, our protagonist, is a polygamist with four wives) and the entertaining theatrics of this family of 12 members immediately transported me to the excitement and drama of Nollywood.

Let me introduce you to the wives:

Iya Segi is the first wife or the Queen of Wives. Even though she is as round as a watermelon and probably on the bad side of forty, she is wily enough to command Baba Segi's mind, if not his heart. She is the one that disperses the rations in the household and keeps all the other competing wives under control. Iya Segi is an excellent businesswoman and loves the feel, look and scent of money.

Iya Tope, the second wife, is meek in comparison and unable, or maybe unwilling, to take charge of anything. She is more than happy for Iya Segi to call the shots. She is happiest at home braiding her daughters' hair or watching television. She is totally non-confrontational which makes her stick out like a sore thumb amongst this chorus of characters who seem very able to get what they want. Unfortunately this habit of not wanting to confront anything or anyone makes her unwilling to stand up for injustices in the household.

Iya Femi is the wife I liked the least, but probably the most interesting of them all. Born a Muslim she converts to Christianity and when she arrives at Baba Segi's house she has a belly of fire and brimstone. She is the kind of person who (probably because of her miserable childhood) is happiest when plotting revenge on people. She's the kind of person who suffers from schadenfreude - happiest when someone else is miserable.

And then there is Bolanle. It is not just her education (the other wives are uneducated) that makes Bolanle different, but it is also the fact that of all the wives, Bolonle was the only one that Baba Segi deliberately chose to marry. The other wives were either gifted to him or they gifted themselves. She was also the youngest and the least competitive of the lot. You would have thought that these characteristics would make her Baba Segi's favorite wife, but it transpires that she is barren and since children is all that Baba Segi cares about he turns against her...not for long though for there is a secret waiting to be unearthed which turns the entire household on its head....

"The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives" is a treat to read with a plot and storyline that will
alternately horrify, amuse, and bemuse its readers. But at the same time, its breezy tale urges a degree of compassion for the women of Nigeria as it is plain to see that even with economic opportunities on the rise women there are not always fully appreciated in that male-dominated society.

The novel is also is a startling but beautiful evocation of a Nigerian woman's inner world: of the little village girl whoso wanted to be literate; of the young woman filled with yearning to be loved by a young and handsome man and of the wife who comes to harbor a dangerous secret. But it is also a heartbreaking portrait of the institution of marriage in Nigeria, especially the polygamous kind and the role women play as wives and co-wives. It also put under the magnifying glass this "obligation" to produce an heir, especially a male heir. A woman can be uneducated or ugly as sin and she will find a husband but if she's barren she may as well be a statue for no one has any need of her.

Lola Shoneyin is not just a writer to watch - she's a writer to follow. You'll be saying the same thing once you read this fine novel.

If You Follow Me by Malena Watrous

2010-05-04T07:00:00.004-04:00

Harper Perennial; 354 pages; $14.99 paperback

This is not a review, just a write-up:

I had never heard of Malena Watrous' "If you Follow Me" when it came to me by mail from Harpers Perennial, but its opening pages which contained a very sweet letter addressed to Malena Watrous by her Japanese minder in his charming Japlish seduced me and I knew I wanted to read more.

"Dear Miss Marina how are you? I'm fine thank you. A reason for this letter is: recently you attempt to throw away battery and jar and some kind of mushroom spaghetti and so forth, all together in one bin. Please don't try "it wasn't me." We Japanese seldom eat Gorgonzola cheese!"

I searched the net for reviews (something I don't usually do before I read a book) and fund them uniformly positive so decided to give it a whirl and before I knew it I had breezed through 150 pages in a single sitting (almost unheard of for me these days!).

Here's a tiny synopsis so you get a feel for what the book's about:

Hoping to outpace her grief in the wake of her father's suicide, Marina has come to the small, rural Japanese town of Shika to teach English for a year. But in Japan, as she soon discovers, you can never really throw away your past . . . or anything else, for that matter.

"If You Follow Me" is at once a fish-out-of-water tale, a dark comedy of manners, and a strange kind of love story. Alive with vibrant and unforgettable characters--from an ambitious town matchmaker to a high school student-cum-rap artist wannabe with an addiction to self-tanning lotion--it guides readers over cultural bridges even as it celebrates the awkward, unlikely triumph of the human spirit.

The book is everything the publishers say it is and more. It is semi-autobiographical, a love story, and a story about loss and learning to cope, but it also reads as an expat journal detailing interesting and obscure details about Japan and the Japanese that only someone living there would pick up on. For instance, the Japanese fascination with rules. You get the feeling that Japan is a very law-abiding country and they have little or no patience with foreigners who will not follow rules. It took several epistolary rebukes from Marena's fellow “sensei,” or teacher, Hiroshi, who has been assigned to supervise her presence in Shika, about the "gomi rules" (garbage rules) before she caught on and started following .

What did I like about the book? The honesty. I felt like Watrous never tried to cover up her faux-pas or faults. She was the tall, bumbling foreigner in Japan, who could only speak a smattering of Japanese, and she never tried to be anything else. She has also has a wacky and dry sense of humor and is game to poke fun at herself as she stumbles through life in Japan, but it's not a "laugh-a-minute" thing like we are used to seeing with travel writers like Bill Bryson, J. Proost. Also, she really does want to teach the kids English but her progress is marred by the fact that she doesn't always "get" the culture, or what is or isn't acceptable in Japanese society. Also, there is a kid (a previous hikikomori or a shut-in) who seems intent on sabotaging her time in Japan, not to mention the boys she teaches in the technical college who, because they don't see their futures improving with English, refuse to cooperate during the lessons. They sit half-naked in class and their previous teacher left on account of sexual harassment. This brings up quite an interesting point actually....while Japan may be a country of social conformity, there are the exceptions or rebels who truly stick out like sore thumbs.

Also, while all of this is going on, Watrous is trying to cope with personal losses on two fronts: the suicide of her father and the break up of her relationship with Carolyn, the girl she followed to Japan. However, the book is not without its warm and funny moments like the gatherings at the "Hottorondo" or hot springs where colleagues gather and chat naked around the hot tubs. I have heard this is similar in Finland that has a sauna culture, but as a Indo-westerner, I am not sure I could frolic around naked with my colleagues and then work with them the next day!

Then there is the Japanese wedding she goes to: unlike most weddings which are noisy, joyous occasions, Japanese weddings are sober and reflective in comparison. Malena is given a long oral list of rules to follow while she is at the wedding, but, ofcourse, not belonging to the culture she finds it impossible to follow the rules and just has fun instead!

She also touches on a lot of issues currently affecting Japanese society....like the high rate of abortions, the shut-ins and issues that are peculiar to Shika only. Shika being a small town ......... the city is constantly losing its young people to bigger cities for work, also, Shika is the site of two nuclear power plants

This book has been reviewed by many bloggers before me and I give you some links (below). As you will see, some have loved the book and others haven't. Read it and decide for yourself. I would say it would be an immensely helpful read for anyone interested in learning about Japan and especially for someone who would like to go teach there.

Malena’s TLC Book Tours TOUR STOPS

Tuesday, March 9th: Dolce Bellezza
Wednesday, March 10th: Take Me Away (and interview)
Thursday, March 11th: Life in the Thumb
Monday, March 15th: Raging Bibliomania
Wednesday, March 17th: Stephanie’s Written Word
Thursday, March 18th: nomadreader
Monday, March 22nd: Books and Movies
Wednesday, March 24th: Book Chatter
Tuesday, March 30th: BookNAround
Wednesday, March 31st: Bookstack

Secret Son by Laila Lalami

2010-04-30T18:54:00.001-04:00

Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Viking; Export Edition edition (4 Feb 2010)

I will be the first to admit that Laila Lalami's "Secret Son" had me yawning when I first opened it. At chapter two I was wondering if I had made a mistake buying the book. No, it wasn't slow-paced, quite the contrary infact, but coming to it after a novel like "Possessed" (my previous post) , the writing seemed so pedestrian and lifeless with tired metaphors (perhaps this is because French speaking Lalami writes in English?). Thankfully, by the time I was at chapter four things had started looking up and I found myself being drawn into the story. I'm really glad I persisted because the book, although not a great literary triumph or anything, does bring its own rewards.

The title gives the plot away. The story follows Youssef El Mekki, a boy born out of wedlock to a servant girl and an already-married, very wealthy man (Nabil Amrani). Being married Nabil was unable to give the woman and their son a home. So Youssef grows up as the son of a single mother, in Hay An Najat, a slum in Casablanca, often described as "melting pot of misery and poverty", while his "other" family, only a few miles away, live lives of the rich and famous. Had Youssef grown up in the US he may not has cursed his fate so much, but to be the bastard child of a single mother in Morocco carries with it a strong social stigma, something that is very hard to shrug off.

As a premise, the notion of there being a "secret son" is always exciting, but I think this particular novel failed to really capitalize on that - for a truly exciting and endearing story on a secret son try Tim Brannigan's "Where are you Really From?". However, as I continued to read I realized that the plot is little more than a hook from which to suspend a relevant social and political commentary of the Morocco of the new millennium and despite my reservations on the plot, narrative etc, I found myself drawn to the country, its people and their lives.

Morocco has a rigid hierarchy based on class, wealth, power and jobs, but especially class. This division of society is very apparent in the cliques at Youssef's university. There are the rich kids (the “Mercedes-and-Marlboro group”) as they are called; the religious kind (“headscarf -and-beard faction”); the egalitarians or ( “Marx-and-Lenin group”), and the "Berber Student Alliance and the Saharawis", students from distinct ethnic minorities within the country.

The novel also explores how Islamic fundamentalism has come to visit Morocco and how marginalized youth in the poorer areas of the country are sitting ducks for fundamentalist recruiters. A boy like Youssef who is not only poor but has major identity issues as well, would be just the kind of person these fundamentalists are fond of targeting.

All in all "Secret Son" is a pitch-perfect rendering of contemporary Moroccan life in all its chaos, energy, humor and terror. As you read you will start to put the touristy, picture postcard images of Casablanca aside and come to the sad realization that it has problems with corruption, a mistrust of government/police, poverty, overcrowding, unequal distribution of wealth and fundamentalism, just to name a few.

Although I didn't like "Secret Son" as much as I enjoyed her previous novel "Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits", I will say that this novel has a great sense of place and just for that I will give it three stars out of five.

The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them by Elif Batuman

2010-04-23T17:45:00.000-04:00

Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Original edition (February 16, 2010)

A comedic academician sounds almost oxymoronic, right? But that is exactly how critic and Stanford University instructor Elif Batuman comes across in her excellent first novel "The Possessed". I had read a few blurbs before picking up the book and while I expected it to be touching on humorous I was not prepared for just how laugh-out-loud funny some parts of the book are and how Elif's pen can turn any meeting-of-people into a scene from "Whose Life is it Anyway" (a live improv comedy show where a bunch of comedians improvise everyday situations turning them into comically bizarre events!)

Batuman’s “fascination with Russianness” began after she discovered an old copy of "Anna Karenina" as a teenager at her grandmother’s apartment in Ankara. Funnily enough, I, too, have Anna Karenina to thank for my love of Russian literature. In my case, I discovered a copy of Anna Karenina while I waited for my mother in the waiting room of the Russian Embassy in Bombay. I managed to read a few chapters while I waited and was completely bewitched. I suspect Bautman fell under the same spell.

This novel ( The Possessed) thus sets out to explore her love and fascination with Russian literature where she not only offers a fresh perspective on well-loved Russian authors and their works (Babel, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky to name a few), but takes the reader on trips to Stanford, Switzerland, and St. Petersburg; retraces Pushkin’s wanderings in the Caucasus; learns why Old Uzbek has one hundred different words for crying and also observes an eighteenth-century ice palace reconstructed on the Neva.

How does a student like her get to travel so much? Batuman believes in grants. In a chapter titled “Who Killed Leo Tolstoy?” she requires grant money to help pay for a trip to a conference at Tolstoy’s estate. To qualify for an extra $1,500, she devises a theory that Tolstoy was murdered. Her academic department doesn’t buy it, but she makes the trip nevertheless.

I don't suppose this is meant to be a travelogue but Batuman with her keen eye for beautiful detail, her penchant for absurd stories and her knowledge of Russian and Uzbek (which gives her access to the locals)makes for an invaluable raconteur of travel stories. She is an endearing guide and after you read about her travels in Samarkhand, Tashkent and St. Petersburg, you'll find yourself "possessed" with a desire to travel there yourselves.

Batuman has this penchant for picking up the oddest, most fascinating details. For instance, did you know the Uzbecks actually lament not having been colonized by the British? I'll bet you didnt'!

"Peter the so-called Great who, noticing that the English had colonies in India, decided that Russia had to have colonies in Central Asia. The Russians were very different from the English, who had sent to India not muzhiks (peasants) but aristocrats. "Things would have gone better for us if we had been colonized by the English" Dilorom said. It was one of their idées reçues.: they all thought of India as their missed fate" pg 237

Throughout the book Batuman also regales the reader with some wonderful anecdotes about figures of history we may or may not have heard of. One that I was most fascinated with is, the "seven-foot, 280-pound" Empress Anna who was the great niece of Peter The Great. Also fascinating are stories from the life of Chekhov, Pushkin and Dostoevsky among many others.

Anyone picking up this book hoping to be engaged in an intense discussion of Russian literature is in for a disappointment. Even the chapter devoted to the Dostoevsky novel that gives the book its title (narrating the descent into madness of a circle of intellectuals in a remote Russian province) spends most of its pages detailing how disturbingly her friends in graduate school replicated the same story. But she writes with such charm, such cleverness and wit, you'll be enchanted and very glad you stayed for the literary romp through obscure, but wonderfully entertaining tales surrounding the lives of Russian authors.

To close, the one very important message I took away from this book is that when you go after your passion (in Batuman's case it was to learn all there is to learn about Russian literature) you just never know where the road might lead you, but the journey will definitely be very interesting.

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick

2010-04-09T14:20:00.001-04:00

Category: Social Science - Ethnic Studies - Asian American Studies
Format: Hardcover, 336 pages
On Sale: December 29, 2009
Publishers: Random House, Canada

For the most part North Korea remains a dark, inscrutable place. Journalists, tourists and AID agencies are allowed in but with severe restrictions. They are usually not allowed beyond Pyonyang, the Potemkin village-like capital, and they (especially journalists) are assigned "minders" whose job is to make sure no unauthorized conversations or reporting take place. When Barbara Demick moved to Seoul as a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, her job was to cover both the Koreas, but as no contact was permitted with the North Korean people she took to talking to North Koreans who had defected to South Korean and in time a picture of real life in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea began to emerge which she put into words for articles written for the Los Angeles Times.

Eventually after seven years of conversations with North Koreans, she decided she would tell their stories in a book titled "Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea" - a title inspired by a North Korean children's song which boasts that the N.Korean people have nothing to envy of the rest of the world. Nothing could be further from the truth as Demick very ably describes in this beautifully-written narrative of life in the Hermit Kingdom.

For the book she focuses on people that came from a place called "Chonglin", N.Korea's third-largest city and one of the places that were hardest hit by the terrible famine of the mid-1990's. It is also almost entirely closed to foreigners.

Funnily enough, North Korea hasn't always been this hopeless. In its early history, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was actually considered a success case in economic development. In the 1960s, the "Korean economic miracle" referred to the steel plants and electrified transport networks of the DPRK, but as South Korea, China (1980) and even Vietnam (1990) embraced market reforms the chasm between North Korea and its neighbors grew wider...South Korea grew richer while its neighbor to the North kept getting poorer.

Also, all through the '70's fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, X-ray machines and more were coming at a low or no cost from Moscow, East Berlin and Prague.With the collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc 20 years ago there was a sharp decline in Soviet aid and credit, which could not be replaced by the less advanced Chinese, thus the North’s economy was in free fall...

The country’s electricity supply collapsed. Factories went silent. Salaries went unpaid. Food disappeared. Families foraged for grass, and ground the barks of pine trees into a flour substitute in hopes of staving off death. Corpses piled up. Animals that might have provided food disappeared; even frogs were hunted to near extinction.

However, "People did not go passively to their deaths, when the public distribution system was cut off, they were forced to tap their deepest wells of creativity to feed themselves. They devised traps out of buckets and strings to catch small animals in the field, draped nets over balconies to snare sparrows."

By 1996, North Korea was in the grip of one of the deadliest famines in modern times. Much of Demick's book is devoted to that time period when an immobile, totalitarian country was transformed into a place of "wandering swallows" (children whose parents had died or gone off to find food) stealing fruit and hunting frogs; middle-aged women who had never worked before bartering skills for food in the black markets; college-educated women wading half-naked across the Tumen River to sell themselves into arranged marriages with Chinese farmers; family patriarchs making sure that the food gets to the younger members of the family first often going raving mad before a quiet, hideous death from starvation.

Demick, (through the eyes of six ordinary North Koreans including a female doctor, a pair of star-crossed lovers, a factory worker and an orphan) describes the harrowing toll of mass hunger on the basic institutions and infrastructure of North Korean life. Its tales of mass starvation, brutal political repression, citizens working long days followed by hours of ideological training at night; gulags; neighbour spying on neighbour, and a communist regime which seemed intent to blame the “American imperialist bastards,” for having created the famine by imposing blockades on North Korea does not make pretty reading, but you will be riveted because the rationalist in you will keep asking if this post-apocalyptic scenario really could have happened...in this modern day and age...where new reporting has scaled new heights...can a place like North Korea actually exist? How do they exist? How do they keep their population so ignorant?

The truth of the matter is that North Korea sadly is a place where transistor radios were/are tuned into domestic services only, the only country on earth not connected to the world wide web, no mobile phones, also, a rigorous system of passes largely forbade internal travel. North Korea manages to seal its inhabitants off from any outside influences, while at the same time inculcating a belief that North Korea is a paradise.

While North Korea may not have been a paradise, defectors had very mixed successes when they arrived into South Korea. It is not easy for people earning less than a dollar per month be integrated into the world's thirteenth-largest economy. A good deal of propaganda on both side of the DMZ is devoted to how North and South Koreans are the same (one people, one nation), but after 60 years of separation the differences between the people are significant. South Korea is one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world while people in North Korea don't have access to the internet. North Korea has been frozen culturally and economically for the last 50 years so even the languages are no longer the same. South Koreans pepper their Korean with a lot of English slang words. Physically too, the people have grown apart with the average 17-year old South Korean boy being atleast 5 inches taller than his North Korean compatriot!

For all the support provided by the South Korean government, defectors often find it hard to settle down in their new homeland. It is not easy for somebody who's escaped a totalitarian country to live in the free world. Defectors have to rediscover who they are in a world that offers endless possibilities. Choosing where to live what to do, even which clothes to put on in the morning can be utterly paralyzing for people who've had decisions made for them by the state their entire lives. They are also desperately lonely when they first arrive in SK and have a hard time understanding South Korean etiquette, often mistaking sympathy for condescension. Defectors are also nagged by the impermanence of their situation. Many fled with the conviction that Kim Jon-il's regime was close to collapse and that within a few years they would be back "home". Sadly, it's 2010 now and that still hasn't happened. Many left parents and children behind whom they will probably never see again in this lifetime. If that is not depressing, what is? Finally, the qualities most prized in South Korea are height, fair skin, affluence, prestigious degrees, designer clothes and English-language proficiency. And these qualities are precisely those that the newly arrived defector lacks which accounts for a low self-esteem, making it virtually impossible for them to shine in social or professional settings.

Some might question Demick’s heavy reliance on the accounts of defectors, but because much of North Korea is so impenetrable there is no other way to tell these stories. She explains that she corroborated the stories with publicly-reported events and cross-checked the accounts with reports by nongovernmental organizations and other defectors. One can only hope that one day North Korea will be open and we will be able to judge for ourselves what really happened there.

In closing I really must commend Demick for this wonderful expose on the world's last totalitarian regime. She writes with such sensitivity, grace,skill and novelistic detail you will be completely drawn into the lives of these poor, unfortunate people. As with all good writers, she leaves herself out of the picture and takes us into the minds of her subjects until they no longer are the grey-clad people marching in unison that we see on TV, but people like you and I with dreams, hopes and desires.

Dahanu Road by Anosh Irani

2010-03-29T20:23:00.001-04:00

Category: Fiction Format: Hardcover, 320 pages Publisher: Doubleday Canada ISBN: 978-0-385-66699-2 (0-385-66699-3) Pub Date: March 30, 2010 Price: $29.95

It might not be too much of a stretch to state that Rohinton Mistry, Bapsi Sidhwa, Dina Mehta etc. are essentially Parsi writers, not just because they follow the Zorastrian religion, but also because their books portray Parsi life, their writings shed light on the issues affecting the Parsi community in India and by describing in detail the esoteric rituals and Zorastrian festivities like Navroze and so on, their works assert their ethnic identity. In other words, the tempo of Parsi life is infused in their writing.

The Iranis are also Zorastrian community living in India and Anosh Irani's "Dahanu Road", does for the Irani community what Mistry did for the Parsis in some of his books - presented us with a look into the lives and sensibilities of the Irani community- many of whom live in an area called "Dahanu", a town on the outskirts of Bombay.

Many of the early Irani migrants to India settled in the area and bought up a lot of fruit farms (Dahanu is well known for its bountiful chickoo crop) from the indigenous people called "Warlis". Warlis were the original farm owners (tribals) but drinking debts (and confiscation of their land by the British) forced many of them to sell their land to the Iranis and who in turn made the Warlis work for them.

"Dahanu Road" is based, in part, on Anosh Irani's ancestors. Through the two main characters, Shapur Irani and his grandson, Zairos Irani, Anosh is able to tell us, the readers, the story of how the Iranis came to be in India . Shapur arrived in India as a kid with his father from a place called Yazd in Iran. His father loved Iran but decided to move because of religious persecution. In India, not only did they find refuge but also a way for them to put their business skills to good use. Many, like Shapur, bought fruit farms in Dahanu and became land owners, but a large majority moved to the city (Bombay) and became hoteliers (the Irani cafes of Bombay are world famous), confectioners/bakers and liquor retailers.

So the story goes back and forth (seamlessly I will add) between the 1940's when Shapur was in his prime to the early 2000's when Zairos comes into his own. Shapur is representative of the old generation where the landowner was Lord and quite literally King of all he surveyed. The Warlis possessed little or no say and were no better than slaves on the land that was once theirs.

Zairos represents the new generation. Not only is he uncomfortable with being lord and master of the Warlis but it's come to a point where the Warlis do not revere him as they once revered his grandfather. Also, in Shapur's day if the Boss wanted to sleep with one of his workers' wives, he could just "take" her. But Zairos was not like that...he wanted Kusum one of the Warli girls that worked on his farm and instead of taking her in secret he had an open love affair with her which made him a laughing stock but which also brought him grudging respect.

To me, this is an ideal book...it is a love story, it has history, great storytelling, wonderful characters, an unusual plot, and best of all, it is set in a locale not familiar to too many people and in a community that is slowly becoming extinct - the Zorashtrian Iranis of Western India. Reading this book provides the reader the opportunity to discover another culture altogether, with its different rhythms, tastes, smells and ways of being human.

Anosh Irani's writing sparkles as usual (he is also the author of "The Song of Kahunsha" which I enjoyed tremendously). The prose is animated, lyrical and has such a meditative quality to it that very often I'd put the book aside and reflect on a statement that I'd just read.

"Night would fall soon. Shapur Irani always thought of dusk as a beggar. It had no light, it had no darkness; it lived on the scraps that were fed to it by day and night."

Also, I love how he captures the Irani community at play and at work, I especially loved the gatherings at Anna's place which is where the Irani men would gather together...just like an old boys club.

"At Anna's they were like beasts in a cave where they could fart, joke, smoke, abuse and pontificate. Ofcourse they could do this anywhere, but Anna's was the home ground. Each morning after making a round of their chickoo farms, the Iranis would gather here and drink tea, coffee or Pepsi. Cigarette smoke gave the place a sinister haze, like fog in a cemetery. Yet the place was alive, full of joy and horniness and credit had to be given to Anna's steaming chai and his steamy wife" pg 24

Irani also has a very strong feel for relationships and such a poetic way of describing moods:

"Mithoo, who in all these years had rarely been anything but chipper, now cooked in silence, her tea was hot but lacked warmth, and when she sad on the swing outside, her cream skirt failed to flow or flutter even a tiny bit"

To sum up, this is a story that is simply told but very deeply felt. Enjoy it.

The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China by Jay Taylor

2010-03-23T14:04:00.006-04:00

Jay Taylor Wins 2010 Lionel Gelber Prize for Book on Chiang Kai-shek

Jay Taylor, a U.S. Foreign Service specialist and Harvard University researcher on China for many decades, has won the 2010 Lionel Gelber Prize for his book The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China, published by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

According to Jury Chair George Russell, “The Generalissimo is a remarkable achievement, a fresh and impeccably documented approach to a vital issue that puts the histories of the Chinese Revolution and of Chiang Kai-shek and his Nationalists in a new and more favourable light. For decades since the Chinese Communist revolution, the triumphalist historical view of Mao Zedong’s Communist Party dominated. Chiang was viewed as a greedy villain and a puppet of Western capitalist influences. It is a tribute to Taylor’s objectivity that his own views changed as he researched the topic.

The jurors agreed that this was an important, intriguingly written contribution that would stand the test of time and would be an important corrective to another era’s intellectual fashion, as China itself is forced to consider the continuing remarkable success of the Republic of China. That success owes a great deal to the austere and contradictory personality of Chiang Kai-shek, which Taylor brilliantly illuminates.”

I'm really excited to see this book win such a prestigious prize. I haven't read it yet, but anyone with a finger on the pulse of Chinese history will tell you that a revisionist history book on Chiang Kai-Shek was long overdue.

From the Globe and Mail:

Mr. Chiang was given the name General Cash-My-Cheque by U.S. officials to whom he regularly went for financial aid while fighting the Japanese and Communists. During and after the wars, his regimes were seen as plagued by corruption (though Mr. Taylor's research suggests the generalissimo himself was not on the take).

His rehabilitation comes as relations are rapidly warming between Beijing and Taipei, where the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party) was voted back to power in 2008 after an eight-year absence. With the Kuomintang now seen as the most Beijing-friendly of Taiwan's political parties, quarrels over history have been shoved aside in favour of the closer economic and cultural ties that Chinese President Hu Jintao and Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou both seek.

More controversial is a new reassessment of Mr. Chiang that argues that although the Nationalist chief lost the war, it was he who laid the foundations for China's current rise, by reuniting the country and by securing for Beijing one of the five permanent, veto-wielding seats on the United Nations Security Council.

Drawing from 56 years of Mr. Chiang's own diaries, in addition to Chinese, American and Russian sources, Mr. Taylor's biography The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China surmises that while Mr. Chiang made some enormous errors – most notably the White Terror campaign of arrests and executions unleashed on his political opponents in Taiwan – his accomplishments outweigh the harm done.

“I came to the conclusion that Chiang did commit crimes against humanity in Taiwan … but on the balance he comes out as having made some remarkable contributions to Chinese history,” says Mr. Taylor, a historian and former U.S. government intelligence analyst, who has also written a biography of Mr. Chiang's son and successor to power, Chiang Ching-kuo.

Indeed, in his conclusion, Mr. Taylor says that even though Mr. Chiang lost the war to Mao's Communists, his ideas won the longer struggle to shape China. He argues that the country today's Communist Party presides over is in many respects closer to Mr. Chiang's vision than to Mao's.

“If the Chiangs could see modern Shanghai and Beijing, they might well believe that their long-planned ‘ counterattack' had succeeded and that their successors had recovered the mainland,” Mr. Taylor writes in the conclusion of Generalissimo.

“Truly, it is their vision of modern China, not Mao's, that guides the People's Republic in the 21st century.”

Although China is rethinking Mr. Chiang, that last idea is far too revisionist for Mao's heirs. Mr. Taylor's book is being translated into traditional Chinese ahead of its Taiwan publication, but he doesn't expect to see it on Beijing book- shelves any time soon.

The Far Eastern Economic Review reviews the book here

And one more from the Washington Post.

A good companion read might be Hannah Pakula's "The Last Empress" ( a biography on Soong Mei-ling (1897-2003), usually called Madame Chiang Kai-shek.

My Life as Emperor by Su Tong

2010-03-23T11:40:00.006-04:00

After Chinese author Su Tong won the Man Asian literary Prize for 2009 for "The Boat to Redemption" my curiosity was piqued and I vowed to get to a book of his that I had sitting on my shelf for years, "My Life as an Emperor". I bought this book in Singapore and after a hurried read of its synopsis had the idea that it was historical fiction, but it's NOT!

Su Tong has set this book (about a fictitious Chinese Emperor and his doomed Kingdom) in a deliberately hard-to-guess era. In the epilogue he says he did this deliberately because he wanted the freedom of using imagination over fact. However, he writes so convincingly and in the same vein as some of my other favorite authors of historical fiction, that several times I came close to googling the "Xie" dynasty and Imperial family, believing they were real people.

"I hope my readers do not approach 'My Life as Emperor' with the idea that it is historical fiction; that is why I have set the novel in no particular time. Identifying allusions and determining the accuracy of events places too great a burden on you and on me. The world of women and the palace intrigues that you will encounter in this novel are but a scary dream on a rainy night; the suffering and slaughter reflect my worries and fears for all the people in all worlds, and nothing more."

Fourteen-year old Duanbai came to the throne after the sudden death of his Imperial father. To say he was unprepared for this honor or responsibility would be putting it mildly. He had no social graces, limited hobbies and no real intelligence. His favorite thing to do was to listen to caged crickets sing and he was afraid of going to bed alone because he had nightmares populated by "white demons . . . raising a sad wail."

But it wasn't long before he was intoxicated on the power that being king brings. He realized that it didn't really matter how smart or intelligent he was, what people really respected was someone they could fear. Being cruel seemed to come naturally to him and one of his first imperial acts was to cut off the tongues of concubines confined in the cold Palace, because their sorrowful wailing at night disturbed his sleep.

Most courts are places of intrigue, gossip, mind games and so on, but the one that Duanbai presided over seemed to have cruelty at the top of its list. Not only was Duanbai cruel, but so was his grandmother Madame Huangfu, the Empress Dowager who wielded the actual political power, Lady Ming (his mother) and Lady Ping (his wife). Infact, it's hard to find a single sympathetic character in the book, although, Duanbai's eunuch attendant and closest friend (their relationship is shrouded in ambiguity), Swallow, might come close.

Now, the dandy Prince Duanbai has two half brothers who believed with all their might that Duanwe, the elder of the two, and son of the imperial concubine Madame Yang, was the rightful heir. Throughout the young cruel king's time on the throne he is constantly afraid of Duanwe and of the day he might wrest the crown away from Duanbai. The day comes to pass but Duanwe, who is obviously more merciful than Duanbai, doesn't take the king's life but expels him from court and tells him to live life as a commoner. The dethroned king leaves to follow a childhood dream, that of becoming a tightrope walker in a travelling circus . Incidentally, I found that it is at this point that the story actually came alive for me, infact, it almost takes on the garb of a parable with Duanbai learning that loyalty, love and doing what you are most passionate about makes you a happier person than limitless power.

While this may be a little book, Su Tong skillfully manages to weave plenty imagery and symbolism into a tantalizing web of meanings. I have to confess I didn't discover all these meanings for myself but discovered them after reading this review. It is an indepth and academic review of "My Life as Emperor", so go ahead and read it for more insights. And in case you missed you missed those parts of the novel that alludes both to China's past, particularly the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), and to the nation's uncertain future, please read this review....the author certainly manages to uncover far more depth and matter to this novel than I ever could. Fascinating stuff!

If Imperial China fascinates you as much as it does me, have a look at Royalty.nu's page on "Royalty in China" for some book recommendations.

Lust, Caution by Eileen Chang

2010-03-23T11:29:00.003-04:00

Yesterday I finally saw Ang Lee's "Lust, Caution" based on a story by Shanghai writer, Eileen Chang. The movie left such an impression on me, I just knew I had to grab a copy of "Lust, Caution" to see how true the movie was to the story. Besides that, I was very curious to read something by Eileen Chang. I had read that she was a Chinese wordsmith, a linguistic queen with a vocabulary so large she regaled her readers with a bewildering panoply of baroque names for ornaments, fabrics, plants, and bric-a-brac, many of which have become remote and quaint to us. But the most gratifying moments of Chang's prose belong to the many deliciously refreshing and always piquant metaphors and similes that enliven the descriptive passages between saucy and spirited dialogue. Now which reader can pass up such delicious-sounding prose? Certainly not me!

Lust, Caution is the title story of a collection of five stories, most of which were published in the 1940s when Eileen Chang was in her 20s. The title story, which was begun in the 1950s and not published until 1979, is set in China, during the Japanese occupation in World War II.

This is the story in a nutshell: A young student and actress named Wong Chia Chi has agreed to be the central figure in the assassination of a Japanese collaborator, Mr. Yee. Using the alias of Mak Tai Tai (Mrs. Ma) and the fictional Mr. Mak, Wong befriends Mr. Yee's wife, Yee Tai Tai, and eventually seduces her husband in order to kill him. However, just as she is about to have him killed, something unexpected happens which changes the course of both their lives. I cannot reveal exactly what happens because that would a huge spoiler!

As I couldn't find a copy of "Lust,Caution" at the library or even at my local bookstore, I downloaded the story from audible.com. It had a very short running time, only 90 mins, so the fact that it was made into a full length feature film (run time: two and a half hours) is perhaps a testament to the author's wonderful prose and plot. Chang has this way of giving the reader so much information but without being too wordy. She has also mastered the art of giving the reader the illusion that the prose and the pace is unhurried and leisurely when in actual fact there is a lot that is happening on every page! Besides the stylistic prose, the irresistible themes of lust, love, betrayal, kinship, jealousy, espionage etc. keep the reader (or listener) mesmerized.

Having said that all that, however,I benefited greatly by seeing Ang Lee's film first. The film provides a good historical background to the story, something that the story itself neglects to do, it also provides more background information on the characters. The story does make references to the Japanese occupation of Shanghai and the apathy of the people of Hongkong to the plight of the displaced people of Canton, but it's choppy and probably would require that the reader google some of the events to get a better idea of that time in history. However, the story is a treat to read and Chang's sparkling and witty dialogues are not to be missed...but if you want to enjoy it fully, watch the movie too!

The Beijing of Possibilities by Jonathan Tel

2010-03-10T20:15:00.000-05:00

Format: Trade Paperback, 208 pages
Publisher: Other Press
ISBN: 978-1-59051-326-2 (1-59051-326-6)

Pub Date: June 30, 2009
Price: $18.95

In recent years, there has been no shortage of expat-written nonfiction books set in Beijing, but fiction in the same category is hard to come by. That is why Jonathan Tel's new story collection, The Beijing of Possibilities, caught my eye the moment I saw it on the Commonwealth Writers' Prize 2010 short list (thanks, Leela Soma and Rob) .

It's a slim little volume with a most intriguing cover art of a pretty Chinese lady with what appears to be sightless eyes. When friends and I first saw the cover design we had a nice discussion of what that might signify...was she looking "inside" herself or was she deliberately refusing to "see" that which is obvious to everyone else? Don't you just love cover art that intrigues? I did some research on the art and found out it has been taken from the Reed Darmon collection. Reed Darmon is the person responsible for the "Made in China" graphics book and you can learn more about it here.

To come back to the stories...all twelve invoke Beijing in some way or the other even if the stories themselves vary widely in time period and location. The most notable aspect of Tel's storytelling is how he recounts modern facts about China but interwoven with Chinese folk tales (and superstitions). The Monkey Legend seems to be his favorite one and the first story of the collection "Year of the Gorilla" begins with the sentence, "It's been a while since the Monkey King set out on his Journey to the West", with "A Journey to the West" being the title of this much-loved legend and folk tale.

Another trait I noticed is his ability to blend old China with the new and no story illustrates that better than "The Most Beautiful Woman In China.” which links together two thousand years of Chinese history, while being set in Beijing today! One generic character that makes his or her appearance in many of the stories is the 'Chinese migrant' and after reading a lot of topical articles on China I have come to the realization that Beijing, even more than Shanghai, is a mecca for the Chinese people...it is the land of opportunity, the land where dreams come true or as Tel himself describes in the title, it is the land full of possibilities.

"Beijing is the center of the universe. Ask anybody who lives there. “The true Beijinger secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.”

—in a foreword by Helan Xiao

One of my favorite migrant characters in this collection is from the title story. Miss Xu is a fisherman's daughter but "foster" mother to the child of a young couple in Beijing. The couple have hired Miss Xu to look after their as-yet-unborn child because they are too busy to care for the child themselves..in ten or twelve years time they'll be ready to take the child to live with them. Unfortunately the child dies before they could hand it over to Miss Xu but because she had been registered in Bejing as a "foster mother" Miss Xu lands herself an unexpected ticket to residency in Beijing which is to most Chinese what an American green card is to refugees! Ofcourse, being a "hick" from Hainan (a sleepy little fishing village) she was treated as an outcast in Beijing which makes for a very moving story.

Tel also has this ability to infuse his stories with playful plots and language. Amusing, but a little sad too, is "The Book of Auspicious and Inauspicious Dreams" where a young, modern couple, during renovations to their 1960's home, chance upon a rusty tin of souvenirs buried in a wall of their suburban Beijing house. Realizing it must belong to the previous owner they do everything to try to return the tin, only to be met with exclamations of protests from the previous owner who insisted she had never laid eyes on the tin before and that she "loved Chairman Mao more than her own mother and father" which reminds the reader of a turbulent time in China's history where to be a lover of the arts or to have "western" things meant having a "bourgeois" background which in turn meant being sent to the villages for "reeducation"...something that was a tough and humiliating experience for most intellectuals.

I found a couple of the stories had the overall effect of looking at a subtly distorted mirror but for the most part Tel's prose and plots are smart, entertaining, observant and insightful. It's most definitely a collection to cherish.

Oh, and before I go...I haven't been able to explain the girl on the cover. My best guess is that she is "Little Yu" from the heart warmingly sad story, "The Three Lives of Little Yu" about a childless couple who adopt a little girl whom they call "Yu" only to have her snatched away by the god of death. They adopt a second girl and call her "Yu" too, but the same fate awaits her. When the third girl, again called "Yu" enters their family it is implied that she is a reincarnation of the previous little girls. So could the girl on the cover have been Yu between her lives on earth? I guess I am getting carried away. I'll bet you not even Jonathan Tel thought about his cover as much as I have! :) Oh and whatever you do, don't miss the last story....there's a nice twist in the tale there, a brilliant narrative coup!

Two insightful reviews that might interest you are:

L. Dean Murphy at The Book Reporter

and Happy Reader at Book Closet

And finally, some entertainment! A clip from the pop opera, "Monkey: Journey to the West"

The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives by Lola Shoneyin

2010-03-08T20:00:00.005-05:00

(Coming soon: 08 April in the UK and 29June in the US)

For a polygamist like Baba Segi, his collection of wives and a gaggle of children are the symbol of prosperity, success and validation of his manhood. Everything runs reasonably smoothly in the patriarchal home, until wife number four intrudes on this family romance.

Bolanle, a graduate amongst the semi-literate wives, is hated from the start. Baba Segi's glee at bagging a graduate doesn't help matters. Worse, Bolanle's arrival threatens to do more than simply ruffle feathers. She's unwittingly set to expose a secret that her co-wives intend to protect, at all costs.

Lola Shoneyin's light and ironic touch exposes not only the rotten innards of Baba Segi's polygamous household in this cleverly plotted story; it also shows how women no educated or semi-literate, women in contemporary Nigeria can be as restricted, controlled and damaged by men - be they fathers, husbands, uncles, rapists - as they've never been.

Black Mamba Boy Nadifa Mohamed

2010-02-18T13:53:00.000-05:00

Harper Collins Canada

Downtown Mogadishu today is beat-up and bone-white from the sun and a coating of dust. It is overlaid with a deceptive grid of empty streets. Most buildings are ransacked shells frozen in time or have simply vanished. Today, when we think of Somalia we think civil war, Somali pirates, Islamic fundamentalism, so how very refreshing to chance upon "Black Mamba Boy" which takes us back to a thriving Somalia of yesteryear, and not just Somalia, but Djibouti, Sudan, Eritrea, Egypt...a veritable tour of North-East Africa in the mid-30's.

Let me explain: "Black Mamba Boy"by Somali-British author Nadifa Mohamed is based on the true story of the author’s father’s life. Opening in 1930's Aden we are introduced to Jama, a ten year-old Somali boy, a street kid, whose mother dies unexpectedly thus leaving him alone in this world.

" Jama is forced home to his native Somalia, the land of his nomadic ancestors. War is on the horizon and the fascist Italian forces who control parts of east Africa are preparing for battle. Yet Jama cannot rest until he discovers whether his father, who has been absent from his life since he was a baby, is alive somewhere. And so begins an epic journey which will take Jama north through Djibouti, war-torn Eritrea and Sudan, to Egypt. And from there, aboard a ship transporting Jewish refugees just released from German concentration camp, across the seas to Britain and freedom."

OK, my challenge here as a "reviewer" is how to give you my impressions without gushing or using a great many superlatives, so I'll just say this: if you choose to read the book, you're in for an amazing ride through the dusty, noisy but bustling streets of the some of the most important cities of North East Africa in the '30's. From the vast sandy deserts of Sudan to narrow busy alleys in Somalia, from the tree-lined manicured boulevards of Djibouti to the emerald-green landscape with juicy mango trees of Abyssinia, you will see it all!

Mohamed's prose zings with the vibrancy of North African life, an unfamiliar landscape of strange tribes and tongues, bizarre rituals, superstitions and tribal kinship. The sensitive way in which she handles Jama's relationships with his family and kinsmen, tugs at one's heartstrings. In a historical context I cannot vouch for Mohamed's accuracy because I know so little about that area and in that time period, but it is told so well, you get completely swept up by the events and happenings.

But central to the story is suffering...the suffering of the African people at the hands of their colonizers. Mohamed's acute and unsparing descriptive powers render vivid everything from Aden street chaos to traditional Palestinian wedding in Khan Younis, but her clipped depiction of the death by torture of a young Somalian man at the hands of two drunk Italians made me gasp out loud and pushed me way out of my comfort zone into a place I wasn't sure I wanted to be. And that's not a bad thing because when I read I want to be astonished, I want to be moved, I want to be shaken to the core and Mohamed succeeds in doing this.

Having said all this though, for me, the most moving part of the account is when Jama finds employment as a deck hand on board the "Runnymede Park" at Haifa, Palestine. "Runnymede Park" was a British prison ship carrying thousands of Jewish refugees originally from Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen and Treblinka who were denied permission to disembark in Palestine (their Promised Land) but instead taken back to Europe to be made an example out of (thereby deterring other would-be Jewish immigrants from making the trip to Palestine). Her descriptions of the agony (physical and mental) that the poor refugees suffered are so vivid, I could literally hear the crash of broken dreams and feel the dejection in my own chest.

If you enjoy Africa, history, travel (the story weaves its way through a labyrinth of countries), stories of exile and survival...this one is definitely for you!

Luxurious Hearses in "Say You're One of Them" by Uwem Akpan

2010-02-04T06:21:00.000-05:00

Hardcover: 368 pages
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; 1 edition (Jun 9 2008)
Language: English

"Luxurious Hearses" is this ( "Say You're One of Them") collection's fourth and longest story but perhaps its most important. I see it as important because more than any other story I have read here so far, it is this one that brings to life the political, economic and religious strife we read so much about in Africa.

The story, set in Nigeria, illuminates the political situation of Nigeria, the poverty of the people in the Nigerian Delta, the tension between the Muslims in the North and the Christians in the south and what happens when innocent people get caught in between.

After you read this longish nouvella you come away, seeing with new eyes why every now and again Nigeria plunges into Muslim-Christian riots and why, despite all the oil that Nigeria possesses, its people are so poor.

Our protagonist in this story is a 16-year old boy called Jubril who is forced to head south (towards the Christian part of Nigeria) after riots broke out in his very-Muslim city of Khamfa which is in the north. Ordinarily Jubril may not have had to run away, but when his own Muslim friends turned against him for having a Christian father (whom he had never seen or known) he decided that if he was interested in saving his life it would be prudent for him to leave his town and Muslim mother (and her family) and head south to be reunited with his Christian dad.

The story of his journey from the North to South in the midst of some of the worst religious riots Nigeria has ever seen with a host of wonderfully- colourful characters that are his bus companions; his fears and insecurities about heading to a part of the country that is so alien to him and his perpetual fear of being found out as a Muslim in bus full of Christian refugees is riveting, suspenseful and unputdownable! The reader is as tense as Jubril who is forced to try and blend in with the other people on the bus, a task made much more difficult because his right hand was lopped off when he was arrested for stealing a goat months before.

As always, Akpan's writing holds you spellbound. Most of the story takes place on the bus with occasional flashbacks to Jubrail's life in Khamfa before he had to flee. As a reader you are privy to all the conversations that place on the bus...the fears, egos, anger and other emotions that the passengers bring with them; power dynamics between the well off and the not so well off,the sick and the healthy. Many a time, like Oprah, I got so claustrophobic from being on that bus I had this strong urge to jump off and yet, the writing and the thought of what might happen next kept me glued to the pages.

"An Ex-Mas Feast" was audacious, "The Fattening of Gabon" was downright sad, but "Luxurious Hearses" is gruesome. You're going to need a strong stomach to endure the second half of the novel. Gruesome it might be but at no point do you get the feeling the author is aiming for sensationalism, instead, you come away feeling deeply for the characters, the victims and the persecutors alike, for you come to understand that each man is simply doing all he can to survive.

Since each of the five stories in this book are set in different countries in Africa, you might want to use Howard French's "A Continent for the Taking" or even Richard Dowden's "Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles" as a companion read. I found both very helpful in explaining Africa to me.

The Fattening of Gabon from "Say You Are One of Them" by Uwem Akpan

2010-02-02T09:20:00.002-05:00

"Fattening for Gabon" is Uwem Akpan's second story (nouvella length at 130 pages) in the collection, "Say You're One of Them".

It starts off innocently enough with a young (10-year old) boy narrating how his maternal uncle offers to take him and his 5-year old sister to live with him on the border of Benin and Gabon because the boy's parents are dying of AIDS and too poor and sick to look after the children, but the story very gradually starts to take on a sinister tone which gets completely brutal towards the end.

“Selling your child or nephew could be more difficult than selling other kids”: that is the blunt line with which “Fattening for Gabon” begins. I wish so much Akpan hadn't used that opening line because it really does give it all away. The story is so beautifully written that had Akpan waited to reveal this, say about halfway through the story, I think the reader would have been shaken to the core (and which reader doesn't mind being shaken?) Anyway, what's done is done and this other child-narrated story succeeds in provoking the whole gamut of emotions, from incredulity to disgust and from confusion to absolute fear in the reader. For me, the biggest issue here was child manipulation, I could have screamed at all of the adults in this story and cheerfully lined up against a wall to be shot. I know, I know some of you might think I am over reacting but you know, when Uwem Akpan was interviewed he stated that all these stories were drawn from real people he met and counselled in his years as a Jesuit Priest. Just to know that there are adults like this makes my blood boil.

Again, as in the previous story, one of Akpan's strengths is in how he slips into the skins of his characters no matter what gender or age they might be. He also has such a gift for description and narration. There are several scenes that stand out for me in this story, the main one being the Thanksgiving service at church that Fofo Kpee(the uncle) organizes in order to give thanks for his (ill-begotten) gain. Akpan describes the procession, the dancing, the characters, their clothes, the gifts, the priest's invocations, the offertory to god and the elation the family feels to be given so much importance on that day, so vividly it is literally like watching the service unfold on a cinematic screen. What a writer this man is!

Something I liked very much (and that's probably because I listened to this on audio as well as read it in print) is Akpan's frequent use of the local dialect in the dialogue. Four colloquial languages were used in this particular story...English, French Idaatcha and Egun sometimes in the same paragraph. I have spoken to people who found that distracting...not me!!! I guess knowing a little French does help speed the read along.

Last, but not least...the title is very conversation-worthy...but that, I'm afraid, will be a whole different post!

If you would like to read an excerpt from "Fattening of Gabon"..please go here

Or you might want to watch the Oprah Book Club interview and book discussion with the author here