pen.books.and.scalpel

BOOK NAME:  HAMNET AUTHOR NAME:  MAGGIE O’FARRELL GENRE:  HISTORICAL FICTION PUBLISHER:  TINDER PRESS There are days when I finish a book, feel good about making the right choice, and stack it neatly on my shelf before carrying on with my life. And then, there are days when after reading the last line of a book, I close it with care and hold it to my chest for a couple of minutes with my eyes closed and refuse to move on as if life has come to a standstill. This is one of those days when I prefer to dwell inside my book instead of being surrounded by chaos.  Hamnet is partly biographical and partly fictional, based on Hamnet Shakespeare and how his passing affected his parents and gave birth to the world-famous tragedy ‘Hamlet’. This book has been sending waves across bookstagram ever since its release. While some call it a masterpiece, others call this an attempt to whitewash Shakespeare’s image. But contrary to all the claims, I found the book very balanced an...

BOOK NAME:  NIGHT CRAWLING AUTHOR NAME:  LEILA MOTTLEY GENRE:  CONTEMPORARY  PUBLISHER:  BLOOMSBURY   My, oh my! What a find. I went in search of a recently famous classic in a second-hand book shop. But when I couldn’t find the one I was looking for and I was about to leave the place disheartened, I found this one lying in a corner, pleading to be picked. Having seen it a couple of times on bookstagram, I picked it up instead of returning dejected and empty-handed. I usually don’t start the books I buy right away but something about this book made me want to read it immediately. And when I flipped that first page over, I knew there was no putting it back without finishing it. And that’s what I did too. I gulped it down like it was a potion made to heal while all it did was break my heart piece by piece.    Kiara is a seventeen-year-old living with her brother and an abandoned child, Trevor in Oakland. Poverty pushes her to the brink where she cho...

BOOK NAME:  NORMAL PEOPLE AUTHOR NAME:  SALLY ROONEY GENRE:  LITERARY FICTION PUBLISHER:  FABER & FABER   This must be a mistake. The title, I mean. Normal People? These two? Marianne and Connell! Seriously? If anything, they are very far from being normal.  The story is about two individuals who are drawn to each other but will never confess their feelings because they think they aren’t good enough for each other. They keep exploring life with other people only to get back together again. But can it go on forever like that? We will only find out at the end. Or… not?! The book is neither plot-driven nor character-driven. It’s more like Asian school drama meets American literary fiction, but better. It’s more about exploration of emotions, mental health, and vulnerabilities rather than just a steamy romance. Honestly, I went into the book blindly because of all the noise around it, and also because I genuinely wanted to try Sally Rooney’s work even thoug...

BOOK NAME:  I WHO HAVE NEVER KNOWN MEM AUTHOR NAME:  JACQUELINE HARPMAN GENRE:  DYSTOPIAN PUBLISHER:  VINTAGE   I should have known. I should have just known. I should have taken all the warnings seriously and prepared myself for the destruction that was about to come.  What happens when forty women are retained inside a chamber and none of them knows how or why they were brought there? What happens when they try to sneak out and go in search of a world that is habitable? What happens when they have to navigate a path where they are surrounded by deafening silence throughout? What will a woman do when she realises she is the only breathing, moving human left in the vastness that never seems to end? And that she has never known men before? And anything else, for that matter.  This 187-page book is a concise novel that speaks of everything there is in this world—the earth, the moon, the colours, flowers, mirrors, beauty, rooms, lives, food, companionship...

BOOK NAME:  PROPHET SONG AUTHOR NAME:  PAUL LYNCH GENRE:  DYSTOPIAN PUBLISHER:  ONEWORLD   Set in dystopian Dublin, Ireland, this book imagines the future of the country under a totalitarian regime where a mother of four is left to fight her tooth and nail to save her family, after her trade unionist husband gets arrested for starting a peaceful protest, after her son joins the rebels to fight the regime, after her second son is destroyed by war and is left in the hospital for surgery, with yet another son who is always strapped to her chest, a daughter who is too innocent for this vicious world and a father who is suffering from Alzheimer’s. She needs to choose who she needs to save the most - a choice a mother should never have to make in a free country. Feels claustrophobic and suffocating, right? That’s exactly how this book is written and paced.  There were moments when I wanted to stop reading and give myself a break, and that’s when I realised how pr...

BOOK NAME: THE GOSPEL OF YUDAS AUTHOR NAME: K R MEERA (TRANSLATED FROM THE MALAYALAM BY RAJESH RAJAMOHAN) GENRE: POLITICAL FICTION  PUBLISHER : PENGUIN INDIA BOOK REVIEW I read two books for the Malayalam translation readathon in 2025, one of which was this outstanding political fiction by K.R. Meera, carved out of the tension that rose during the emergency in India.  In this novella, the author has gone to great lengths to establish the criminal atrocities committed by people in power against those who cast their voices during the emergency rule. The protagonist, Prema, the daughter of an ex-policeman who was involved in the brutal torture of Naxalite rebels, seeks an escape from his clutches. Not until later does she meet J.U. Das, aka Yudas, whose passionate work is to retrieve dead bodies from the lake and then disappear. Prema develops an intense liking for the strange man who calls himself a traitor, giving away his Naxalite rebel friends to brutality. But in a land t...

BOOK NAME: WHISTLES OF THE SIPHOONG - TALES FROM ASSAM’S BODO HEARTLAND AUTHOR NAME: RASHMI NARZARY GENRE: FOLK TALES PUBLISHER: OM BOOKS INTERNATIONAL First of all, let me make it clear that this book is not a work of translation. Not completely. But I had to choose this book for the 2025 indian translation readathon for various reasons. One of them is that finding and acquiring a book translated from Bodo was way too difficult. And even if I found one, I wasn't quite impressed by it. So, I researched and found that this book is based on Assam’s folklore, cultures and beliefs and has also portions of traditional songs in the book translated from Bodo to English by the author herself. So, I saw it as a fit and picked it up. About the book, it features eight nonlinear stories with Ojha and his siphoong as the main characters and all the stories revolve around some mystical events that happen around them. All of them are based on the Bodo’s culture, practices, and spiritual belie...

BOOK NAME: VAZHGA VAZHGA AND OTHER STORIES AUTHOR NAME: IMAYAM (TRANSLATED FROM THE TAMIL BY PRABHA SRIDEVAN) GENRE: SHORT STORIES PUBLISHER: PENGUIN INDIA Nope, not the book I wished I had chosen for the Tamil translation. And definitely was not expecting this because I was looking forward to reading A Woman Burnt by the same author soon. I don’t even feel like writing a review but here it goes anyway. It has three short stories, the first one being the longest which is the story behind the political tactics and agendas in Tamil Nadu. A political rally is being conducted before the elections, but the party leader absolutely has no idea about what’s happening behind the crowd gathering. This was a reasonably good one among the three and hence the two stars. But I would have liked it better if the author hadn’t tried making all the women in the story look bad, including those in power and those who gather for money. The second story was about a couple whose spiritual and cultural ide...

BOOK NAME: UNTOUCHABLE SPRING AUTHOR NAME: G. KALYANA RAO (TRANSLATED FROM THE TELUGU BY ALLADI UMA AND SRIDHAR) GENRE: POLITICAL FICTION PUBLISHER: ORIENT BLACKSWAN Untouchable - a word that goes hand in hand with the Indian caste system. And, one cannot speak about the Indian caste system without talking about this book. Untouchable Spring is an important work of fiction which masters the art of oral storytelling highlighting the struggles of the generations of the Malas and Madigas of Yellenadinni, how their lives are reduced to nothing because of the curse of the Gods and how they fought against all odds for their own justice. You can't read this book without a feeling of tightness in your chest. This book is included in the indian curriculum at many levels and I understand why. But having said that, for me, it was an extremely difficult read. It took me three long months to finish, skimming through parts of it. It might have been the overuse of characters or the homophonic ...

BOOK NAME: TAMAS AUTHOR NAME: BHISHAM SAHNI (TRANSLATED FROM THE HINDI BY DAISY ROCKWELL) GENRE: HISTORICAL FICTION PUBLISHER: PENGUIN INDIA Let me start this review with a question for a change. What do you think of history? Can history ever be accurate? I wonder what if someone somewhere missed the point entirely and miswrote history unknowingly? How can historians learn the intentions hidden in someone’s heart? How can one take into account minute details that happened in the dark that no one except the vast dark sky could witness? How would one know if it all didn’t start with something and end with something else altogether? Who do you trust, and how many sources would one consider? So, can history ever be accurate, or is it just hearsay? Because all of us can write history based on what we know or hear. But will it ever be enough to be called the truth?  Tamas by Bhisham Sahni is a first-person account of the riots that broke out across the villages in pre-independent Ind...

BOOK NAME: SANATAN AUTHOR NAME: SHARANKUMAR LIMBALE (TRANSLATED FROM THE HINDI TRANSLATION OF THE MARATHI NOVEL BY PAROMITA SENGUPTA) GENRE: HISTORY, POLITICAL FICTION PUBLISHER: PENGUIN INDIA There comes a time in everyone’s lives when they get to discover eye-opening details about their own people or place or language or country which will completely shift their perspective for the better. It can be anything—maybe a newspaper article read in a tea stall, a friendly conversation with a neighbour, a clip from an underrated movie no one knew existed or maybe a book. A book like Sanatan!  Sanatan is a powerful and intriguing title which had my attention from the very beginning of its release. Getting shortlisted for the JCB Prize 2024 only increased my determination to get to it stronger. I went into it after reading about the author without any preconceptions about the book. I knew it had to have harrowing details because the author’s works were primarily Dalit literature. And t...

BOOK NAME: RATNO DHOLI: THE BEST STORIES OF DHUMKETU AUTHOR NAME: DHUMKETU (TRANSLATED FROM THE GUJARATI BY JENNY BHATT) GENRE: SHORT STORY COLLECTION PUBLISHER: HARPERCOLLINS INDIA As someone who enjoys writing and reading short stories, discovering Dhumketu’s collection of short stories has been a blessing. A prominent figure in Gujarati literature, Gaurishankar Govardhan Joshi, aka Dhumketu, has revolutionised Indian literature with over 600 short stories and 30 historical novels. I can only imagine the amount of potential and hard work that went into such ginormous figures.  Ratno Dholi is a collection of thirty of his best stories, translated with sincerity and perfection by Jenny Bhatt. The collection begins with the most poignant tale titled ‘The Postoffice’, where a man’s wait for a letter from his abandoned daughter evokes a sense of empathy and fondness for the characters in less than three pages. From the very first chapter, the book draws your attention towards and ...