The Namesake, published in 2003, is the first novel written by Jhumpa Lahiri. Lahiri was born to Indian parents in England who then moved to America while she was still a child, making her a part of the Indian diasporic community. This theme of Diaspora is recurrent in her writings, including The Namesake. In the … Continue reading The Namesake and Diaspora
Tag: Books
Tragedy in Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, published in 1958, is a landmark text in African writing in English. At the most basic level, the novel is a story about Okonkwo, his rise to status in the Igbo community and the subsequent fall culminating, eventually, in his suicide. The combination of hubris and misfortune that leads to … Continue reading Tragedy in Things Fall Apart
Borders in The Shadow Lines
The Shadow Lines is a novel by Amitav Ghosh and it interrogates the notion of borders. As implied in the title itself, it shows borders not as concrete but as shadows. This interrogation is done through one of the main characters in the text, the narrator's grandmother, Thamma. Thamma is the narrator's grandmother and a … Continue reading Borders in The Shadow Lines
Wuthering Heights: Exploring Heathcliff’s Darkness
Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights (1847) is a tale of tragedy and revenge. Heathcliff, one of the prime characters of the novel, lies at the centre of the tragedy and is the perpetrator of the revenge. His deeds leave no doubt that he is violent, abusive, and cruel. What intrigues me the most about Heathcliff in … Continue reading Wuthering Heights: Exploring Heathcliff’s Darkness
To The Lighthouse: Of Time and Narratives
Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse (1927) is a modernist literary classic. One of my favourite things about Woolf's works, and about this novel, in particular, is her use of Stream of Consciousness narrative technique and her treatment of time within it: her art of making one day span over a hundred pages and compress ten … Continue reading To The Lighthouse: Of Time and Narratives
Reading Marquez
At the beginning of 2020 I read two of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novels, namely Chronicle of a Death Foretold and Of Love and Other Demons, and it is these novels that I am going to talk about (read: gush over). The plot of Chronicle of a Death Foretold revolves around the attempt of the narrator … Continue reading Reading Marquez
Not So Random Ramblings 