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Showing posts from November, 2014

Book Review: Merlin’s Keep by Madeleine Brent

Jani only knows one person in her life while sustaining a harsh life in the adverse terrains of Tibet. And that person is Sembur. They both live far-off from the civilized world for more than one reason. Sembur isn’t her father but a well-wisher kind of guardian. Without getting the hints of change, they encounter a young but arrogant army captain from Ghurkha Rifles. To Jani that captain sounds like a Mister, so she addresses him Mister. The captain is seeking a person wanted for murder ten years ago. And that wanted person or criminal is none other than Sembur. However, while descending towards the plains of the colonized India, they all struggle against the odds of the Himalayan winteriness. Sembur dies of heart problems, leaving the captain to take care of the girl who soon becomes sick with diphtheria. By implementing great courage and patience, the captain manages to save the girl from the obstructing mountainous hardships and sends the girl in a hospital in Gorakhpur.

Book Review: The Guide by R.K. Narayan

R.K. Narayan’s ‘The Guide’ is considered a representative novel which brings forth the incompatibility of interests of human beings who are ironically brought together by fate. The triangular love story presented in the novel tends to be tragic for all the main characters of the novel.  The hero of the novel, Raju, is popularly called ‘Railway Raju’ because he serves railway passengers as a tourist guide, and his career has flourished quite successfully. The turn of events takes place when Marco and his wife Rosie arrive in Malgudi. Marco is an academician obsessed with his fresco hunting in ancient caves. He does not pay much attention to his wife. He does not even consent to her organizing the art of dancing which he looks upon as a deplorable activity. Raju is employed by Marco in his professional capacity to show him the caves in and around Malgudi. Marco gets too busy studying. The young guide finds that he gets ample opportunities of spending a happy time with the young

Book Review: Speed Post by Shobha De

The relationship between mother and child is nothing less than beauty and happiness bonded in their blood. Shobha De’s Speed Post is proved to be a written record of such a wonderful relationship. Speed Post by Shobha De is a kind of biographical book of a twenty-first-century Indian mother. Here the focus is on being a friend more than a mother, through letters. As we go through these letters we can visualize every aspect of Shobha De’s life, whether it is her childhood, her attitude towards the world, her approach to accepting modern views, or her motherly propensity to tackle the problems and issues of her children. In ‘Speed Post’ Shobha De has written letters to her children. The letters are interesting for the teenagers as well as the parents too. The most glaring aspect of the lives of teenagers today is their disturbed relationship with their parents and guardians. Teen-parent relationships lack trust, intimacy, and frankness. Many teenagers are starved of pare

Book Review: Elephant Song by Wilbur Smith

Wildlife filmmaker Daniel Armstrong and his childhood friend Johny Nzou shoot the mass slaughter of elephant herds to raise money for wildlife conservation and protection. The ivory collected from the mass killing is sent to the government warehouse, in the custody of the chief warden, Johny Nzou. However, soon, a team of poachers kills Johny Nzou and his small family to take away the government-protected reserve of ivory. Behind the theft and murder was Nasty diplomat Cheng’s greedy trade motives. So, Daniel vows to take revenge of his friend’s death. Later, Daniel gets an assignment to shoot for a green initiative in a small African country, and Cheng is the director of that project. So, here is the bright chance for him to trail the murderers. However, things go wrong and to save his life Daniel escapes to England, where he meets anthropologist Kelly Kinnear, who is equally against the project’s investors as she knows in the guise of a green project there ahead lies th

Book Review: Dominion by C. J. Sansom

Dominion by C.J. Sansom is a political thriller cum war fiction. The book escapes out of the regular course of the history to depict that Nazis have won the WWII and are ruling over Britain, which has become a puppet state of Nazi Germany. The book moves ahead on the counter-fact history by showing Winston Churchill not a prime minister of Britain following Neville Chamberlain, in 1940. Rather, Churchill is leading the Resistance Movement to discourage the current British government which has been supporting Nazis to deport all Jews out of the country. War fiction novels based around WW-II have to inevitably play around the Jews, and this book is no exception to that. David Fitzgerald, a civil servant, is a half-Jewish owing to his maternal roots. He is clandestinely involved in the Resistance Movement and given with a responsibility to move his childhood friend Frank Muncaster out of the country. Since Muncaster holds a secret about atomic bomb invention, which if discover