Kevein Books and Reviews

A Thousand Splendid Suns is a tragic tale of two Afghani women. Like The Kite Runner, this novel is also set in Afghanistan but its time span is different i.e. the 1960s to 2000. Mariam is a teenage girl living with her nasty mother Nana, on the outskirts of the city Herat. Her father Jalil comes to visit her once a week. He lives in the main city and is a highly successful businessman. Mariam is an illegitimate child of his affair with Nana, thus he cannot afford to give her fully blossomed fatherly love which he gives to his other children and three wives that live with him. On her fifteenth birthday, she insists her father that he must take her for Pinocchio movie in the city. When her father doesn’t come back to fulfill the promises, she takes up walking to the city – to the place of his father. Back at home, Nana thinks that Mariam has abandoned her hence in sheer depression she kills herself. Upon finding Mariam in the city, Jalil fears his dark secret may get exposed h

"A woman has to sleep with right men to progress in life. And love will always elude her." Rinita Bose is a gorgeous girl from a small village called Phoolbari. By the time Rinita reaches to an age of adolescence, she becomes an orphan. Though she has no social security in the men-dominated society, she has two friends, Chaitali and Mahesh, on whom she can count during the crises. Rinita is ambitious about her dreams in life but as soon as she reluctantly joins a news channel, RTC, life begins giving her jolts. There, her boss Arindam tricks her to his bed and later when she is pregnant with his child, he not only betrays her but also thrashes her to an extent that she loses the child in her womb. To avenge the loss and pain, she tricks Arindam in her trap and busts his wickedness to many people in the company and beats him proudly. After that, she flees to Darjeeling to escape from Arindam as he was after her life. She does one commercial for Wellington Tea

Though Ruskin Bond is purely into writing stories for children, Escape from Java is a fantastic war fiction, and for maintaining a sense of innocent childhood he has kept the story revolving around a nine-year- old boy, who lives in Java, one of the islands in Batavia, with his father, who is there for a business deal. They are English, and Dutch are the rulers of this island. And for locals, every white person is English for them, little do with their actual origins. The story is staged against the WWII, especially when the power of Japan and its allies were increasing. With Singapore fallen to Japanese, positive rumours are that soon Java will be in the grip of Japan because Dutch is not as strong as the British to resist the mighty Japanese. All outsiders are busy escaping Java; no one is interested in saving it from Japanese. Soon Japanese begins bombing the islands as well, Java being no exception. Initially, the bombing was limited till dockyard region but soon the cit

The Boy from Pataliputra is an historical novel by the Indian author, Rahul Mitra. It is staged against the Alexandrian era, in the years of 300 B.C. Aditya and Ajeet are brothers, with no family, living in Pataliputra, in the Magdha kingdom. Though the king is Hindu, majority of the mass practices Hinduism; but still Buddhist monks influence the kingdom because they are wealthy. Ajeet has been framed by the minister of justice, Indukalpa. And as a consequence, Ajeet is being executed publicly while his younger brother Aditya and other well-wishers watch as mute spectators. The administration is at the peak of corruption. Following the execution, Aditya attacks on Indukalpa but fails to nail him down. This action forces him to be fugitive. But why did Indukalpa order to execute Ajeet remains unclear but certainly it is the best climax in the book which forces the boy to flee from Pataliputra to strive ahead in life. With the help of some well-wishers he is packed and sent to

Dvarca is an Indian dystopian novel by the author Madhav Mathur. The novel is all about India which has been renamed as Dvarca and the time is around the end of twenty first century. The founders of Dvarca believe that one nation with one religion instilling one way of life is safe and futuristic for the citizens. Thus, the population is divided into many segments or, say, clans like Nakuls, Sahdevs, Samyuktas, Sanjeevs, Miras, Vidurs and many more. According to these segments, people work, earn and live. However they are constantly under the vigilance of the state through DD (Distant Directives). So running away from the duties or state is almost impossible. People have no freedom but their lives are tech rich and highly calculated, even their rations. Amid such regimentation, one family of Dvarca where one Gandharva, a low-level bureaucrat, and one Jyoti, who works in a factory, find themselves unable to cope up with the day-to-day life prescribed by the state. Gandharva ma

The word ‘Zahir’ has been derived from Arabic, meaning obvious, an obsession that one cannot hide despite wearing all forms of masks. What’s important in one’s life is evident on his or her face and eyes, even in the actions. In the novel ‘The Zahir’, Paulo Coelho has expressed a writer’s life and of course what is the most prime thing of his life, other than fame and money. The novel was, first, penned down in his native language Portuguese. Later as the book got exposed to glittering highlights it was translated into many other languages, including English. Though it is banned in Iran, it is available in many other countries. For the backdrop matter, the story has to feature Paris and the beautiful topography of Kazakhstan. The protagonist of the book is a nameless, famous writer. He lives in Paris with his wife, Esther, who is not only extraordinarily beautiful but also a war correspondent. She loves to be courageous while covering stories from battlefields or war-torn

The Old Man and the Sea is a tale beyond an ordinary fight between a man and a big sea fish. The novella rather underlines the value of perseverance and the will to fight all odds during the adverse time. Santiago, the protagonist of the book, is a Cuban old man. He lives by the sea and is a veteran fisherman. He believes in bad luck but is of the opinion that a man cannot be defeated but destructed. So, in a sense, he never feels defeated in his life. Once at the game of 'hand', during his youth days, he defeated a black muscular man after holding his hand for twelve hours. After that, many people called him Champion. His instincts are of champions and he is a kind of man who would like to use the last brick of his mettle before accepting defeat; but defeat is not meant for him. Thus, he can only be destructed. It has been 84 days without a fish, he goes and returns empty handed every time. Because of this bad luck, people have begun doubting on his abilities and a

On a cold and frosty evening, the narrator is equivocal about attending a Christmas party at Kapadias. Outside, the roads are wet with patches of snow, making him more to stick with his lethargy. Somehow he musters up courage and wears double sweaters, rolls up a scarf, and put the overcoat. From his cottage the destination is about a mile. While walking alone he meets a girl midway, who too is going for the party. She introduces herself as Julie. She must be around sixteen or seventeen years of old, the narrator thinks. The narrator is new to the hilly place; thus, he finds it difficult to sketch her background in his mind. At the party everyone thinks that Julie is a friend of the narrator and he thinks that she knows Kapadias personally. She is scarcely eating or drinking anything but enjoying the music and dance. At midnight, the narrator is over-the-top drunk and starts back for home. Julie comes with him. At midpoint, she takes another route – she says her home address is