Kevein Books and Reviews

The Great Indian Bust by Rishabh Bhatnagar is a coming of age fiction, with traces of autobiographical notes in it. The novel is completely fictitious in its narrative, and with the plot and settings, but still as a reader one can make out that the author has a life that is evident all throughout the storyline. The author has brilliantly provided preface to every backdrop, be it Delhi NCR, or Mumbai, or some other place. This worked fine as while reading one does not feel lost in the rigmaroles of the story. This novel is a kind of compound work – no specific them – but still a lot has been covered and seemed converging to one point. And that point is the protagonist Sidharth’s life. He is the center of all that is going in the story. The novel kicks off with the story of his grandfather and his grandmother. Later, it gets near the lives of his father and mother, and their collective struggle to raise their children. So, basically this is a story of a family and a boy. As y...

Gaur Gopal Das is one of the most well-known and organized monks in the world, sharing his knowledge with millions of people around the globe. His debut book is Life’s Amazing Secrets, in which he portrays his experiences and life lessons in a well-structured way. This book will help you arrange yourself with the life you want to live and not regret later. I came to know about Gaur Gopal Das when one of my friends forwarded his viral video on Whatsapp. I was really fascinated by his sense of humor and perspective. Ultimately, I went on YouTube and saw multiple videos by him. I came to know about his first book Life’s Amazing Secrets. I thought of reading this book and bought it from Amazon. Book Review While cruising their way through Mumbai’s dreadful traffic, Gaur Gopal Das and his rich young friend Harry discusses the approaches ranging from finding one’s purpose in life and the secret of staying happy. In case you are looking at nourishing your relationships, f...

We are back with another author interview. Today, with us, we have Jacqueline – the author of ‘Butterfly for a Heart’. Here, she talks about her journey as a writer from a young age and her latest collection of poetry.  She also offers some great insights and tips into writing poetry. Jacqueline, what attracted to you poetry? As it's a trend among new young writers to write more about love and college stories?  What made you to choose something different? Writing poetry is faster and requires very less words. I am not joking, it`s a fact, I cannot write anything longer than 1000 words. There is something about writing poetry that brings out a different Jacqueline; it is all words and the twist and turn of them that makes it all the more beautiful. School and college life did not have an effect on me much and even while I am writing this I could not sense any emotions out of it. Love and loss are the main factors that push an artist to express her feelings,...

The culture of reading self-books is increasing worldwide. Though it is good, but, do you know...why? The answer lies in our lifestyle patterns. We don't realize but with the passage of time our lives have been overtaken by hectic schedules, tight deadlines, and lack of time for basic things, and never-ending desires. People get entwined in the process so badly that to enhance the mettle and quality of their lives, they get into self-help books with a very strong and optimistic outlook. However, the ground reality is that self-help books come and go, if not like civilizations…but somehow like the sessional phenomena. Some self-help books promise you a lot, but fail with the content hidden inside. Many take you to a good level, but midway you realize that it's becoming a banal affair. No doubt, self-help books help people to come to out of their bad times or also succeed in refreshing their mind to some extent. However, have you come across a self-help book, whic...

Often in short stories people look for realism and themes of contemporariness. However, this collection written by Mridula – Still Loved…Still Missed – is a way different than normal short stories. One main reason is the use of allegories in it. The title story, Still Loved…Still Missed, is a story of a small boat narrated by itself. Here the author has personalized the boat, has given human motions and voice and desires. Another good aspect in the book is balance between positive things and dark things, like birth and desires; death and separation. Even the dark stories, well before they exhibit something that we all dread, they have given out the meaning for which they were intended. For instance, in the story Bluebells in the Woods…, the girl gets into the touch of her passed-away grandma, but soon she is brought back to the reality by her parents. Two strokes measured brilliantly in the story. ‘The Passing’ is another good story that says aloud that this world is a ...

Butterfly for a Heart by J. Jacqueline is a delightful collection of poems and prose that takes us into the various facets of life. Life As it is… Our generations will look at us and see fools; Consumed with a materialistic mind and vulgar thought. They will erase us from their history of goodwill and place us in their history of destruction and disgrace. The collection opens up with the above poem and it immediately casts an impression that deep inside the book there is more to savour and understand and feel within your heart. Like many other contemporary poem collections, this book too is segmented into various aspects and the poet has placed poems accordingly. Major themes presented in the book are vagaries of life, resurrection, the value of men and women, love and lust, and dark themes like death and hollowness, and more. Another gripping aspect in the book is its ability to hold aggressiveness with firm intensity. The poems are simple to read and u...

The short story by Ruskin Bond ‘The Tunnel’ has two main characters, in fact, there is no third human character in the story. It is rare to find a story so captivating with such limited cast of characters. After the watchman Sundar Singh, the second character in the story is Suraj. He is a young boy – which is clear from the descriptions made throughout the story, for instance, he rides a bicycle and loves watching the passing trains. He is so much inquisitive about the watchman’s life and the train tunnel that he comes to the hut of the watchman at night to see the happening of events. Suraj is inquisitive in behavior. He loves nature but slightly afraid of wild animals. He loves observing things, such as hearing the thundering in the tracks when the train passed and noticing the disturbance caused by the train while crossing the jungle. He has parents, there is mention of his father in the story. Also, his father wants him to be part of his business, wants to teac...

We are back with another author interview. Today, with us, we have very young Indian author – Souvik Roy. His recently published crime thriller novel, Abhinash Chakraborty, has begun creating buzz in the town. In this interview, he talks about his writing aspirations, and the route to getting his books published, and inclination towards crime fiction, and much more. Stay on...while we chat with him. How do you feel as an author – being so young and ambitious? How do people around you react to that? Well, I have been congratulated by my teachers and friends and even those friends who had never read a novel or any other book out of their course syllabi have also bought my book. Well, I am actually a conservative person, so I had very few friends. My juniors in school and my college seniors have also done what they could to support my enthusiasm. I’m really grateful for their support. Well, you can’t deny the fact that reading books out of course content has become a rar...

After reading the short story ‘The Tunnel’ by Ruskin Bond, you will come across two main characters of the story: Sundar Singh and Suraj. In this post, we are going to see the character sketch of Sundar Singh. This short story, TheTunnel , is placed in the foothills of the Himalaya, where train passing is possible. Some distance from Dehradun, lies a small village, and some distance from that village, up in the hills, through the forest goes a railway line. The railway line has one tunnel. Sundar Singh is a watchman of that tunnel. His duty is to inspect the tunnel twice a day. Two trains, one at day, second one at night passes through that tunnel. His duty is to make the tunnel clear of manageable obstacles like small stones or wild animals. For the day train, he waves a red flag if found anything objectionable in the tunnel. And at night, he waves the lamp if something is wrong in the tunnel. If everything is fine, he does nothing and relaxes in his small hut.  ...

We are back with another author interview. Today, with us, we have AmyReads – the author of ‘Not a Different Story’. In this interview, he talks about his writing aspirations and the route to getting his books published. Stay on...while we chat with him. What inspired you to write this book? Any tales to tell… The idea to write this book had caught me unawares when I was going to my college in a city bus. But I feel that the core of this book i.e. “a toxic family experience can fill you with negative attitude” had been in my mind for so long. When I was small, I used to live with my family in a rented apartment, and the flats were such that if you spoke loud enough, people in adjacent flats could easily hear you. So, the couple next door used to fight a lot. A lot means their altercations were the constant background noise. Their children rarely interacted or played with other children and that was definitely because of the shame. One day, our landowner told them to v...

Abhinash Chakraborty by Souvik Roy is a page-turner crime thriller. Though short in length, it may make you feel like as you have gone through a saga of some amusing and intriguing characters. What makes a crime thriller interesting and riveting – probably it’s the sweeps of the characters in it. So, with plain and timid character line, perhaps the crime thriller is going to be a lot predictable and boring after some time. However, this titular novel – Abhinash Chakraborty by Souvik Roy is just an anti-thesis to predictability. One moment you are waiting for the character to appear, next moment it comes and disappears. A lot of hide and seek, on the run lives, adventure, no-hope situation – are some of the aspects that you can find in this novel, which perfectly makes it a riveting crime thriller from a very young Indian writer. The story kicks off with a murder scene, so people may assume that now detectives are going to solve the murder case. Well, it runs out of its ...

Untouchability is something that is not new in our societies. Though nowadays it is not available to see openly, but somewhere secretly or subtly it is being carried out. Our country, India, has muddy history of untouchability, people from one era to another have had suffered because of it for no apparent reasons. Questions like who created it and why it is still existing, no one asks. People do not care for the suffering of others. It truly a matter of concern for all of us. Undoubtedly, untouchability is a widely-spoken topic across the globe, thus it is not an exception in the world of literature too. In the past, there have been many books based on untouchability, the most dazzling one was Untouchable by MulkRaj Anand . This topic was covered well and widely in India just after the independence, however, in modern time people hardly care about writing literature on this topic. So, books on untouchability are rare, but today we have this book (Rayan’s Cry) that takes us in...

This is a short story based on true events witnessed by the author when he was posted in India during the British Raj. The story dates back to Jansee (now Jhansi) territory and many villages that was part of it. As per the narrator, in the villages around, there’s strange belief of spirit guardianship. There every field or farm is being dedicated to some spirit. And these spirits guard the farms and orchards or trees against all types of predators and invasions. If anyone, be it animal or human, thieves anything from the farm or guarded trees, or try to harm in any way, as a result, that person or animal either suffers great health problems and many a time they die mysteriously. The belief is so deep-rooted that even when land transfer takes place, it is not claimed by any living being. They are entitled to dead men. Villagers can choose the spirit from their family members, died recently or long ago, or they also have the option of choosing someone they know, though not ...