Kevein Books and Reviews

A Conspiracy of Violence unfolds thrilling accounts of vile mystery in the aftermath of Restoration London, somewhere around 1662. Thomas Chaloner is a spy cum apparent male protagonist but probably not the lead protagonist as the book abounds with many important as well as insignificant characters. Soon after Cromwell is defeated and being out of the contest, new conspiracies against the new king begin taking place and so Thomas begins working for inconsistent bosses for his basic needs but as the events unfurl untowardly his obedience towards his reporting chiefs’ tumbles down. To an extent, Thomas being a top-class spy finds tough to understand who is true and whom to trust and where to report. Finally, his spying caliber nears a brink of extinction.   Strange enough, over-mingling of characters and events delay the exact clues for investigation. Therefore, many assumed Thomas isn’t a perfect spy – which he ought to be as per the readers’ expectations. The book is...

The Shadow of the Crescent Moon is a poetic title. The story covers Mir Ali, a small town, bordering Afghanistan perpetually torn by war. The book gains overtly limelight as the author is Fatima Bhutto, native of Pakistan and hails from political family. The story oscillates from time to time as the setting – Mir Ali town holds memories and values to characters of present day, Friday, the day of festival Eid. Three brothers from the same family, strange enough that they decide to offer prayer in three different mosques, as there lurks fear of bombing the mosques. The book is poignant, while it reveals sad status of lost lives, lost families and earlier peaceful way of life. How war affects and brings ill-fate to innocent people. The book is based on Afghan war that invariably has been affecting the lives of Pakistanis. Through this book readers may conclude that media coverage and news about wars in Afghanistan isn't that authentic as depicted in the novel. The boo...

Star of the Sea is a ship set for New York from the ruined Ireland. The narration goes beyond the ship and sea tides to unveil life episodes of victims boarded on that ship. Amidst many is a killer, ravenous for retribution to bring some equality and justice to the past life. As the journey charges ahead, long and harsh in biting cold, many passengers of her are battered and die during the journey, some lose themselves while the ship waits at the outer of the harbor. Star of the Sea by Joseph O’Connor is a book rare to find on the Irish Starvation. A magnetic tale unfolds tragedy and mercy and love and redemption with utmost appeal of humanity. The effects of colonization on Irish land by British during the Victorian era are the staple that holds the plot extraordinarily. The novel gives details of ‘The Great Starvation’ in Ireland in 1847. As going by the facts, during the Irish Famine millions died and many travelled to America to find new life and food. A tragic part...

Soul Seekers by Neelam Chandra brings forward a collection of emotions through this book. As it simply unfolds, readers come to know about how the lives of simple people engaged in day-to-day responsibilities and frivolities manage and look over their love fates. Pia, a modern girl, has everything handy to say that her life is comfortable and good going. However when her exploration for love and its allied affairs commenced, she begins getting the jolts of depression and failures so much that her past becomes start haunting her. This debilitates her confidence in life and as an upshot she becomes wary of things that look like love affairs, stuff like love-at-first-sight or infatuation. But that is not going to be the case for always. Thus, Yatin once a favourite guy in her life, as they were ready to take off in the plane of love, the gentleman disappears abruptly, for that he has some quite serious peculiar reasons of his own in life. Modern love stories are always dev...

Uprooted from their home in Ireland, young Charlotte Drummond and her glamorous mother, Lady Pat, must adjust to life in Jerez, Spain. In Ireland, Seventeen-year-old Charlotte Drummond had access to her ancestral estate but as the circumstances forced she lost it to her lover Richard Selwin, new Lord Blodmore. Though they both were in love but he was manoeuvred to marry someone else. And she being forbidden had to exit, hoping never to return to Ireland and her love. She and her mother find refuge in a crumbling mansion which was once secretly bought by her grandfather.    There where the grapes cluster thick on the hillsides, Charlotte enters the exciting world of sherry vintners. Staunchly she holds her ground against the powerful Marquesa, the legendary feisty Spanish woman her grandfather had loved. And in the arms of Carlos Santander, she tries to forget her own faraway love, never daring to hope he might be hers again. ‘The Summer of the Spanish Woman’ is a...

Train to Pakistan, published in the year 1956, is an historical novel by Khuswant Singh. The theme swirls around the much debated partition of India for two nations. Mr. Singh has able-handedly thrown light on the gruelling circumstances and abject suffering of innocent people which they went through during the tragic partition. The novel is true, more in the right way, for covering the changing outlook of people assembling from different communities and religions, the way they lost trust over one-another, and the inevitable massacres. Both sides (two nations) received equal damage by employing many ways of inhuman agonies. Mr. Singh writes less about the ‘Nehru-Jinnah’ politics involved and responsible for the partition; he instead dealt with the local feelings.   During the summer of 1947 when the news of partition came, over 10 million people doomed to move and seek refuge. They were living together but under the heat of partition they got involved into mass k...

The book’s story takes into hand Leningrad of 1941, then into war, and it offers a remarkably reminiscences of the yesteryears, when Leningrad was being approached by the German army. Readers would figure out that endurance was the toughest possible streak among the victims and the civil population. Marina is the central character, who goes along and skitters back and forth with the gritty episodes of love, war and museum paintings. Marina, in present time lives with her husband and children, suffers Alzheimer – and it is through this mental disorder that she often experiences past-life haunting memories and at the same time finding solace in pictures of the museum. The nub of the book is that how a suffering soul can find a respite in arts – prominently gallery pictures. The story seems incomplete as no particular war fighting characters have shown. However, the only feast is the writer’s immense aptitude for good language. References of paintings are a great thing that needs...