By Willie Gordon Suting
I was sauntering in Leo Expo at Malki Ground. It took me awhile to figure out the place. But Padam Book Company took me by surprise. With its collection of rare classics and contemporary fiction that come at Rs 100 and Rs 200, it was a treat.
Colourful book covers have to be looked into closely. So I searched for the best titles. It is difficult to mention all. I was taken, though, by these few novels that offered quality prose. The underlying subject matters were dense but profound.
Saturday by Ian McEwan explores engagement with the modern world and meaning of existence. Perowne, though successful, struggles to understand meaning in his life, exploring personal satisfaction in the post-modern, developed world. Perowne feels he has little influence over political events. As he goes about his day, he ponders the meaning of the protest and the problems that inspired it; however, the day is disrupted by an encounter with a violent, troubled man.
The Amber Spyglass is where Phillip Pullman pursues his central philosophical theme with greater passion. In his world, the temptation and fall are not the source of all human misery, but the end of repression by “the Authority” and the beginning of liberation and freedom of thought. Lyra and Will, two children on the threshold of growing up, embrace knowledge that saves the world.
Thus Bad Begins by Javier Marias is a discourse on how Muriel ponders which is worse-setting the record straight, telling the truth or maintaining deception? Muriel thinks deception is better, to stay in the dark and give cogent reasons for unknowing, such as if the deception is revealed, it invalidates or gives the lie to everything that happened before. It forces the deceived to see his life in a different light or to deny it. Yet he can’t unlive what he has once lived.
The Rights of Desire by Andre Brink explores the relationship of Ruben and Tessa, simultaneously exploring rights and desires in a political sense. The dark atmosphere has a mood of palpable violence where a sense of foreboding lies heavily over all. The relationship of Ruben and Tessa is unsettling, strange, perhaps even clinically sick. Brink’s language is fluid with the first-person narrative and his sense of timing so keen that his style achieves elegance.
No Longer at Ease continues many of the themes from Chinua Achebe’s novels. The clash between European culture and traditional culture has become entrenched during the long period of colonial rule. Obi struggles to balance the demands of his family and village for monetary support while simultaneously keeping up with the materialism of Western culture. He is confrontational, speaks his mind, and has self-destructive tendencies. This aggressive streak manifests itself in different ways.
Philip K Dick’s The Man in The High Castle is an imagined dystopia of a world split between the victorious Reich and Imperial Japan. The internal monologues and the dialogues leave the story with lots of questions unanswered.
Albert Camus’s The Plague asks a number of questions into the nature of destiny and the human condition. The characters ranging from doctors to vacationers to fugitives, all help to show the effects the plague has on the populace. The novel is believed to be based on the cholera epidemic that killed a large percentage of Oran’s population in 1849 following French colonisation, but the novel is placed in the 1940s.
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo condemns the unjust class-based structure of nineteenth-century France, showing time and again that the society’s structure turns good, innocent people into beggars and criminals. Hugo focuses on education, criminal justice, and treatment of women that need reform. He conveys much of his message through the character of Fantine, a symbol for the many good but impoverished women driven to despair and death by a cruel society.
If you are on a search for a novel, the bookshop offers quality fiction. Separated into different topics, the piles of books range from photography, political non-fiction, music, childrens’ et al. For any bibliophile, it comes as a blessing with the discounted price.
Reading suggestions for the week:
1. Optimism Over Despair by Noam Chomsky
2. Against Interpretation by Susan Sontag