ASIAN BOOK CHALLENGE 2022 - JUNE IN THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT

JUNE



June 2022 - THE INDIAN SUB-CONTINENT / WRITERS FROM INDIA, SRI LANKA AND BANGLADESH

I will let you into a secret. I love Indian fiction. Favourite novel of my lifetime if I had to choose one I would take A Fine Balance. Best Booker Winner would quite possibly be Midnight's Children and I got hours of enjoyment reading and re-reading the books of RK Narayan.

India really ought to get its own month but I had a whole continent to fit into the year! Some of the authors you could choose (I don't mind if you take Rushdie or Mistry in this month or in December as part of the Diaspora as both were born in India but moved overseas at an early age)

Vikram Seth
Anita Desai
Vikram Chandra
Kiran Desai
Chetan Bhagat
Arundhati Roy
Amitav Ghosh
Gita Mehta
Aravind Adiga
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Amit Chaudhuri
Neel Mukherjee
Raja Rao
Jeet Thayil
Tishani Doshi
Kishwar Desai
Mulk Raj Anand
Amrita Pritam

and the list could go on and on.

Sri Lanka is also developing a fine storytelling tradition:

Anuk Arudpragasam
Shehan Karunatilaka
Ru Freeman
Romesh Gunasekera

and Michael Ondaatje could be counted here or in December as he was born in Sri Lanka but moved very early on to Canada.

Similarly Monica Ali and Tahmima Anam would fit both months as both were born in Bangladesh but have spent most of their lives in England.

What will I read?

Definitely :

Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree (which just won the Booker International Prize)

Hopefully

Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra
The Good Muslim by Tahmima Anam
A Passage North by Anuk Arudpragasam

I'm in the middle of Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh and will read Kundo Wakes Up by Saad Z. Hossain. Not sure about my Sri Lanka selection yet.

I've chosen The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

>3 amanda4242: I read Train to Pakistan a while ago, Amanda and don't remember that much about it.

>4 ChrisG1: If I had a scale/ranking of Booker winners, Chris, this one would be near the bottom.

So much to choose from! (Also, this challenge is like a rolling snowball--I have books from each month that I didn't get to, but still want to read, so my list is becoming quite unmanageable.)

A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
Flood of Fire - Amitav Ghosh (but I might have to refresh my memory of the first two books in the trilogy)
The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga
A Passage North - Anuk Arudpragasam
The Good Muslim - Tahmima Anam
An Atlas of Impossible Longing - Anuradha Roy
In Custody - Anita Desai
Joseph Anton - Salman Rushdie

I can't imagine I will have time for A Suitable Boy as it is a sizable tome.

>4 ChrisG1: As for The God of Small Things, I loved it, and would put it on a list of 100 favorite novels, if I were making such a list (which I'm not). Interesting how tastes can differ.

Mastery through Accomplishment by Hazrat Inayat Khan covers contemplation and meditation from a Sufi and Koran perspective.

A long ago gift from a Sufi friend and teacher, I look forward to this one!

>6 AnneDC: Shared authors this coming month for sure, Anne.

>7 m.belljackson: That sounds interesting, Marianne.

I just started The Hungry Tide, so I'm ready for this one! Happy reading everyone.

I have On Sal Mal Lane by Ru Freeman and The Startup Wife by Tahmima Anam home from the library. I'm not sure if I'll be able to finish one or both, but I will try.

I started Amrita Sher-Gil: Rebel with a Paintbrush by Anita Vachhrajani a few weeks ago so will continue with this.
From Vachhrajani's website bio - 'Anita went to school in Mumbai, India, and has refused to ever leave the city since then. So much is she is love with it, that she’s always finding new ways not to travel. She trips on potholes and slips on paver blocks, and the city’s smog makes her sneeze. But she refuses to think of moving to cities with better air, like say, Beijing or Delhi.'

The Calcutta Chromosome by Amitav Ghosh looks interesting though I did make a promise to myself to read Two Lives by Vikram Seth earlier this year.

Ive been reading about India since Kim. Far Pavillions is one of my all time fav books. Neither of these fit here but I do have some I recommend

the mistress of spices , sister of my heart in fact just about anything she has written.-

god of small things

Riot: a novel about the riots between Hindus and Muslims in 1989.

What I want to read;

Tomb in the sand

the far field

red earth and pouring rain

A woman is no man

and more as people start recommending them!

I'm sure I'll find something... I've had Sacred Games checked out several times this year but haven't started it at any of those opportunities and now it's stuck on hold.

>13 quondame: I read Sacred Games a couple of years back and really enjoyed it. It's a Netflix series now, though I've only watched a couple of episodes.

>13 quondame: & >14 avatiakh: I did take Sacred Games off the shelves last night but it will be Tomb of Sand first.

Question why is India a sub continent,?

I had a post that disappeared. I'll try again. When I get home

>16 cindydavid4: When two continents love each other very much.....

ROTFL!!°

>16 cindydavid4: India was once a smaller landmass that collided with Eurasia raising the Himalayas, so it wasn't originally part of that extent of Pangaea.

Thx!

>16 cindydavid4: Susan provides a good answer in >19 quondame: but there is also this definition provided in the website immersionindia.com

"A subcontinent is a part of a continent that is politically and geographically separate from the rest of the continent."
https://immersionindia.com/why-is-india-called-a-subcontinent

yeah well I like Susans first answer:)

>22 cindydavid4: Me too!

I have Latitudes of longing and Miss Timmins' school for girls lined up for this month. I'd like to get my hands on Tomb of sand as well.

Paul - how about Kyoko Mori FALLOUT for December?

>25 m.belljackson: I am not familiar with that one, Marianne and the touchstone is different.

It does appear though that she was born in Japan but emigrated to Wisconsin in her teens. By this token she would qualify for either our Japanese month or December and the diaspora.

Fallout

Yes, at last one from my shelves for December!

I have Clear Light of Day lined up for this month.

I have The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar lined up. But it seems to have disappeared from the basket where I place all the books I have chosen for this challenge. I know I put it there but I can't seem to locate it at the moment. Of course I do have a few other options but that's the one I wanted to start with, especially since I have a 6-hour train ride on Monday coming up to give me a nice chunk of reading time. I sure hope it turns up before then...

India and the India sub-continent… I think I have enough books on my shelves to read only books from Indian authors (all the more from the sub-continent). I would like to avoid to read only boooks written in English so, with that in mind, I’ve selected 3 books for this theme (and I have a reserve list if I have the time and the will to read more…):
La Sterne rouge by Antonythasan Jesuthasan, translated from Tamil (Sri Lanka)
Devdas by Sarat Chandra Chatterjee, translated from Bengali (India)
Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara, translated from the English (India)

I’m currently reading La Sterne rouge. The author is from Sri Lanka but is a refugee in France (hence the early translation in French, and no translation available in English yet). It’s dark but I like it so far.
I think I live in a cave as I bought the book when it was first published in February this year and I had not realised before I did a bit of research on wikipedia before reading that the author is also an actor. He is the title character in Dheepan, a French film about a Tamil Tiger soldier which won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2015. Antonythasan Jesuthasan was himself a LTTE soldier before being a refugee. Obviously my Indian sub-continent month will therefore include watching this film.

Oh, and I forgot to add that I have already read an Indian book this year: The Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing by Sonia Faleiro (written in English).
It is a non-fiction book based on the death of two young teenagers in Uttar Pradesh in 2014. Obviously it is not a joyful reading, but it's an interesting description of the poor rural India that is sometimes over-shadowed by more glamorous images.

I don't know if I'll get to it, but someone today just happened to drop off a book by an Indian author into my Little Free Library. The book is A Burning, a debut novel by Megha Majumdar. It looks good!

>32 SqueakyChu: And it fits in TIOLI Challenge 15. Just saying.

>33 AnneDC: LOL! Okay. I'll go add it now. :D

>33 AnneDC: Well...I got to it..with a little shove from you, Anne. I'm reading it now.

The book has an interesting narrative. Although it's written in English, the spoken (or narrated) sentences have sort of a dialect to them. I can tell it's not my American way of speaking English. LOL!

My first new word was hijra which means transgender in the Indian dialect.

>35 SqueakyChu: Hijra showed up in Blue-Skinned Gods which I read back in April, where one was a more significant character than the more background appearances in A Suitable Boy.

>36 quondame: I have a feeling the hijra in A Burning will have a larger part as she is one of two main characters.

I am one of those who has not yet read A Suitable Boy. The size of that book scares me!

Finished The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, which also won the Booker Prize in 1997. Part family drama, part mystery, part commentary on the caste system, Roy's narrative takes you through shifting timelines and character viewpoints, slowly revealing the tragedies that haunt the family Recommended.

>37 SqueakyChu: I participated in a group read of A Suitable Boy a few years ago. Well worth the effort.

>39 avatiakh: Maybe one day...

If you haven't tried Seth but want to, can recommend the much shorter The Golden Gate if you can get hold of a copy.
I've got a copy of Sunlight on A Broken Column in the TBR pile, so will pick that up if / when I ever get through my current chunkster (meant for last month).

>41 charl08: thanks , I just ordered it.

So I was readingred earth and pouring rain but then the book I was needing for my Tues RL BG just arrived: a woman is no man I was surprised that they picked this one, they usually stay close to home.but they als voted for wrong end of the telescope so my infl=luence may rubbing off. So I need to read it first, then Ill go back to the Chandra which I am enjoying so far.

I'm listening to the audio book A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth

I am reading The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai. I've had it on my shelf since 2013, It is the Man Booker for 2006. It is a 1001 Book. So lots of reasons to read it.

My book for this challenge was A Burning by Megha Majumdar. It’s a debut novel that tells the story of Jivan, a young woman who was wrongly arrested by the Indian government for terrorism and two people she hoped would help her get out of prison. One was an hijra (transexual) who was an aspiring actress and who Jivan tutored in English. The other was her physical education teacher from school who was just becoming involved with the opposition political party to the one currently in rule. The story is told in sort of a colloquial English that reinforced its Indian setting.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book although it was both sad and infuriating. I noted the difference in opinions in the reviews of this book, but I would happily read more books in the future that this author might write.

>45 SqueakyChu: I enjoyed this one, found it a gripping read. I had to go back to my review to remind myself of the (high) star rating.

>46 charl08: I'm happy to see that you and others already read A Burning. I had never heard of this book, but someone slipped a hardcover copy of it into my Little Free Library as a donation. Before giving it away, I browsed through it and thought, "Hey! I want to give this book a try myself!". I'm glad I did. :)

>47 SqueakyChu: This is one of the reasons I want a LFL. Not that I need to add to my TBR!

I would love one, but we live at the top of a cul de sac that rarely gets pedestians. I do support a few in our neighborhood tho so I get books from them

Well I received golden gate and just cant get passed the verse writing. just doesn't work for me Still working on red earth and pouring rain love the concept but having trouble keeping track of where the stories are going...If this one doesn't work for me I will try the far field Wonder where my copy of Tomb of SandI thought I had ordered that

I finished Amrita Sher-Gil: Rebel with a Paintbrush by Anita Vachhrajani last week. It's for children or teens but well worth reading for an introduction into the life of Sher-Gil. It has delightful illustrations as well as photographs and copies of her paintings. She had an Indian Sikh father and an Hungarian mother and the family travelled to Europe several times for the education of the two daughters.
Her paintings are stunning and she would have had an amazing career but died at only 28 yrs.

I'll pick up Vikram Chandra's Love and Longing in Bombay next rather than Vikram Seth's Two Lives. A collection of short stories that I expressed interest in reading on the Club Read rebeccanyc thread.

>50 cindydavid4: Sorry to hear that about the Seth. It's one of my favourites.

>51 avatiakh: She came up recently in a book I read about women artists. She did such beautiful work, I'd love to see some in person.

>52 charl08: I may try it again, maybe listening to it might work better with the verses than reading it.

Finished Far Field The writing was very good and I liked the first part much better than the lat.but I did not like the narrator/protanganist. I think maybe she was truly sorry for the trouble she caused, but not totally sure. Did find out nmuch about the conflict in kasmir. For the writing alone Ill give it a 4.Not liking the protaganist is probably more my problem than the authors

I have completed Tomb of Sand and to be honest I still do not know what to make of it.

The narrative was extremely allusive although there were passages of pure beauty which made the overall bemusement at the "story" unfolding worthwhile. I suppose that it addresses the borders and boundaries of age and gender as well as the physical boundaries and borders that separate us. There is quite a bit of Indian / Hindu mythology which is fascinating but difficult. Overall I am not sure whether I enjoyed it or not but I was affected by it.

>52 charl08: She also came up in first in a book about inspiring Indian women that I read earlier this year. I also would love to see her works, probably need a trip to India to do that though.

I finished Love and Longing in Bombay by Vikram Chandra, a short story collection mostly set in Bombay.

I read two books by Thrity Umrigar for the challenge this month. The first one was a reread of The Space Between Us about a woman named Bhima whose life changes radically when she is dismissed from her job as a maid to a wealthy woman in Mumbai/Bombay. I read it first in 2006, and the injustices to women on the lower scale of the caste system were just as hard the second time around. The Secrets Between Us picks up a year or two later after the abrupt and unsatisfying ending of the first book and has more hope in it. I'm glad I read the sequel so I could get some closure.

I loved both of those books!

I've read Latitudes of longing which took me to some less-visited parts of India - the Andaman islands and the Himalayan snow desert, as well as Burma. It's a series of four stories, with characters linking from one to the next. The main story is set on the Andaman islands and shows us a young couple living close to nature and to ghosts from colonial times. The story then follows their child's nurse to Burma, where she seeks the son she gave up at birth. Another characters takes us to Nepal, and from there to the Indian Himalaya. The narrative is rooted in the geology of the subcontinent, as the land itself reflects the impermanence of the people who live upon it. Frequently dreamlike and strange, this is a fascinating and unusual book.

Now I'm reading Miss Timmins' school for girls, a murder mystery set in 1970s Maharashtra at an archaic boarding school which teaches British values and traditions to the daughters of the Indian middle classes. I'm enjoying it so far.

>56 Donna828: - I had those 2 to read for this challenge, as well but I could not get into the first at all so decided not to bother with the sequel. I ended up giving them to a friend. My brain just needs lighter fare these days. So much squalor and hardship and I just wasn't in the frame of mind for it.

Finally finished red earth and pouring rain a rathere bloated book that badly needed an editor. it was intriguing at first, this monkey who comes back to life as former self and strickes a bargain with a god to remain living as long as he keeps telling stories. They were interesting at first, but I kept putting the book down and losing my way, and at the end really not sure what I just read. Descriptions of life in India, and the revolt after partition was realistic. It was the writing that kept me going. But it was a real slog towards the end. this is well loved apparently and has good reviews here so I suspect some here will love it. Ill give it 3*

I finished Miss Timmins' school for girls and enjoyed it quite a bit more than most of the LT reviewers. The portrayal of life in a small town in 1960s Maharashtra was very well done, with emphasis on the tension between those who seek the big-city diversions of modern clothes and culture (including drugs), the more traditional ways of the town, and the archaic English customs of the school. Charu is a flawed but relatable protagonist as she seeks to figure her way through life. My favourite section of the book was that narrated by one of the pupils though.

India: Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh

Well, I found this one much more memorable than Paul did! The book concerns a small village that hasn't yet been struck by the horrific violence during Partition. Singh does a masterful job of building tension, and he had me on the edge of my seat at the end.

Bangladesh: Kundo Wakes Up by Saad Z. Hossain

Sadly blah follow-up to the excellent Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday.

Sri Lanka: Eyesha and the Great Elephant Gathering by Nadishka Aloysius, illustrated by Manoshi De Silva

A picture book about an annual gathering of elephants during the dry season. Except we don't really learn anything about elephants in Sri Lanka, or elephants in general. Add in the illustrations that look like they were done by someone who just discovered Adobe Illustrator and you have an eminently skippable book.

I am really enjoying expanding my horizons with the challenge of reading from different areas of the world, I look forward to July's thread!
For June I chose The Hungry Tide, it was atmospheric, interesting and helped you look at things from different points of view, 5 stars and I would recommend it. The setting was very vivid and like another character, which added to the experience of reading the book.

>62 amanda4242: I read Train to Pakistan last year and also found it memorable.

I forgot about Riot which I read decades ago; Will have to see if I can fit it in with next months reads!