The Zeitgeist

Top 10 Books of 2008 - First 5

As I enjoyed doing this last year I'm going to do it again. Top *whatever* lists of 2008 are like the blogging thing you do. It's a good roundup of what happened in the previous year in the blog topic of your choice and also it's guaranteed content for the end of year when nothing much happens (well nothing much apart from Gaza, but then, what's new right?).

Firstly two disclaimers.
Disclaimer 1, I will not even attempt to put these in any sort of order. I have no idea which one was the best or my favourite or whatever, I enjoyed them all which is why I'm posting about them.

Disclaimer 2, The Holy Qur'an, though it was something I read over the last year, is not in contention. I don't consider holy books to be on the same level or in the same category as mere fiction/non-fiction. Reading The Qur'an was an amazing experience and for sure I learned a lot but I would not disrespect it by putting it alongside Nick Hornby (no offence Nick!) in a year-end list. It is quite simply in a category of its own.

I have no idea if anyone even still reads this thing considering how sporadic my content has been over the past year (though I guess it's always been a matter of fits and starts for me). I have resolved to blog more and write more in 2009 as one of my New Year's Resolutions (I have 10, as to whether I have the courage to post them is another matter... let's see...) but if you should happen to chance across this post, please do comment with any comments or opinions on these books, if you've also read any of them, or any others you care to share or recommend.

So without further ado.

Naguib Mahfouz - Adrift on the Nile

Adrift on the Nile, was lent to me by Marwa and was the first Mahfouz book that I had the pleasure of being able to read (and only so far, I hope to read more soon, I do have one sitting on my desk at home, also gifted by Marwa, I'm sorry I haven't read it yet) and it was fantastic. In a short novel, Mahfouz effortlessly evokes Nasser's new Egypt, a cast of characters all seemingly drowning in the apathy that took hold of the middle-class/intelligentsia of Egypt at this time.

The congregation meets regularly over the sharing of shisha with hashish in it as they cannot stand the hypocricy and lack of sophistication in the Government of Egypt and modern Egyptian life. They smoke to forget and their conversations prove to be as interesting as anything Tarantino ever wrote. An excellent book and there has also been a film made - Mahfouz in collaboration with the director Hussein Kamal, but it's not easy to get hold of (as it was banned when it was released, in the era of Sadat).

Alain de Botton - Essays in Love

This is not my first time reading de Botton and I became a fan of his when I read his Consolations of Philosophy last year. This book was just as accessible and also more substantial because, unlike Consolations, it wasn't attempting to deal with a million things at the same time. It was simply about love, and not just love in all its broad glory but specifically human romantic relationships. In the book, de Botton chronicles an (apparently) fictional relationship and all of its ups and downs, from first meeting to eventual end.

De Botton's analysis of all of the regular emotions that we normally go through in relationships is remarkable and many people will be able to deeply and easily relate to how De Botton thinks and writes. Once again, clever, accessible philosophy from Mr. De Botton. I am impressed.


Cormac McCarthy - The Road

McCarthy's The Road is a post-apocalyptic tale describing a journey taken by a father and his young son over a period of several months, across a landscape blasted years before by an unnamed cataclysm that destroyed civilization and, apparently, most life on earth. The novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 2006 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction.

I found the novel to be utterly gripping, one of those it's-freaking-me-out-but-i-cant-put-it-down page-turners. If we're talking about books in which you get lost and seemingly wake up from a dream with the room spinning around you when you close them, this is certainly one. McCarthy's prose is simple but beautiful and evocative. His post-apocalyptic landscape reeks of a now seemingly inevitable future for our doomed planet. Not for the faint of heart and certainly not a "light read" but utterly amazing. A film is now in production starring Viggo Mortensen.

Sa'adat Hasan Manto - Black Margins

Though he is very well known in his native Pakistan, along with the rest of the Indian Sub-Continent, Manto does not enjoy such prominence in the West, which is a real shame. Rashna introduced me to him, and Saba later gushed of his brilliance, and after having read the book, I do understand what all the fuss is about.

Manto is a short story writer, and although I have not traditionally been a fan of short stories, he's up there with Jhumpa Lahiri as my favourite short story writer. His shorts are powerful in that they do not beat around any sort of bushes. They go directly to the heart of the matter, and in Manto's case more often than not it's the heart of the bloodshed unleashed during the Partition of India in 1947. Partition was an event of such cataclysmic proportions that it has been written about and discussed countless times and in countless forms. Manto holds his own and has his own place in these after-the-fact discussions and he deserves respect because he does not gloss over the gory details. He does not fall victim to the Indian tendency to selectively forget certain things as it is best to not to bring them up again. The pain, the absurdity and the sheer misery of Partition is all here, fragmented and real.

Rohinton Mistry - A Fine Balance

Another fine lesser known author from the sub-continent, Rohinton Mistry did not achieve any kind of real fame in the West until this novel was featured on Oprah's Book Club. Despite this feature, and despite him being easily available at Borders in Austraila, his books arent exactly flying off the shelves which is a real shame.

This is because, A Fine Balance in particular, is exactly the sort of novel that Western audiences would love. It is soaked in the pain, love, life and humanity of India, and of Bombay. Considering how much readers have loved Shantaram, a similarly sprawling and dramatic, yet immensely accessible, picture of life in Bombay, this book should be a best seller.

What sets Mistry apart from his post-colonial dramatic contemporaries in the sub-continent is his amazing ability to get inside the heads of his protagonists. For example, A Fine Balance has a cast of characters which includes a pair of impoverished lower-caste tailors that hail from a small Indian village. I have never seen an author seemingly understand the impoverished masses of India and the way they think better than Mistry. Mistry humanises them, gives them a role far more prominent than that of porters and cab drivers in Shantaram, they are not merely side-pieces here to amuse the reader while he follows the adventures of the main character, they are real flesh and blood.

Although the novel is set in an unnamed 'city by the sea' it is quite clearly referring to Mistry's hometown of Bombay and is set specifically in the time of Indira Gandhi's National Emergency. The narrative is rich in the intricacies of Indian life, including that of the Parsi community, and is heavy in political undertones critical of the Emergency time period and its absurdities. Although many writers have successfully tackled the absurdity and beauty of life in an Indian megaopolis, none have done it quite this well and quite this accessibly. This book is an absolute must read.

Labels: literature

posted by LX @ 2:24 AM Comments: 6