Blakwall

At a time when Black Lives Matter movement is bringing forth the deep embedded racism in the United States, when racist people are being called out and racism deniers are trying to hog the limelight, The Nickel Boys serves as a testament to the truth beneath it all. Set during the era of the Civil Rights Movement, Colson Whitehead tells the story of Elwood Curtis. Elwood is a serious young boy, getting good grades and working hard at Mr. Marconi's Tobacco and Cigars shop. He's kept on tstraight and narrow by his grandmother, Harriet. Elwood listens to Dr. Martin Luther King and conducts himself according to the ideals. But as luck would have it, he is sent to the Nickel Academy, a juvenile reform school. The school claims to turn delinquent boys to honourable men. But that is all on the surface. Inside the campus of the reform school, Elwood sees the horror white men can exert when he is beaten senseless for standing up for a fellow inmate. It is here in the school

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata. The book revolves around Keiko Furukura, a thirty six year old oddball, who spent the last eighteen years of her life working at a convenience store. The fact that she does not conform to the society is set from the very beginning of the book. Keiko recalls incidents from her childhood, that to her were normal, but caused distress to others. But to Keiko, being a convenience store worker was a revelation. She has a manual on how to behave with customers. She copies her fellow workers' expressions, speech patterns and behaviours to fit in. If they express anger at something, so does she. Even when with friends, she reacts to situations as her convenience store co-workers would do. Her life revolves around the store.  But to her parents and sister, she needs to be cured. Her friends and their husbands question her lifestyle and her dead end job, suggest her to find someone to, even offering to set her up. Things take a funny turn when Shiraha

White Chrysanthemum is the story of two Korean sisters- Hana and Emi, separated by the second world war. Hana is dragged away by a Japanese soldier to a life of sexual slavery while Emi is left to grow up in war ravaged times. The book is divided into two narratives- Hana’s narrative covers the war years, while in Emi’s chapters it is 2011, and the elderly Emi is still looking for her sister. The sisters are part of the haenyeo community, female sea divers. The book is an account not of war but how war affects people, how wars bring out the worst in men. It isn't an easy book and I found myself crying a lot over the days it took me to go through it. It is an immensely well told testimony of the brutalities of war and it has attempted to recognise the plight of the comfort women, who are yet to receive an apology for the atrocities committed on them. The characters are fictional but the truth it has attempted to show needs to be recognised, so we do not end up denying or

Murder in Mahim was a quick and interesting read. Although it is a crime novel in a general sense, but it could very well serve as a viewing window for the dark underbelly of Mumbai's gay scene. This book reminds me of another book I had the chance to read, The Boyfriend by R. Raj Rao. Both books dealt with the role of casteism and sex. Murder in Mahim starts with the discovery of the body of a boy called Proxy, in the loo of a train station that is known to be frequented by gay men. Bodies follow in a quick succession and the two people at the centre of it, Inspector Jende and retired journalist Peter "Pittr" Dsouza are nowhere close to solving it. It is a proper muder mystery book, with all the gore and blood. The narrative is fast paced and in the process of going through it, you might end up guessing some of the plot points( it isn't a bummer, though!). But it isn't just the murder at the centrefold. The chaos surrounding the characters take up as

Growing up, I've listened to my mother read out stories and folk lore about gods and goddesses as prayers. As a kid, these stories enthralled me and I'd listen to them with rapt attention. One such story was that of Devi Manasha and Behula. And it is one of those stories that form the backdrop of Amitav Ghosh's new novel Gun Island. Based on the legend of the Bonduki Saudagar and Devi Manasha, the book is set years after the end of Ghosh's previous book, The Hungry Tide. While in The Hungry Tide, Ghosh took us on a journey of the beautifully dangerous waters and jungles of the Sunderbans, in Gun Island, he takes us from the waters of Sundarbans to Venice and then further out to the ocean. Dinanath Dutta or Deen, the rare books dealer, Cinta, the Venetian historian and Piya, the marine biologist from the previous book form the pillars of Gun Island. Fakir's son, Tipu and Rafi, one of the last descendents of the entrusted caretaker of the shrine of the god