shortillas

Two tragedies, and a Master Piece – Chinua Achebe's Trilogy The trilogy begins with the landmark literary accomplishment, Things Fall Apart , that depicts the first encounters between the Igbo people and the Christian Missionaries; it then moves on to the story No Longer at Ease , set in a Nigeria that is on the brink of Independence; the last story, Arrow of God , a true masterpiece, relates the gradual dissolution of Ezeulu, a powerful high priest. I call Arrow of God a true masterpiece because Achebe seems to have perfected the tragedy form in this story. There is a very interesting conversation in No Longer at Ease between its protagonist Obi Okonkwo and the Chairman of the Public Service Commission, who is interviewing him: the Chairman is surprised when Obi tells him that The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene was nearly ruined by the happy ending, (at the end of that novel its protagonist dies by suicide!), to which Obi replies: 'Perhaps happy endi...

The boyhood of Walter Raleigh – Millais “ What do we do with knowledge that we cannot bear to live with? ” Deborah Levy asks, in her memoir Things I don’t want to Know. Picture yourself: you are a thirty one year old (gelded) male, who is cracking in the skin with piles and piles of pent up stories; you have an angle-poised light (of a dim yellow colour, I presume) shining over your head like a halo and you write and write in the nights and then read out your literary output to your sole companion: Padma, a pickle maker; you are writing primarily for your son, who is not in fact your son (albeit being the son of your dead wife) but is in fact, ironically, through a strange twist of events, the great-grandson of your grandfather–a doctor, who trained at Heidelberg and returned to Kashmir–with whose story you intend to start, at Kashmir; there’s the story of his piecemeal courtship with his bride-to-be: the Reverend Mother; there’s the story of his surviving the Jalianwalla Bagh massac...

 I have a huge respect for literary awards and glory. All modern writers–Deborah Levy, Hilary Mantel...–who've left an enduring mark on my writerly character are winners of major awards. In the year 2008, when I was eighteen, I read my first Naipaul; presumably because he won the hundredth Nobel Prize for Literature. The year 2012 is an important year for Booker Prize enthusiasts: as it had such a remarkable short-list. 2012 is when I got my first job as an Automation Design engineer at Schneider Electric, Guindy, Chennai. The first book–actually, the first gift–that I bought for myself from my very first salary was Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil.  I read Narcopolis eight times. Then I chucked it out of the window. The book had altered me. It washed away all the Naipaul. I went from God to anti-God and I wasn't sure if I wasn't left with an improvement!! Swimming Home by Deborah Levy (which was shortlisted the same year for the Booker as Narcopolis : 2012) is a modernist marv...