Books recommendations by a self-exiled Urban Indian
Discover a curated exile reading list from a self-exiled urban Indian. Featuring Midnight's Children, Shantaram, and Catch-22, explore fiction, travel, and identity through the lens of displacement and modern life.
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Catch-22
by Joseph Heller
Catch-22 is like no other novel. It is one of the funniest books ever written, a keystone work in American literature, and even added a new term to the dictionary. At the heart of Catch-22 resides the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero endlessly inventive in his schemes to save his skin from the horrible chances of war. His efforts are perfectly understandable because as he furiously scrambles, thousands of people he hasn't even met are trying to kill him. His problem is Colonel Cathcart, who keeps raising the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. Yet if Yossarian makes any attempts to excuse himself from the perilous missions that he is committed to flying, he is trapped by the Great Loyalty Oath Crusade, the hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule from which the book takes its title: a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but if he makes the necessary formal request to be relieved of such missions, the very act of making the request proves that he is sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved. Catch-22 is a microcosm of the twentieth-century world as it might look to some one dangerously sane -- a masterpiece of our time.
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Among the Believers
by V. S. Naipaul
The Nobel Prize-winning author gives us â on the basis of his own intensive seventeen month journey across the Asian continent â an unprecedented revelation of the Islamic world. ⢠âA brilliant reportâŚ. A book of scathing inquiry and judgment, whose tragic power is being continually reinforced by current eventsâ (Newsweek). With all the narrative power and intellectual authority that have distinguished his earlier books and won him international acclaim (âThere can hardly be a writer alive who surpasses himâ â Irving Howe, The New York Times Book Review), Naipaul explores the life, the culture, the ferment inside the nations of Islam â in a book that combines the fascinations of the great works of travel literature with the insights of a uniquely sharp, original, and idiosyncratic political mind. He takes us into four countries in the throes of âIslamizationâ â countries that, in their ardor to build new societies based entirely on the fundamental laws of Islam, have violently rejected the âmaterialismâ of the technologically advanced nations that have long supported them. He brings us close to the people of Islam â how they live and work, the role of faith in their lives, how they see their place in the modern world.
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Nineteen Eighty-four
by George Orwell
Eternal warfare is the price of bleak prosperity in this satire of totalitarian barbarism.
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Prince of Ayodhya
by Ashok Banker
The original Ramayana was written in Sanskrit by a reformed thief-turned-sage named Valmiki, possibly as long ago as 2,000 B.C. Now, with breathtaking imagination and brilliant storytelling, Indian writer Ashok Banker has recreated this magnificent tale for modern readers everywhere. In the ancient city of Ayodhya, a young prince has a terrifying apocalyptic vision. Shortly after, an ancient seer arrives at the city gates with an equally terrifying prophecy. Two men brought together by extraordinary events. Two men who will journey together to the ends of the world... The Ramayana has begun. Find out more about this title and others at www.orbitbooks.co.uk
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Notes from Underground; the Double
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
âIt is best to do nothing! The best thing is conscious inertia! So long live the underground!âAlienated from society and paralysed by a sense of his own insignificance, the anonymous narrator of Dostoyevskyâs groundbreaking Notes from Underground tells the story of his tortured life. With bitter sarcasm, he describes his refusal to become a worker in the âant-hillâ of society and his gradual withdrawal to an existence âundergroundâ. The seemingly ordinary world of St Petersburg takes on a nightmarish quality in The Double when a government clerk encounters a man who exactly resembles him â his double perhaps, or possibly the darker side of his own personality. Like Notes from Underground, this is a masterly study of human consciousness.Jessie Coulsonâs introduction discusses the storiesâ critical reception and the themes they share with Dostoyevksyâs great novels.
