Man Booker Prize is to the literary world what Oscar is to Hollywood. This prize is awarded to the writers from the Commonwealth countries. My first ever Booker Prize read was Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. I believe that book’s every sentence deserved that coveted prize. The second book I read was DBC Pierre’s Vernon God Little. It was awesome but due to bold language and Texan accents not many people liked it (here). The third book was Arvind Adiga’s The White Tiger. I loved the flow of the book.

From Pakistan in 2007 Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist was shortlisted (It was one of the final six books) but unfortunately it couldn’t win so Pakistan has yet to claim a Booker Prize winning author.

This year’s Booker Prize was awarded to British writer Hilary Mantel for her 16th century political saga Wolf Hall. I’ll try to get my hands on it.

Some other famous Booker Prize winning novels are Midnight’s Children (1981) by Salman Rushdie. The Famished Road (1991) by Ben Okri. The English Patient (1992) by Michael Ondaatje. Life of Pi (2002) by Yann Martel etc.

Trivia

Including authors with dual citizenship, the United Kingdom has the most winners of the prize at 25. Second is Australia with six winners (counting both Coetzee and Carey twice); Ireland and India each have four winners. [Wikipedia]

Once upon a time there was a little girl who read about hobbies in the book. (The word ‘hobby’ didn’t feel trite at all). At that time she would play random games of childhood or simply be destructive by breaking the branches, clipping leaves, killing wasps or at the most enjoy swinging in the long, hot summer afternoons.

So after reading about the positive beneficial effects of having a hobby she got restless and started scanning her mind for a possible hobby. That book mostly talked about hobbies related to collecting items. She thought of collecting matchboxes. What a brilliant idea that was! But in no time she realized that was actually very boring. What was fun about collecting the ship logo matchboxes with corny jokes at the back? She dumped that hobby in a week.

How about collecting postal stamps?! Her brother already had a tiny collection. Why not expand that? She vigorously started collecting postal stamps. At that time snail mail was the only way of long distance communication (of course other than the good old but expensive telephone). She would ask the postman for stamps when he would come to deliver the mail. He would skillfully peal the foreign stamps from other people’s mail. Doesn’t sound a good today! But postmen back then would do so without any remorse. She carried on that hobby for a long time but what a tedious sort of hobby that was. Seeing and appreciating the stamp collection once in a while was good but beyond that it failed to serve any purpose for her.

Then she thought to give postcard collection a shot. She did collect about 30 odd postcards from across the world and that was it. Whimsical she was! She thought to change the line of her hobby once again.

Damn that book which only spoke of collecting items! Yes, it did mention writing journals or keeping a diary of day to day account but heck she had no knack of writing so dropped the idea even without trying.

Time went by and the habit of collecting things stuck to her. She started collecting music and movies for she used to like them too much. She used to love reading stories; the only thing that always unconditionally appealed to her. The habit of reading stayed with her and she started buying, reading and hoarding stories, books and magazines and she never got fed up of it.

Do I need to say that capricious hoarder was me?!

Shahabnama

Shahabnama by Qudratullah Shahab is undoubtedly one of the unique books in the Urdu literature. It is a bestseller autobiography that has never gone out of print since its release in the late 80s.

The books discusses at length the pre-partition era, the post-partition Pakistan, details about the growing influence of military and bureaucracy in the mainstream politics. It is a mammoth book but it has been written in such interesting and simple style that the reader cruises through it. I read it 6-7 years ago and once I started I couldn’t put it down until I finished in a few days. The book’s most surreal and debatable chapter (other than the haunted house) is where Shahab claims to have been in touch with a mysterious mystical figure codenamed Ninety. Ninety, according to Shahab, provided him the spiritual guidance. Shahab also expressed his deep respect and affiliation with Silsila-i-Owaisia. So the readers get the ample dose of Sufism too which appealed to many people.

Mumtaz Mufti, Shahab’s close friend shed more light on Shahab’s spiritual facet in the second part of his autobiography ‘Alakh Nagri’. In his words: In the first half of his life he discovered women and in the second half Qudratullah Shahab.

One interesting fact is that Shahab’s autobiography was published posthumously so no one could question him but there are several books available in the market that rebut all his and Mumtaz Mufti’s claims about Shahab’s spiritual personality.

Call it a reality or a fictionalized fact, the truth is that ‘Shahabnama’ exhibits the writing prowess of the author. It’s been one of my favorite books of Urdu literature. I, like many people, will always be in search of truth. I am neutral about his claims of spirituality.

Mantorama

I had once written a post about Manto as to how just by sheer chance I stumbled upon Mantorama in the library of my college. Manto’s personal life has nothing special to write about. He was apparently an ordinary married man with three daughters, got sued many times for obscenity. He was a short story writer, scriptwriter and a journalist. He died of excessive drinking in 1955 at the age of 42. In 2005, fifty years after his death, he was commemorated on the postal stamp.

It is indeed Manto’s larger than life work that has kept his name alive. Manto in my view is the best thing to have happened to the contemporary Urdu literature. His work carries strange depth, bitterness, indifference and melancholy. His work was termed as lewd which is neither true nor false; it all depends upon the reader’s perception and sensitivities.

When I had first read his certain stories – I had taken a slight offence. It was perhaps I was reading him with my elder’s eyes – who had detested him. But later on when my thinking reached certain level of maturity, I realized the class of Manto. It is difficult to name his best stories because each one is a gem but usually the following of his stories always receive special
mention:

1) Toba Tek Singh
2) Mozalle
3) Naya Qanoon
4) Khol Do

Mantorama is the collection of all his short stories, novelettes etc.

Nothing can beat . . .

Lying in the bed at night when I devour the book in the faint lamplight as if there is no tomorrow.

Then reading tire my eyes and I feel an urge to sleep – light as a feather and so serene as if there is no tomorrow.

I would like to read these books…

I like these WP themes…

Review of the beautiful novel that I had read some time back.

The Village by the Sea is a fantastic novel by Anita Desai. The novel is set in the beautiful fishing village of Thul, fourteen kilometers from Bombay, India that is surrounded by rice paddies and coconut groves. The main characters of the novel are Hari and his sister Lila. Their mother is severely ill and is bed ridden. While their father, once a fisherman, is a drunkard.

Lila has to do all the chores and to look after her ailing mother as well as two younger sisters and Hari has to plow the small field that they have and to keep the house running. While Hari and Lila struggle to make ends meet, this sleepy village is abuzz with rumors that the government is going to set up fertilizer factory in Thul very soon. This meant the paddies and coconut groves would be replaced by the factory and fishing wouldn’t be lucrative anymore. The prospect of the factory meant new jobs as well. But Hari couldn’t wait for the factory project to begin, besides he isn’t sure whether he would get a job or not while he desperately needs money for the treatment of his dying mother, for the education of his younger siblings, for the wedding of Lila and to bring happiness in their sad house.

After much deliberation he gets ready to take risk for the sake of his family. He runs away to Bombay without letting anyone know. Will he survive in the monstrous city? Will he be able to make and save some money for his family? Will he get back to his village safe and sound? Answers to these questions can be found in this enthralling novel about the struggle and determination of a young boy.

The village by the sea is pleasure to read because not only it is a poignant tale that the writer claims to be based on true incident but it awesomely depicts the scenic beauty of Thul and the crazy life of Bombay. Though basically it is for the young readers still it is highly recommended if you haven’t read it yet!

I am reading this super boring novel by Cheryl Benard. I am cursing the moment when I wasted my precious money on this piece of junk. I haven’t completed it yet but I will for the sake of money I spent on it.

This is a relatively unknown novel. So why did I buy it? The word ‘Peshawar’ in the title made me curious. The lesson learnt from this experience is that don’t judge the book by its cover title. Really, go for the content and reviews.

By the way, it is a murder mystery set in the heart of Peshawar, the Inter-Con Hotel, involving an American and a bunch of locals from the different strata of society.

Just a note: This is the third boring novel I have ever read. The first two were 786 Cyber Cafe (Bina Shah) and Kolachi Dreams (Nadya A. R)

I was trying to read the book but the cheap double print caused me headache. Who suggested me to buy the pirated book? Ok, I admit no one did. It was my mistake to buy the 30 Rs. pirated version. I should better stick to the original books no matter how costly they are.

Actually I am not fond of pirated books it is that sometimes even the big bookstores don’t have the original ones so they present the pirated books. I remember when I was buying this book a few months back, there wasn’t the original one. And since it was so cheap in price so I thought to buy it.

This reminds me a totally unrelated incident. Once I walked into a big bookstore (I won’t name it), took out a list of books from my hand bag and looked around. I spotted a man in shalwar kameez  standing next to a book shelf staring at me. From his overall look he looked like one of the workers in the shop so I forwarded the list to him and asked, do you have these books? He smiled sheepisly and said I don’t work here. Well, well that was such a blonde moment but nevermind happens once in a while

I think the men (here) in the bookstores should wear some sort of uniform so that the customers could identify them. 

So are you people reading any book these days that you’d like to share?

I once read the review of Maps for Lost Lovers in Literati, The News. The scribe had praised the novel so much that when I ended reading the review I was convinced to buy the book. The South Asian writers always bring unique flavor by writing about the culture we all can identify with.

I did buy the book and though it was pretty slow and the failed to maintain the suspense about the killers through the end yet I liked his way of storytelling. And then I bought his first novel The Season of the Rainbirds. It’s set in a small town of Punjab. I liked it too though I couldn’t figure out what was there in the lost mail bag that everyone waited for anxiously. It is obvious both these novels couldn’t be term as the best but the way writer describes the characters and their lives are enough to entertain you. Now he’s back with his third offering called The Wasted Vigil set in Afghanistan. I might buy it because somewhere I like Nadeem Aslam’s craft of storytelling.

Nadeem Aslam was born in 1966 in Gujranwala, Pakistan. When he was 13 he had had a short story published in Urdu in a Pakistani newspaper. He came to Britain at the age of 14 when his communist father (a former poet and film director, now garbage collector and factory worker) fled President Zia’s regime and settled the family in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire. He went to Manchester University to read biochemistry but left in his third year to become a writer.

He sent the manuscript for his debut novel, Season of the Rainbirds, unsolicited to Andre Deutsch, who accepted it within 10 days.  It was published in 1993 and won two awards.  He was 26 when he began writing Maps For Lost Lovers in 1992, thinking it would take him 2 years to complete – it actually took him 11. During this time he lived on the award prize-money and various grants, living in a number of different UK locations – wherever he could find a place to stay.

Maps For Lost Lovers was published by Faber & Faber in the UK in August 2004 (USA publication by Knopf in May 2005).

He writes in longhand and says that sometimes a sentence will take a whole page of crossing out.” He says that the first chapter alone too five years to get right and the following story about Kaukab took seven months – but he then rejected it, keeping only 1 sentence of the 70 pages he’d written!

After two years he stopped writing the novel altogether in order to develop 100 page biographies of the main characters so that “I fully understood what this family was. Then I was six years into the writing and in deep financial trouble.” He laughs: “But it had to be done.”

He prefers to write in absolute isolation, draping the windows with black cloth and not going out for weeks at a time.  He says, “I always think of the silence and the darkness of a root that enables the flower to grow.”….”The only time I’m ever fully alive is when I’m writing. When I’d finished this book, I felt like a cage from which the songbird is being removed. For a month I just didn’t know what to do.”

Although culturally a Muslim, he describes himself as a non-believer and, due to money constraints, has not been back to Pakistan since leaving at the age of 14.  However, he says that he was raised with a ‘feeling for the life of the mind’ and was urged by his father to ‘live a passionate life’ and not to worry about money.  Aslam appears to live by these works as when he received a Royal Literary Fund grant he actually turned part of it down saying that he didn’t need that much!

When asked  if he is apprehensive about how the Muslim community will receive his novel he answers, “Writers have always got into trouble with people who think they know the answer….there’s no message in my books. My writing is my way of exploring my own life and the workings of my own consciousness.”

Aslam’s latest novel, The Wasted Vigil, was written in seven months. During the time in which he was writing, he saw no one. His family brought him food while he was sleeping. In appreciation, he dedicated the novel to his sister and brother-in-law for their support. The title of the novel is derived from a painting by Pakistani artist Abdur Rahman Chugtai (1894-1975) with the same name. Aslam remarks on the connection between his novel and the painting, in which a well-dressed, smiling, hopeful woman sits waiting, saying “the artist and God knows that it ain’t gonna happen. So once you look at the title, it’s quite a chilling picture.”

Aslam believes that “the novelist’s job is not to pose solutions, but to find out how best to live. That is the intention in each of my books.” As with all Aslam’s work, he begins with the mundane and discovers the beauty and pain of everyday life. In The Wasted Vigil, he started with a group of people with opposing ideological backgrounds and put them together. “I wanted to write about how friends become family,” he says.

He currently lives in north London.

If you want to hear the audio interview of the author click here: Interview

A few weeks ago I watched this critically acclaimed movie based on a short story of the same title by Canadian writer Shaun Mehta. The movie is slow and mainly caters to those who appreciate serious cinema. Talking about my taste, I’ve always appreciated such movies.

The story is about an eccentric old man whose path crosses with Amal and impressed from his humility he bequeathes him his entire estate before passing away. Does Amal get the inheritance in the presence of the old man’s greedy sons? And does Amal know about how rich he could become by signing the paper is the story.

The best scene of the movie is when old man’s son is shown playing gamble in casino while on the other hand the rickshaw driver gambles with life by mortgaging his rickshaw – his only source of income.

The story of the movie impressed me too much. A young writer has written about a character – the rickshaw wala – that we usually find in Ashfaq Ahmad’s stories. The movie is fairly good. At least it is worth watching once. I’d like to read more of Mehta’s work/stories.