And the Monutains Echoed - Khaled Hosseini

'A story is like a moving train: no matter where you hop onboard, you are bound to reach your destination sooner or later.’

 'So, then. You want a story and I will tell you one. But just the one. Don't either of you ask for me. It's late, and we have a long day of travel ahead of us, Pari, you and I.'

I bet to my friend that this time, I will not cry after reading Khaled's new book. In the first 20 pages, I lost that bet.

What did I think? I don't know exactly. Like his two other books, Hosseini is an excellent storyteller. He's great with words and produces images that flow like poetry. The story is touching, emotional and speaks of life's hardships and the difficult choices one must make. If you don't happen to shed a tear at some point while reading, you're heartless. He captures your emotions from the very first page. You find yourself transported to 1950's Afghanistan where you smile, cry, and feel pity right alongside the unfortunate characters in this book. But Hosseini tried something different with "And The Mountains Echoed" and that was incorporating a slew of different characters as opposed to just two, like he did in his last two books, and I don't know if it worked out too well. Some people could have been mentioned in passing, or not even at all, as opposed to dedicating whole chapters to them, such as Markos and Thalia's story. Also the Bashiri cousins seemed unnecessary. Even though these characters were unique in their own way and provided food for thought regarding their plights, I still felt like these chapters dragged on when I was more concerned about what was happening with the others. It was like Hosseini deliberately sucked us in, made us get cozy with Saboor and his family just to rip them away from us and branch off onto some completely different writing exercise. As the reader, I just couldn't reshape my feelings to feel another strong connection to these new characters. Regarding the writing style, the book spanned over several generations and then spoke in the first person from the point of view of different characters from the next generation which got confusing at first, especially as he jumps between past and present and even geographical locations. Furthermore, he squeezed in a subplot with Iqbal and the commander and it came off sounding short and incomplete. I feel like the author could have dedicated more pages developing and telling the story of the characters we already got to know and love in the beginning, rather than introducing new, unnecessary ones halfway through the book. This format Hosseini used left a lot of open ends and a kind of longing, leaving the reader unsatisfied.

Not my favorite out of the three but still an enjoyable read

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

She succumbed to her earlier dreams. Along with the idea of romantic love she was introduced to another physical beauty probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity and ended in dissolution. In equating physical beauty with virtue, she stripped her mind, bound it and collected self-contempt by the heap. She forgot lust and simple caring-for. She regarded love as possessive mating and romance as the goal of the spirit. It would be for her a well-spring from which she would draw the most destructive emotions, deceiving the lover and seeking to imprison the beloved, curtailing freedom in every way. 

I was roaming in the college premises, when I came across with my friends who were discussing something about the projects. I found those projects useless, and went inside the classroom to read The Kite Runner. My friend, Rachna was there too. She had a copy of The Bluest Eye. I took her copy and told her that I will give back her copy within a week. But alas! That week never came.

Pecola. That's her name. 

Her name bothered me the first time I read it. Pecola. How do you even pronounce it. It's...ugly. Slowly, but surely, I understood that was the point. Or at least a point among many wicked-but-important points in The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. 

Pecola herself would never be pretty, would never be understood. No one would ever be able to shorten or lengthen her name into a cute nick. Her hair, her eyes, her countenance, her life, would never be considered more than an insult, not only to herself, but to her people, too. 

Pecola, trapped in poverty, was mercilessly teased by her peers, raped and impregnated by her father and judged by her elders. Eventually, Pecola went crazy and was last seen digging through the garbage by her old childhood "friend", one of the narrators of the novel. 

The narrators acknowledge the superior tone of The Observer, a concept I had never considered. The listener/watcher/reader is a powerful person, so I will be more careful of what and how I share from now on. Or, maybe just less caring. That's it.

Pecola herself, never experiences self-superiority, which I believe is the first time I have ever noticed such a phenomena. Most characters, especially underdog protagonists, experience some sort of self-superiority (however deluded) at some point in their "character arc." Even when she is coerced/tricked into harming a cat and a dog in two separate but bizarre incidents of what I consider male-domination, she is neither elevated nor deflated by the moment. Instead, she is motivated by achieving superiority by getting blue eyes. That is interesting to me. 

This is not a book that you curl up with by your stupid hearth with to be entertained, amused, tickled, or heart-warmed by. It's the kind of book you read to marvel at and grieve for the characters and in the end hope that you learned something about human nature.

This book was incredible. I couldn't put it down and when I did put it down, I had to sit there and not move for a good one hour.

Rachna, will give you back your book once we see each other, but I guess I am going to live Pecola’s life one more time.

Not Without My Daughter - Betty Mahmoody

'You are here for the rest of your life. Do you understand? You are not leaving Iran. You are here until you die.'

It was back in the year of 2012. I was in Goa for a trip and at that time, I was reading one Iranian Novel (will write about it soon), my friend Rachna told me that if I am loving that book which I was reading then I am sure going to love, Not Without My Daughter. She told me that I should read it as soon as I finish my current reading. I came to Mumbai in late December, and bought the copy of Not Without My Daughter from Landmark, and read it in one week. One entire week I was lost in the world of Betty Mahmoody.

Such a harrowing story! After years of marriage and a beautiful child together, Betty agrees to travel with her husband to Iran to visit his family. There he becomes a completely different person, and refuses to let her and their daughter leave. At one point she is literally held prisoner by her husband, and her journey out of Iran with her daughter actually turned her hair gray. 

This isn't completely a catalog of how awful Iran is, though. She gives its beauties their due, and also details meetings with kind and compassionate people. She made many friends, and even among her in-laws there were those who were sympathetic to her plight. Many of her husband's relatives were actually shocked and scolded him for his treatment of her and their daughter, including his own mother.

There are many things the author wrote about that are very typical of Iranian behavior, things that I have grown to love about the culture (the best food, the love of tea, the strong family unit, the way they seem like they're arguing when they're talking).

This book gives a really positive message which is that there is good in people all around the world. There were many Iranians who were willing to help her no matter what the consequences were.

I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in equality and human rights and above all, a love which bounds a mother with her daughter.

Thanks Rachna for Recommending this book to me.

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

“Do you know what the definition of insane is? Yes. It’s the inability to relate to another human being. It’s the inability to love.” – Revolutionary Road


It was an early morning of October 2012. I slept late the other night, and when I was wide awake in my thoughts, I read the pages of the story which I was writing at that time. I read all the 178 pages and didn't find it exciting. Not a single word. Everything was something gimmick from from other writers. Every feeling was not true. I wanted to write something which defined me, which can shout in front of the world and say that This is truely me. This is what I am and These are the reasons why I am writing something. With this thought, and hatred for my own work, I tried to sleep.

When I woke up next morning, my friend suggested me to read Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates. I had already seen the film and found LEonardo's acting very very touching. He was indeed the true Frank Wheeler. I started reading the book, I read, I read and I read. I just couldn't control myself from turning the pages. I read it in one sitting and that's when I knew, What I wanted to write. I wanted a family drama like that one.A relationship which Frank and his wife, April shares is what I wanted to write. This is what, I wanted to feel from inside.

Most of Revolutionary Road’s characters stare at themselves in mirrors with a glint of recognition of mediocrity before they relapse into self-delusion. Self-reflection is a recurring motif. Frank and April are in desperate need of self-revelation and self-revolution. To quote another Yeats, “Surely some revelation is at hand.”

In the 300-plus pages of the novel, nothing all that extraordinary happens to them, at least not until the end: Frank and April deal with dissatisfaction and fear, with pregnancy and ambition, and with the dream of escape. Yet in spite of this lack of surface pizazz, Revolutionary Road seems, each time I read it, ever more moving, and ever more an essential testament about mid-20th century America.

Richard Yates was a famously pessimistic writer, and there's no question that Revolutionary Road, while a hugely pleasurable read, is not an easy one emotionally. Every time I read it, I start to see the world the way Yates did: the clothes hanging on my clothesline begin to look a little shabby, my small living apartment in some desperate need of repair. But that's a small price to pay for Yates' clarity. The deeper I get into the life of marriage and parenthood — Yates' special territory — the more essential I find that clarity to be.

Joseph Anton: A Memoir

As you are fighting a battle that may cost you your life, is the thing for which you are fighting worth loosing your life for? (p. 285)


This of course is the story of the famous fatwa. On February 14th, 1989, Rushdie receives a phone call, informing him that Ayatollah Khomeini has sentenced him to death because of his novel, The Satanic Verses . This book details then his life for the next 12 years, trying to live as normal as possible while being under constant police protection, moving from house to house, relying on the kindness of his friends, driving bulletproof cars and trying to survive, both mentally and physically.

He writes about his private life, his childhood, his years in school, his marriages, his children, his attempt to be a father in these most extraordinary circumstances. He constantly struggles against people – both official people and the public – believing he doesn’t deserve to be protected because he has brought this on himself. He doesn’t agree with this – and neither do I. A leader of a state does not have to right to condemn the citizen of another state to death. So Rushdie struggles with Government officials, ministers and the leaders of his protection service to get them to continue to protect him and to allow him to live as free a life as possible so he can be a father, be a man and a writer, and do the publicity necessary to promote his books.

A strange thing with this book is that even though it is a memoir, it is written in the third person. Rushdie never writes I but writes he, even when writing about his own thoughts. I actually really liked this because for me, it felt like Rushdie was standing outside his life, looking in, trying to make sense of what happened to him. For me, it worked! He is also juggling with various identities through this – there’s Salman, the private man his friends knows; there’s Rushdie, the hated man, the demonstrators are renouncing on the streets; and there’s Joseph Anton, his alias, created out of the names of his two favorite writers, Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekhov. So in some ways, it must be hard to see these years living like this, split into three, as his life instead of someone else’s life, a fictional life.

The book really shows what kind of man he is. Intelligent, well-read, knowledgeable about both the classics and modern (pop) culture (JK Rowling, Doctor Who, Lord of the Rings, Super Mario, various sci-fi etc). He writes about his process when writing books, about getting ideas and using things from his real life experience in his books. And he writes about all his books in a way which makes me want to read them. And I love that while he shares all the famous writers, actors, politicians etc he meets, he also writes about how proud he is to complete his Super Mario game and how he thinks Birkenstocks is the uncoolest footwear, except for Crocs (p. 342). I really enjoyed how he shows his humor throughout the book even though he battles depression throughout these years, living with a constant death sentence over his head.

‘Who shall have control over the story? Who has, who should have, the power not only to tell the stories within which, we all lived, but also to say in what manner those stories may be told? For everyone lived by and inside stories, the so-called grand narratives. The nation was a story, and the family was another, and religion was a third. As a creative artist he knew that the only answer to the question was: Everyone and anyone has, or should have that power.’ (p. 360)

Of particular interest to me, was of course the times he mentioned Denmark and the Danish reaction to the fatwa. Overall, it seems his Danish publisher wasn’t afraid and not only published the paperback – which was a big deal – but also compared the risk of publishing it to crossing the street. It is sobering to read about how hard it was for him to get the paperback published in UK and US because if that paperback hadn’t come out, his attackers would have won.

When I began reading this novel, I had to come to terms with something. I was NOT EVEN BORN when the fatwa was issued. And as a  writer, I’ve always believed that he was in the right to publish that book and that no one had the right to attack him for that. But at the same time, I was against the so called ‘Danish Cartoons’, the caricatures of Muhammad posted by Jyllands-Posten back in 2005. Of course I didn’t want anyone attacking Kurt Westergaard, one of the drawers, but I didn’t like the idea of these drawings. Now, how could I reconcile supporting Rushdie and believing him to be in the right while not supporting these drawings? I thought about that for a while and for me, the answer is, that Jyllands-Posten did it intentionally to cause a disturbance while Rushdie didn’t set out to do anything but write a novel. Whether you agree or disagree with someone, they should always be allowed to talk, to say their mind. You have to use words to defeat words, not guns or bombs or knives.

I enjoyed every page of this and read and read and read.


The value of art lies in the love it engenders, not the hatred. It is love that makes books last. (p. 316)

Manuscript Found in Accra

I loved reading The Alchemist a few years back so when the chance came along to read Manuscript Found in Accra, I jumped at the chance. A philosophical literary story, it is a short book at 190 pages, packed with many words of advice that although I was reminded of the books of wisdom from the bible, didn't quite speak to me in the same way.

On the eve of battle, the people who chose to stay and fight, gathered to hear what the Copt and a Rabbi, Iman and Christian priest, leaders of the three religions in Jerusalem had to say about the battle. But rather than prepare battle, the Copt wanted the people to question and talk about how they felt.

"None of us can know what tomorrow will hold, because each day has its good and its bad moments. So, when you ask your questions, forget about the troops outside and the fear inside. Our task is not to leave a record of what happened on this date for those who will inherit the Earth; history will take care of that. Therefore, we will speak about your daily lives, about the difficulties we have had to face. That is all the future will be interested, because I do not believe very much will change in the next thousand years."

And went on to address questions about defeat, solitude, feelings of uselessness, afraid of changing, beauty, which direction to take, love, fate, sex, elegance, luck, miracles, anxiety, the future, loyalty, and enemies. What do you suppose would be the questions on your mind the night before a battle? Certainly not most of those. Given that it is fiction, I couldn't help feeling that many of the things said by the Copt was new age platitudes and fatalistic thinking, since the majority of people expected to die the next day in the siege. I unfortunately didn't appreciate the story as much as I had The Alchemist. Perhaps if it had been written into a story with action, rather than just a question and answer session, it would have been better.